EarthSLOT offers 3-D interactive world tour

Submitted by Marmian Grimes
Phone: (907) 474-7902
10/13/05

Touring the globe just got easier.

Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have designed a web-based program that will allow educators and the public to do three-dimensional virtual fly-overs of any location on Earth.

ARSC will host a demonstration of the program for media at its Discovery Lab on Friday, Oct. 14 at noon. The lab is located in Rasmuson Library, room 375C.

Using data released publicly today from NASA’s Blue Marble Next Generation project, Matt Nolan and Peter Prokein of UAF’s Institute of Northern Engineering and Luiz Perez, a National Science Foundation summer intern working at UAF’s Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, have created three-dimensional visualizations of Earth. They are available online at EarthSLOT, an interactive web page designed to help scientists, resource managers, educators and the public better understand planet Earth and earth science. The site also features applications designed for informal education on subjects like glaciers, climate, natural hazards and earthquakes, all in an interactive, three-dimensional format.

The Blue Marble Next Generation project has resulted in one of the most detailed time series of composite images of Earth taken from space. Using data from the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s TERRA satellite, the project created 12 mosaics of the earth, one for each month. These cloud-free images reveal seasonal changes throughout the globe, such as the green-up and dying-back of vegetation in temperate regions such as North America and Europe, dry and wet seasons in the tropics and advancing and retreating Northern Hemisphere snow cover.

Nolan, Prokein and Perez, who received an advance copy of the data about two months ago, draped the images over global topography to create the virtual world tour.

"You can fly yourself to any location on Earth in any month and see the landscape in 3-D perspective," said Nolan. "The Tanana Valley is particularly interesting to view, as snow melt occurs earlier here than the mountains to the north and south of us."

Use of EarthSLOT is free and works on both Windows and Macintosh/Unix platforms. Users can access programs using Skyline Software, Google Earth, NASA’s WorldWind and other 3-D engines.

Nolan’s team has also provided sample HTML code that allows the user to embed a three-dimensional window into their own web pages and create custom applications using the data. The user will also be able to download stand-alone applications that run without an Internet connection. Because demand for the three-gigabyte images is expected to be high, ARSC will use this opportunity to test the performance of their Internet2 connection and data-transfer protocols by serving as a download site.

CONTACT: Matt Nolan, Institute of Northern Engineering, at (907) 455-6288 or via e-mail at matt.nolan@uaf.edu . UAF Public Information Officer Marmian Grimes at (907) 474-7902 or via e-mail at marmian.grimes@uaf.edu .

ON THE WEB: EarthSLOT - http://www.earthslot.org
Blue Marble Next Generation project - http://www.bluemarble.nasa.gov
ARSC - http://www.arsc.edu