Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Queso

Suspended
Original poster
Mar 4, 2006
11,821
8
This I absolutely love. Taken today by NASA's TERRA. Have you ever known snow to cover the entire country before? :)

Click for larger.

_47061196_greatbritainjpg.jpg
 
I actually got a shiver down my spine just looking at that picture earlier, said to my girlfriend earlier, it's weird to think we're probably never going to see that kind of coverage ever again.
 
reminds me of some of those pics of that movie The Day After Tomorrow, or whatever it was...:p

its a really cool pic though...:)
 
Certainly is a stunning picture! I've got to try and get from Kent to Manchester on Sunday on a train...not sure how successful I'm going to be!
 
Certainly is a stunning picture! I've got to try and get from Kent to Manchester on Sunday on a train...not sure how successful I'm going to be!

You should be fine. Trains aren't really affected by snow too much. I saw the Acela go through a station at speed (not top speed, I'm sure) just after a storm, and there was a huge cloud following behind it. :D
 
As a space nut, I'll chip in :)

Terra and Aqua, two earth-ob satellites both have instruments called MODIS. Roughly speaking, they each take photographs of the entire world, once a day, at about 250m/pixel

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

There - you can see the raw data in near real time every day. It tends to look a little odd, especially near the edges of the images, as it's not map-projected. There's also a very large selection of automatically map projected regions, and the 'gallery' of specially picked images, like this awesome one of us under the snow.

You can actually have that image at 250m/pixel :)
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/?2010007-0107/GreatBritain.A2010007.1150.250m.jpg

The cities stand out very well, and when it's not snowy - so do the major airports.

As for the UK, without snow, in the clear...well...nearly :)

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/...efl2_143.A2007085130000-2007085130500.2km.jpg

What's really good with these cameras is watching evolution of things like wild-fires, dust storms, algae blooms, and of course the deposition and melting of snow.

For more 'oh, COOL' - try:
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/eyes/

With that - you'll see Aqua, Aura (a close relative of Aqua and Terra) and others flying on the same orbit - called the 'A-Train'. Believe it or not, they have several satellites all chasing one another, so that they collect data of the same places at the same time so it can be combined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A-train_2009.jpg


Oh - and I'm currently sat in Heathrow Terminal 1 (coach down from leicester was fine, and 95% of flights look to be going ahead) - waiting for a flight to LAX for an interview to work with the very team that made Eyes on the Earth 3D (and CASSIE - http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/CASSIE/ ) in Pasadena :) (Hint - you'll need to fire up Safari in 32 bit mode to download and use the unity plugin. )
 
Yeah me too.. You guys aren't big on skiing over there either are ya?

There's a lot of people here big on skiing, usually they have to travel abroad to enjoy it. ;)

There's a few ski resorts in Scotland, though it's just as convenient for most skiers in the UK to fly to Europe and take advantage of the much bigger mountain ranges on offer there.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.