Saturday, January 9, 2016

Pacific Ocean time lapse : Glittering blue, watch this hypnotic view of Earth from space over 24 hours

A video posted by mapbox (@mapbox) on


Always wanted to be an astronaut, but never quite made it to space?
A new site can at least make you feel like you went.
Glittering Blue is a beautiful, simple website that shows 24 hours of observations of Earth from the Japanese weather satellite Himawari-8 like you’ve never seen before.
It’s in stunning high-definition and gives a glimpse at what you might see if you were stationed 22,300 miles above the equator.

 The 12-second clip is a time-lapse of one section of the globe, constructed from a number of photos taken by the Japanese Himawari 8 satellite over a 24-hour period.
It shows the Earth as the sun rises over the western Pacific , travels past Australia (somewhere about here) and eventually sets on the other side.
The clip also shows a Category 5 typhoon captured in pictures that day -- August 3, 2015 -- called Typhoon Soudelor.
Sit back, relax, and watch from above : glittering.blue

Built by Charlie Loyd, who works on satellite imagery at Mapbox, the process used to create the beautiful animation is open source.
Loyd says that “Himawari-8 has the best sensor of its kind in space today” and that it’s how Earth “really looks” over 24 hours… except sped up.

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