Number 231 - July 2002

See The World!
by Burton Shane, ACGNJ News April 2002
The personal computer has amazed, amused, and empowered us for two decades. I recognized the potential of the PC but did not foresee the prodigious achievements that are continuously evolving from a happy marriage of mankind's creativity With the "Universal Machine". Click for a minute on www.geocities.com/ bshane39/ colo.jpg.     The picture you are seeing is one of the first Local images, which will eventually let you visit everywhere on earth. It is a spectacular vista of Cucharas Canyon and Spanish Peaks, Colorado. The Landsat Thematic Mapper image used here came from an on-line mosaic of Landsat images for the continental United States, part of NASA's Digital Earth effort.     Elevation data used in this image was acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, launched on Feb. 11, 2000. The mission is a cooperative project between the National Aeronautics and Space. Administration (NASA), the National Imagery and Mappmg Agency (NIMA) of the U .S. Department of Defense and the German and Italian space agencies. Original Data Resolution: SRTM 1 arcsecond (30 meters or 99 feet).	Topographic data are critical to the accuracy of computer models and global changes climate, land formations, sea-surface heights and atmosphenc changes. That is because Earth's shape determines the flow of air, water and ice, and the spatial pattern of all life, including people. Topographic data also give scientists clues about the underlying structures of the Earth, including tectonic activity. The data will have a variety of uses in scientific disciplines ranging from hydrology , geology and archaeology to ecology and studies of urban development and its impact on the environment. For more images as they become available, click on http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/ PIADetQuery.html and www.jpl.nasa.gov/ srtm/     Point and click your mouse to see any quarter-acre section on earth (it will take two years to collate the data and put the images on the web :-( ). The featureless oceans will be left out. I couldn't resist a quick look at the North Pole. :- ) www.geocities.com/ bshane39/ npole.jpg     By the way, if you have a pair of the old red-blue 3-D glasses, they are making 3-D topographic images for viewing on your pc too!
Number 231 - July 2002