gbnewby writes "Remember the NASA Blue Marble composite image of earth from space, completely cloud free? Today a whole new series was released showing earth scenes from cloudless days across all 12 months of 2004. These beautiful images come in many different resolutions and formats. NASA even provided some animations. We and others have set up web, ftp and rsync mirrors; let the Torrents begin!" NASA BlueMarble: Next Generation Log in/Create an Account | Top | 110 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 110 comments 0: 101 comments 1: 82 comments 2: 58 comments 3: 24 comments 4: 15 comments 5: 10 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Celestia (Score:5, Informative) by Slashdiddly (917720) on Thursday October 13, @07:36PM (#13786640) The best way to enjoy NASA's blue marble is through Celestia [shatters.net]. [ Reply to This Clarification, or what CELESTIA actually is (Score:5, Informative) by Work Account (900793) on Thursday October 13, @07:42PM (#13786680) The creators call Celestia a "free space simulation" that lets you explore the Universe in 3D.It runs on all platforms including my favourite, Linux."Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit. Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that's not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects." [ Reply to This | Parent Re:Clarification, or what CELESTIA actually is (Score:5, Funny) by glwtta (532858) on Thursday October 13, @09:57PM (#13787436) (http://slashdot.org/) I'm not getting it: there's no enemy space craft to shoot, no asteroids to mine... my ship doesn't even seem to have any laser beams, or photon torpedoes, or plasma gatlin guns - nothing!How are you supposed to play this? [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Clarification, or what CELESTIA actually is by RexRhino (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @11:41PM2 replies beneath your current threshold.Re:Clarification, or what CELESTIA actually is by Citizen of Earth (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @10:02PMya but does it plug into google maps? by Dan9999 (Score:1) Friday October 14, @12:00AMI hope... by game kid (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @07:48PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. mirror (Score:5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13, @07:37PM (#13786652) here [alaska.edu] [ Reply to ThisRe:mirror by Brandon K (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @07:51PMAnother mirror by Work Account (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @07:55PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Earth First (Score:5, Funny) by Tackhead (54550) on Thursday October 13, @07:39PM (#13786663) Earth First!Slashdot Saturn [nasa.gov] later! [ Reply to This Tip for browsers -- RIGHT CLICK SAVE AS (Score:4, Informative) by Work Account (900793) on Thursday October 13, @07:39PM (#13786668) I suggest a right-click of mouse and then Save As in the browser to save the above-linked images.The files are huge and may be Slashdotted soon as well. [ Reply to ThisRe:Tip for browsers -- RIGHT CLICK SAVE AS by robsimmon (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @08:09PMRe:Tip for browsers -- RIGHT CLICK SAVE AS by adam1234 (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @10:26PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Nice pictures (Score:2, Interesting) by Barkley44 (919010) on Thursday October 13, @07:44PM (#13786695) (http://www.keeptrackofit.com/) Reminds me of this great picture I was emailed a few years backhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/mmkempe/52260470/ [flickr.com] [ Reply to ThisRe:Nice pictures by cowscows (Score:3) Thursday October 13, @08:06PMRe:Nice pictures by Eightyford (Score:3) Thursday October 13, @08:46PMRe:Nice pictures by swiftstream (Score:2) Friday October 14, @12:19AMRe:Nice pictures by timeOday (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @09:14PMRe:Nice pictures by robsimmon (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @08:16PMRe:Nice pictures by Eightyford (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @08:48PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Nice pictures by dumllama (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @10:25PMRe:That's an original Blue Marble image by Bastian (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @10:50PM mirror with my modem (Score:5, Funny) by aarku (151823) on Thursday October 13, @07:49PM (#13786726) I set up a 386 to mirror the 22 gigs of data with my 56k modem connection right here [127.0.0.1]. Not too many at once, please [ Reply to This Sorry but I'm COOLER THAN YOU (Score:4, Funny) by Work Account (900793) on Thursday October 13, @07:52PM (#13786753) Those of us true uber-geeks have IPv6, where localhost is ::1.So ha! [ Reply to This | Parent Re:mirror with my modem (Score:5, Funny) by iphayd (170761) <jon.mac-consultant@com> on Thursday October 13, @08:31PM (#13786976) (http://www.mac-consultant.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 02, @09:30PM) You must be slashdotted too. I couldn't find the document, then when I did a portscan on you, there were too many security flaws to count. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:mirror with my modem (Score:5, Funny) by the real darkskye (723822) <adw@dsmirc.co.uk> on Thursday October 13, @08:38PM (#13787028) (http://www.freebsd.org/) I had similar problems, but after a while I found an awesome porn stash! [ Reply to This | ParentRe:mirror with my modem by Crunchie Frog (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @09:26PMRe:mirror with my modem by Jon Abbott (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @09:59PMRe:mirror with my modem by WhiplashII (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @11:50PM Image size limits? (Score:5, Interesting) by Carnildo (712617) on Thursday October 13, @07:50PM (#13786736) (http://secondlife.com/ | Last Journal: Monday December 27, @09:12PM) JPEG and many other file formats are limited to 65,535 pixels in any given dimension. The largest image in this dataset is 86,400 x 43,200. What file format are they going to use? [ Reply to ThisRe:Image size limits? by Slashdiddly (Score:3) Thursday October 13, @07:56PMRe:Image size limits? by WhiplashII (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @11:53PM Re:Image size limits? (Score:4, Informative) by kidgenius (704962) on Thursday October 13, @08:01PM (#13786828) The previous max res was split into 2 files that you could bring together. One JPEG for the western hemisphere, one for the eastern. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:Image size limits? (Score:4, Interesting) by Azul (12241) on Thursday October 13, @08:23PM (#13786938) (http://bachue.com/alejo/) From their readme.pdf [alaska.edu]:the global 500m composites stored in the world big directory are raw binary files with thedimensions 3 x 86400 x 43200 (channels x columns x rows); data type is unsigned byte, with noheader. They can be used for direct file access by data processing software (e.g. for subsetting,web-streaming etc.)Pretty raw, eh? [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Image size limits? by Rootbear (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @11:03PMRe:Image size limits? by XenonOfArcticus (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @11:11PM NASA World Wind (Score:5, Informative) by Llynix (586718) <llynix@@@gmail...com> on Thursday October 13, @07:57PM (#13786799) (http://www.worldwindcentral.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 03, @10:21AM) NASA's open source world viewer project World Wind [nasa.gov] will have support for next generation Blue Marble on the 20th. In fact developers today got the beta xml with coverage of all thirty six new blue marble layers. [ Reply to ThisRe:NASA World Wind by Pad-Lok (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @08:37PMRe:NASA World Wind by Llynix (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @11:28PMRe:NASA World Wind by psyanyde (Score:1) Friday October 14, @12:03AM how very appropriate... (Score:1, Funny) by gargletheape (894880) on Thursday October 13, @07:58PM (#13786809) a slashdot story about blue balls we're very attached to [ Reply to This Impressive... (Score:3, Funny) by sanx (696287) on Thursday October 13, @08:20PM (#13786922) (http://www.sanx.org/) We've /.ed an entire planet. [ Reply to ThisRe:Impressive... by gbnewby (Score:3) Thursday October 13, @09:02PMTorrents by mjbkinx (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @11:39PM America Sux! Boo NASA ... oooohhh free space pics (Score:1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13, @08:22PM (#13786930) Bunch of hypocrits! You blast America and NASA all week, then leech the fruits of their work?? [ Reply to This Another mirror (Score:2) by Eightyford (893696) on Thursday October 13, @08:22PM (#13786933) (http://eightyford.com/) Here's another mirror. There's a really big map, and a wallpaper that I made for personal use. http://eightyford.com/archives/126/ [eightyford.com] [ Reply to This EarthSLOT (Score:3, Informative) by gbnewby (74175) * on Thursday October 13, @08:27PM (#13786954) (http://petascale.org/) I forgot to mention in the posting: there are several neatfly-over navigation programs that can use these images. Onewith a tie to the U. Alaska is EarthSLOT [earthslot.org].The mirror links include an "earthslot" subdirectory, whereready-made flyover files are available. Unfortunately,EarthSLOT is Windows-centric :( [ Reply to ThisRe:EarthSLOT by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @09:24PM Torrent toast? (Score:2) by XenonOfArcticus (53312) on Thursday October 13, @08:32PM (#13786982) (http://www.arcticus.com/) I didn't think you could /. a Torrent, but the tracker is refusing my connections.Pull the ftp and http access to the actual files, and leave just the torrents and tracker -- make people HELP you distribute the data, not just plow your server into a smoking heap hot enough to melt any nearby glaciers.http://geotorrent.org/ [geotorrent.org] would probably be a good cohort too. [ Reply to ThisRe:Torrent toast? by robsimmon (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @08:43PMRe:Torrent toast? by XenonOfArcticus (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @09:20PM Oblig. Karma Whore (Score:3) by grape jelly (193168) on Thursday October 13, @08:35PM (#13787003) Since the given mirrors are slashdotted, here's the obligatory corel cache link:http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov.nyud.net:8090/New sroom/BlueMarble/ [nyud.net] [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. next generation... (Score:2) by MMHere (145618) on Thursday October 13, @08:35PM (#13787004) ...server, is what they need. cuz this one is dying.Mirros? [ Reply to This Pretty... (Score:1) by eric_foxx (838112) on Thursday October 13, @08:45PM (#13787072) When I was a kid, I had a wall-wide mural of Earthrise as seen from the moon. To this day, it is one of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen. Stuff like this always astounds me. We have spaceships! Someone took a picture of that! How cool!Earth Rocks! [ Reply to This Photoshop capable? (Score:2) by NMerriam (15122) <NMerriamNO@SPAMartboy.org> on Thursday October 13, @08:46PM (#13787078) (http://www.artboy.org/) Has anyone downloaded the "big" (non-tiled) raw dataset yet to comment on whether it is accessible through normal image-editing software? Photoshop (and presumably the Gimp) can open raw image data, but whether this particular file woks (and what settings it requires) don't seem to be mentioned anywhere.I'd love to wallpaper my office with this image (I have a large 40"x50" version of an earlier 20k x 20k image currently) and would like to do all my adjustments on the original 500m file, then tile it to my own needs. [ Reply to ThisRe:Photoshop capable? by XenonOfArcticus (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @09:08PMRe:Photoshop capable? by NMerriam (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @10:12PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Obligatory POV-RAY (Score:1) by AFairlyNormalPerson (721898) on Thursday October 13, @08:51PM (#13787108) (Last Journal: Tuesday August 02, @09:01PM) How could someone post a giant, hires image of the earthand NOT post an obligatory pov-ray "Earth marble" in space?! // GENERATE WITH // povray +W640 +H480 +A0.3 -J +Q11 +R6#include "textures.inc"camera {location 8 look_at 0}light_source { -50 color rgb 1 }light_source { 50 color rgb 1 }sphere{ 0, 4.5 pigment {image_map { jpeg "world.topo.bathy.200405.3x5400x2700.jpg" map_type 1 interpolate 2 } } finish {ambient 0.4 diffuse 1 specular 0} }sphere { 0,1 texture { Starfield scale 1} scale 200 no_shadow hollow on } [ Reply to ThisRe:Obligatory POV-RAY by robsimmon (Score:2) Thursday October 13, @09:03PM Video cards (Score:2) by mattr (78516) <mattr@@@telebody...com> on Thursday October 13, @10:08PM (#13787487) (http://telebody.com | Last Journal: Tuesday July 30, @08:28AM) This is the best reason yet to get a faster computer with a nice video card. It would be nice if someone had a wiki for linux people to mention their experiences. Seems many cards get glitches in zooming. See WorldWind video card page [worldwindcentral.com] (for windows but maybe same issues on other linux software when zooming this data?)Speaking of which if anyone has a recommendation for a distro / windowmanager / xserver / video card / machine configuration for this type of thing now would be a good time!I remember when SGI used to sell a souped up PC for large dataset visualization (not that it sold I think..). My guess would be a motherboard with huge internal bandwidth and I/O, some big SATA drives, a couple gigs of RAM, and the latest video card by (who?).. [ Reply to This put that in google maps:-D (Score:2) by EMR (13768) on Thursday October 13, @10:39PM (#13787621) Having that data in a google maps like interface would be a really nice way to navigate it. [ Reply to ThisRe:put that in google maps:-D by psyanyde (Score:1) Friday October 14, @12:16AM TFW file for Blue Marble Next Generation (Score:2) by Rahga (13479) on Thursday October 13, @11:06PM (#13787754) (http://rahga.com/svg/) Assuming there is or will be a 86400x43200 TIF of JPEG file, you can use a TFW of JFW file that reads like this in your favorite GIS app:0.004166666666660.000000000000000.00000000000000-0.00416666666666-180.0000000000000090.00000000000000I've got a bundle of these from the last Blue Marble at this page [rahga.com].I do work for Mud Springs Geographers [mudsprings.com], which have an app called AWhere that support loading this sort of image as a map layer. I'm not into crass commercialism, but unfortunately, Slashdot won't let me post just that TFW because of the lameness filter. You'd think they would make excpetions for anciend user ids or excellent karma, but no..... :)(Okay, I've removed the whitespace from the snippet above, but keep in mind that most TFW files have the decimal point positioned 20 spaces from the left edge.) [ Reply to This this photo is depressing! (Score:1) by burden123 (535350) on Thursday October 13, @11:28PM (#13787867) (http://slashdot.org/) I was about to say this: The northern hemisphere is obviously deep in the winter as the snow line during summer is about 500-1000 miles more north of where it shows in this picture in North America anyway. It would be great if they could use another year to capture the whole thing in summer.When i realized this: Such a thing is impossible! I'm sure the sad fact is that during summer North America is covered in a thick vale of pollution. Blue earth my ass. [ Reply to ThisRe:this photo is depressing! by WhiplashII (Score:2) Friday October 14, @12:00AM Blue Marble NG in World Wind (Score:1) by NowakPL (888097) on Thursday October 13, @11:43PM (#13787947) Get the addon here. [worldwindcentral.com] It is only 160KB as all data is downloaded on demand. [ Reply to This Please don't use vulgarities on the site (Score:3, Funny) by Work Account (900793) on Thursday October 13, @07:49PM (#13786723) I browse while at work and would appreciate if I didn't have to view cursing and potty-talk on a web site for science/engineering professionals. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Please don't use vulgarities on the site by rock_climbing_guy (Score:1) Thursday October 13, @08:38PM4 replies beneath your current threshold. Re:I'd like to send this