wow
 

stumbled across this today, you will probably have seen it before but you can create some really stunning images with it:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth

You enter latitude/longitude of an area you want to look at, and a few other things such as type of map, whether you want cloud cover and what time you want to look at, and it produces a stitched image of what that view looks like from outer space.

my current desktop: http://davestones.com/sunset.jpg

Re: wow
 

Yeah .. um .. stunning

I must have broken it

Re: wow
 

have you tried changing the "image size" box to some large value? its set on 800 on mine...

Re: wow
 

Now that is *definitely* WOW! material, it's a stunning image.

I've seen plenty of "Earth from space" pics, but not with the terminator shown like that and with the shape of Europe being outlined by the city lights.

Wow! again :)

Re: wow
 

you can spend absolutely ages playing around with it to get just the right images...

incidentally i actually disocovered the link on a conspiracy theories forum, it was being used to showcase mysterious lights in the middle of the sea of japan... people couldnt work out what they were, but it turns out they were squid fishing vessels. because there are so many of them fishing and the lights used are so powerful, their lights can actually be seen from space...

you learn something new every day...

Re: wow
 

It's kinda spooky how you can see the cities lit up from space.

Re: wow
 

Couldn't really see any lights but the colours are beautiful. Got this image http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dwarfin...img/earth2.jpg as the background for my IE homepage.