The Earth Is Square

So, I was looking at the updates for the VE imagery.  And saw they had SE Michigan for 2006 listed.  So I went and looked up where I lived.  And then wondered when last year it was taken.  And I have it fairly well figured out.

Lets begin.

1. The soy beans are still in the field but are drying out, so this means late September to when they were picked, late October.
2. My van is parked outside the garage, so this is a weekend I am doing something in the garage
3. My gun rest is up and actually looking at the shadows, there is a larger shadow then should be, so I am outside sighting in my gun for deer season, again this relates to a weekend as
   3.a. The shadows, they show that the time is about mid morning and not yet overhead as to not cast an East or West shadow (shadow shows that the sun is still to the East).
4. Trees are changing colors this would be late September

So, taking all of this into account, this area was imaged in the beginning to middle of October (I didn't do any gun shooting in September) and over a weekend.  Likely dates: Sep 30-Oct 1, Oct 7-8, Oct 14-15 or Oct 21-22.

A really nice update for World Wind if you have the Microsoft Virtual Earth plug-in installed.  There is a lot more high resolution imagery for the US:

- 2006 Central Florida
- 2006 Buelton, CA
- 2006 Lancaster, CA
- 2006 Madera, CA
- 2006 Santa Maria, CA
- 2006 California City, CA
- 2006 Sanger, CA
- 2006 Jacksonville, FL (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 Raleigh, NC
- 2006 Lake County, CA
- 2006 Salt Lake City/Park City, UT
- 2006 IL-West
- 2006 SE Michigan
- 2006 Omaha/Lincoln, NE
- 2006 Central Colorado
- 2007 Miami/Ft.Lauderdale, FL (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 Sacramento, CA Region (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 Mobile, AL (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 LasVegas, NV (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 North New Jersey
- 2007 Atlanta, GA (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 Philadelphia, PA (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 Birmingham, AL (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 New Orleans, LA (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2007 BatonRouge, LA (outskirts around 3Di imagery)
- 2006 Los Angeles County, CA
- 2006 NE-Illinois

And international imagery also got a really nice update:

International Orthos - 1 Meter (also, aka Aerial and Hybrid)

- Mt Rainier, Washington, US
- Canberra, AU
- Newcastle, AU
- Ayers Rock, AU
- Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- Mecca, Saudi Arabia
- Montevideo, Uraguay
- St Petersburg, Russia
- St John's, Newfoundland
- Nassau, Bahamas
- Santiago, Chile
- Singapore, Singapore
- Istanbul, Turkey
- Ankara, Turkey
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Bangkok, Thailand
- Mt Everest
- Guadalajara, Mexico
- Kiev, Ukraine
- Quito, Ecuador
- Bogota, Colombia
- Caracas, Venezuala
- Dakar, Senegal
- Hanoi, Vietnam
- Kathmandu, Nepal
- Kuala Lumpur (west of), Malaysia
- Manila, Phillipines
- P'yongyang
- Tunis, Tunisia
- Alexandria, Egypt
- Bora Bora *
- Cook Islands NE & SE *
- Isla_de_Guanaja *

International Hi-Res Orthos

- Paris, FR
- Japan

A lot of this imagery looks better than what GE uses, Ayers Rock looks really good.  Though it looks like Google and Microsoft used the same road data.

Now.. can we get some better stuff of Pennsylvania finally?  Would be nice to see where I lived in better than 10 year old 1 meter B/W

m_k has some screen shots up of looking at the fires in Greece using the MODIS Historical Plug-In for World Wind. Between using the MODIS Plug-in and the ESA Fire Plug-In, you can watch the fires grow in size from their beginnings a few weeks ago.

Ok, first up.. about Miss South Carolina and her answer to the "Find U.S. on a Map" question... if you are looking to Beauty Contests as a marker for intelligence.. you are REALLY looking up the wrong tree.  They didn't get there
because of a 290 I.Q.

I am sure most people might remember what happened in Michigan in 1994 when an Eagle Scout tried to make his own Nuclear reactor.  Well, it seems like he is at it again, he has been arrested for theft of smoke detectors.

And the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which seemed to have a camera concern, has had that concern resolved.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the orbiter has now taken more than 3,000 images of Mars, resolving features as small as a desk in targeted areas covering thousands of square miles of the Martian surface. Already, this is the largest Mars data set ever acquired by a single experiment.

GeoFlexy is in interesting idea being developed by a World Wind forum member.  He is using GeoFlexy as a sandbox to "play with", learn and use GeoTools, GeoServer, Google Maps API and of course World Wind Java SDK as one.

The basic idea is to have a shared and spatial "spots" database useful for me and friends of mine.

It looks like an interesting project and will be nice to see it fully finished.

But the screen shot I like is this one for obvious reasons

So.. usually I don't like too much waking up at 5am to get ready to head to work, but today was a good reason to get up on time.  I got to roll over and look out the window and see the Moon just starting to be eclipsed by the Earth.

And by the time I was out the door and heading to work I could watch the Moon become fully eclipsed by the Earth's shadow.  Which is a rare event for Michigan, it is either too late at night and I just can't stay awake or it is cloudy and you don't see anything anyway (The norm whenever Northern Lights are reported this far south).

Image credit: Mr. Eclipse/Fred Espanack, www.mreclipse.com.