Our precious thin atmosphere

Click on this link to see a beautiful photo of the Earth by the Goddard Space Flight Center. What is stunning to me is the thin-ness of the Earth's precious atmosphere. Click on the image for a much-enlarged version. earth-blue-marble How was this photo taken?

This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across. Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day. Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data.

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Dilemma at Rocky Mountain National Park

To shoot photos, or not to shoot photos; that is the question raised by Erika Price's most recent post. During yesterday's long trip through Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, I often stayed away from my camera to stay in the moment, but I often just had to try to capture yet another photo, because I wanted to remember it, and my memory doesn't provide images in brilliant color. But I didn't want it all to be about capturing yet another image. It was quite a conundrum. Experience it versus photograph it. There were other conundrums too. Look at these incredible scenes wordlessly, or think about them in words while you look at it. img_1676 What an incredible experience, to be able to walk through this incredible park, even though it was about 20 degrees and even though the wind was often howling. Down on the trails of Bear Lake, I had my first chance to walk on snow shoes. The perfect tool for the job, when you are sometimes walking on two or three feet of snow. Note: Click on any of these images for a much larger version. My camera (a Canon SD1100IS is a consumer grade camera with photo stitch feature--most consumer cameras have this feature. I ended up taking about 10 panoramas, because a single photo just doesn't quite preserve that immense feeling of space. panorama-plains I was in Denver for a conference last week, and my trip to Rocky Mountain National Park was only for a day. Alas, I dreamed of someday staying there for a week, hiking during the day and writing at night. img_1784 Then, when I thought I had seen the most magnificent sights, today I was greeted with a brilliant sky on the way to the airport. img_1952

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Miscellaneous

It's been a wonderful weekend. No theme to it. Just a steady stream of good experiences. The technological surprise was the Picasa's new face-matching feature. This will blow your mind, it is so good. The newest release of Picasa (I've extolled the virtues of Picasa before) produces thumbnails of most every face in your photo collection. For me, this meant that Picasa came up with more than 6,000 faces. They needn't be portraits, either. Picasa will find most any face in your collection, even group shots, and give you one or more cropped portraits from that photo. Then comes more magic. You give Picasa a name for one of those instant portraits and Picasa will go gather all the other photos you have of that person in your collection. evv-faces I labeled a few photos each of my daughters JuJu and Charlotte, and Picasa went to work, gathering almost 2,000 photos of each, getting it 99% correct. Quite often Picasa will place a "?" on the photos it gathers, meaning it is not certain it is the same person, but it was almost always correct. It picked out photos of JuJu from age 2 to 11. It picked her out even if she was standing in the shade, even if she had a unusual haircut or a hat, even if her eyes were closed, and even if her head was turned or she was looking down. The face-matching feature even did well in distinguishing between two 11-year old identical twins, who I sometimes struggle to keep straight. I'm using Picasa version 3.6.0 for Windows (a free program, BTW). It seems like magic. Maybe it's one of those military technologies trickling down. Whatever it is, I'm in awe. If you have a big collection and you don't want to take the time to label photos of your friends or family, this is something you should consider. What else happened this weekend? Here's something. There's a new exhibit on Race at the Missouri History Museum: Race: Are We So Different? The answer, of course, is no. [more . . . ]

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Snow falling at midnight

Snow is falling in St. Louis at midnight. This is one of my favorite times. Everything becomes exceedingly quiet and beautiful in a new way. It's almost like you are on a movie set, because it seems a little too perfect. I ran outside with my camera on a tripod and took this shot looking west from the median in front of my house. img_6084

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