Interesting Satellite picture [Archive]

Skyfish

25-07-2003, 13:06

Very nice, I really *dig* that kinda photos !
Actually Belgium is the real christmas tree because they light their Highways all night! [wallbash] The only one in Europe to do that...
absolutely great for the environment [headstab]
Great to see all the big cities lit up, even Abidjan (the New York of Africa) down there...I can even spot my hometown just north of Barcelona.
However it seems the picture was manipulated after taken, but that's OK :D

Gothmog

25-07-2003, 14:50

Yes, this picture is a composite. The day/night boundary is not so sharp in reality.

Some cool links for pictures are:

http://edc.usgs.gov/ - this is the top page of the USGS Data Center, lots of links. A clearinghouse of sorts.

http://edcw2ks15.cr.usgs.gov:8090/ImageGallery/SilverStream/Pages/pgcollectiondisplay.html - this is an image colection. Check out the "Earth as Art" collection.

The next two links I look at every day, sometimes they have satellite pictures. Archives are available.

http://epod.usra.edu/ - this one shows a different picture related to Earth Science every day with explanation. The above photo was displayed last month with explanation.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html - this one shows a different Astronomy picture every day with explanation.

digger760

25-07-2003, 15:11

i was thinking it was'nt quite real after looking at it. i did'nt think it was possible to see the oceanic ridges from space.

anarres

25-07-2003, 15:24

Thanks Gothmog, good links!

Gothmog

25-07-2003, 15:43

I believe the oceanic ridges are 'seen' by radar altimetry.

Most comercial sattelite pictures are composite, the biggest reason being that two thirds of the earth are covered by clouds at any given moment. Notice that there are no clouds in that picture.

Taurendil

27-07-2003, 04:51

quote:Originally posted by Skyfish

Very nice, I really *dig* that kinda photos !
Actually Belgium is the real christmas tree because they light their Highways all night! [wallbash] The only one in Europe to do that...
absolutely great for the environment [headstab]

Almost entirely correct. The current government changed that policy, and they are tearing down all the highway lighting right now.

digger760

28-07-2003, 14:49

here's another one.

Why do the lights in the centre part of the US appear so grid like, did they plan there cities out civ style.

Spot the trans-siberian rail way and the Nile

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/digger760/2003728144554_earthlights2_dmsp_big.jpg
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Skyfish

28-07-2003, 16:19

Great pictures I love this stuff, Gothmog are you an astronomer ? :D

@Taurendil, glad a government finally took a good decision in Belgium [argue]

col

28-07-2003, 17:21

Wow - the earth really is flat after all.

Nightfa11

28-07-2003, 17:27

quote:
Why do the lights in the centre part of the US appear so grid like, did they plan there cities out civ style.

Probably because there's not a whole lot there. Those lights are probably towns on the interstate system and other highways. They are fairly regular features on the landscape when driving cross country.

Gothmog

28-07-2003, 18:38

I am an atmospheric chemist turned earth scientist, though I love astronomy too.

Here are a few of my favorites from entirely different size scales.

And now the large. A Hurricane from space:

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003728183455_Hurricane.jpg
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Two merging spiral galaxies:

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003728183538_2spiral.jpg
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and finally the Hubble Deep Field South. This part represents 10x10 arcseconds of angle, and arcsecond is 1/3600 part of a single degree.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003728183729_DeepField2.jpg
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Gothmog

28-07-2003, 18:41

Here are the small, they didn't come through the first time???

First the small, here is a picture of cells dividing, mitosis that is.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200372818467_Mitosis.jpg
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and neurons

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003728184723_Neurons.jpg
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Ehecatl Atzin

28-07-2003, 18:48

[scratch] um, am I the only one that can't see the last ones?
......never mind [crazyeye]

digger760

29-07-2003, 08:49

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/Countries/

Gothmog

29-07-2003, 14:55

That is a great site digger, I had forgotten about that one.

Sween

30-07-2003, 04:01

that first one is the coolest thing i've ever seen!

anarres

30-07-2003, 09:42

People should carry on posting images here, it's really amazing stuff!

Gothmog

30-07-2003, 20:18

You asked for it, you got it. Here's a few more:

a couple taken from the space shuttle

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003730201721_moonrise.jpg
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http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003730201747_spacewalk.jpg
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and a solar storm:

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003730201830_SunStorm.jpg
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smalltalk

30-07-2003, 22:11

Wow. Great pics.

And those solar flares are probably 10 or 20 times the diameter of the earth.

Gothmog

31-07-2003, 14:43

Good morning CDZ, for your viewing pleasure:

A satellite photo of some Karman vortices - the result of a cylinder moving through a fluid.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003731143851_vortices.jpg
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and a beautiful shot of the aurora borealis.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003731144320_auroradouble.jpg
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anarres

31-07-2003, 14:49

Wow, is that last pic enhanced at all? I hope not! :D

Skyfish

31-07-2003, 15:34

Nope, thats a Borealis for sure, real green it is ...but that's a huge one !

Gothmog

31-07-2003, 15:36

Nope, just a one in a million shot.

Here's a shot of what the aurora looks like from space.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003731153139_spaceaurora_iss.jpg
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and a couple other nice pictures.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200373115367_curtis.jpg
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http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003731153635_izaurora.jpg
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anarres

31-07-2003, 16:11

Woah, I'm off to Iceland!

Gothmog

01-08-2003, 15:05

In our continuing series of nice picts from my hard drive I give you:

A time series of a recent eclipse:

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/20038115342_eclipse01_bassa.jpg
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and the mythical 'green flash' observable just before the sun dissappears.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/20038115435_greenflash2.jpg
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Gothmog

05-08-2003, 15:21

How about something small today?

Some freshwater algae

and a hydra hunting some dinner

Didn't work the first time, try again.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200385152633_freshwateralgae(115x).jpg
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http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200385152645_HydraHunting(10x).jpg
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Gothmog

05-08-2003, 15:27

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/20038515337_freshwateralgae.jpg
33.9 KB

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200385153321_HydraHunting.jpg
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Ah there we go, I guess the server doesn't like names with numbers and/or parenthasis in them.

ProPain

05-08-2003, 15:57

Great pics Gothmog!!

The server doesnt mind numbers but does mind spaces and 'weird' chars like the % that where used in your names the first time.

PP

Gothmog

05-08-2003, 16:05

Thanks PP, the server must have interpreted the parenthasis as a special character.
The original names were: freshwateralgae(115x).jpg and HydraHunting(10x).jpg ,
where the numbers in the parentasis represent the magnification of the microscope used for the pictures.

Gothmog

08-08-2003, 15:57

Human Sperm?

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200388155615_humansperm.jpg
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1500x magnification, fluorescence imaging.

Taurendil

11-08-2003, 04:20

There's nothing like watching pictures of human sperm on the internet! ehm [blush]

anarres

11-08-2003, 09:58

More astronomy please! [groucho]

Gothmog

11-08-2003, 15:22

Your wish is my command -

The 'Sombrero' galaxy, a really nice picture IMO.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200381115424_Sombrero.jpg
43.05 KB

This next object is known as M87 (a galaxy) and is believed to house a supermassive black hole, which has swallowed up a mass equivalent to 2 billion times the mass of our Sun.
The jet originates in the disk of superheated gas swirling around this black hole and is propelled and concentrated by the intense, twisted magnetic fields trapped within this plasma.
The light that we see is produced by electrons twisting along magnetic field lines in the jet, a process known as synchrotron radiation, which gives the jet its bluish tint.
The jet is approximately 5000 lightyears long [mouth] and is moving at nearly the speed of light.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003811152050_BH2.jpg
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At a distance of 50 million light-years, M87 is too distant for Hubble to discern individual stars.
The dozens of star-like points swarming about M87 are, instead, themselves clusters of hundreds of thousands of stars each.

anarres

11-08-2003, 15:29

[eek]

Wow.

Cruise

11-08-2003, 15:47

Vacuum Plasma Sprayed Tungsten, resulting in a nanogranular structure. :)

http://members.lycos.co.uk/akruize/pictures/HRimage1.tif

Picture made by me in april 2003, paper to be published in fall this year. [coool]

anarres

11-08-2003, 16:12

Cruise, any chance of uplaoding it here? I can't see that link. :(

Gothmog

11-08-2003, 16:22

Hey Cruise, I did some CVD work back in my undergrad days too, mostly cadmium selenide though we tried to make diamond films in our spare time.

Is that a TEM picture?

Cruise

11-08-2003, 18:38

Yes its a TEM picture :)

Gothmog

14-08-2003, 20:53

Here's a nice shot of a gravitational lense. The lense is made up of a huge cluster of galaxies know as the Abell cluster, which is about 2.2 billion light years away. The gravity of the cluster's trillion odd stars, plus dark matter, acts as a 2-million-light-year-wide "lens" in space. This "gravitational lens" bends and magnifies the light of the galaxies located far behind it. The faintest objects in this cluster may be as much as 13 billion light years away, so they are almost as old as the universe its self. This picture is currently being used to try to determine the distribution of 'dark matter' within this cluster of galaxies, preliminary results suggest that the 'dark matter' is clustered in much the same way as the 'normal matter'.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003814205313_gravitylense.jpg
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Ehecatl Atzin

14-08-2003, 21:29

Hmmmm... reminds me of granma's chicken soup...wich gives you an idea of granma's cooking skills, or lack of there of.

Cruise

15-08-2003, 10:37

Now i would like to see a night time sattelite picture NOT showing the lights in some parts of the USA. :D

anarres

15-08-2003, 13:21

[lol]

Gothmog

19-08-2003, 17:30

Your wish is my command, again:

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003819173021_blackout.png
338.96KB

Matrix

19-08-2003, 17:57

Wow, cool! I wish I was there when it happened. :) Must be give a very cosy atmosphere. ;)

anarres

19-08-2003, 17:59

*Mr Burn's voice* Excellent! [coool]

Gothmog

19-08-2003, 18:10

Here's one of NY city during the blackout from across the hudson.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200381918103_NYblack.jpg
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anarres

19-08-2003, 18:28

Someone noted (maybe on the BBC?) that America's ability to cope with power loss is substantially less than in most 3rd world countries, since they all have backups. :D

Matrix

19-08-2003, 21:31

Long live privatisation! Everything that doesn't coin money - throw it in the trashcan.

smalltalk

19-08-2003, 21:38

The blackout must have been a good time for the local astronomers. Can you still see the Milky Way, while standing on Times Square? The stars seem to fade away for us electrified citizeners.

This is 2002 Landsat picture of the Himalay.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/smalltalk/2003819213634_himalay.jpg
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Note, how the glaciars are reaching down below the range of snow.

At least we got a good shot of 'em, before they melt away.

Gothmog

22-08-2003, 14:31

I'm going to try to load this multi-frame gif file of mitosis, hope it works.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003822143051_mitosis.gif
153.95KB

anarres

22-08-2003, 15:13

hehe, that's pretty fucked up, but I still prefer the galactic scale. :D

Gothmog

22-08-2003, 18:31

Shabbaman

22-08-2003, 20:53

I think he means the macro scale instead of the micro scale.

Gothmog

28-08-2003, 16:23

In honor of the close aproach of mars here's a nice picture

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003828162156_mars.jpg
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and one of Saturn, note that you can see one of Saturn's moons in the foreground.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/2003828162220_saturn.jpg
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Both of these pictures are RGB composites and present the planets as they would look to you if you were approaching them in a space ship.

Skyfish

28-08-2003, 19:14

Amzingly beautiful and hypnotical !
Gotta love Mars man.. [love]

Thanks a lot for sharing this Gothmog !

smalltalk

28-08-2003, 20:47

The current 60,000 year constellation of Mars and Earth somehow compensates for the fact, that we were not able to see Halley's comet with the naked eye, when he was visiting, once in our lifetime.

Matrix

28-08-2003, 21:16

Cool pictures! :D (Again.)

The funny thing is you can recognize Mars when looking into the sky by it's red hue. That planet's crust is crammed with oxidized iron (rust).

Gothmog

16-09-2003, 21:05

Hurricane Isabel, pictured yesteday as it passed east of the Bahamas.

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/forum/uploaded/gothmog/200391621535_isabel2_terra.jpg
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digger760

17-09-2003, 08:33

quote:Originally posted by smalltalk

The current 60,000 year constellation of Mars and Earth somehow compensates for the fact, that we were not able to see Halley's comet with the naked eye, when he was visiting, once in our lifetime.

Huh, i saw halleys comet, back in the 80's i think it was, for 1 or 2 months we were able to get up early in the monring and see it from Southern Australia, the tail changed over time from a long streak, to a shorter tail (when it was moving away from the sun i think)

you must be a young buck to have missed it..or it was only visible in the southern hemisphere