Pin the tail on the blue marble

May 11, 2013 7:06 AM

NASA needs your help. Match the picture taken of a random location on Earth to the map, see how close you can get and "help NASA qualify their huge photo repository".
posted by MartinWisse (12 comments total)

This is a similar concept to geoguessr, which was posted as a comment in another thread (warning: addictive).
posted by desjardins at 7:12 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

194 points without hints, first time, 194 points with hints, second time.
But honestly, not one of the pictures is easily guessable, except maybe by astronauts and others used to looking at things from that perspective. I'm not understanding how this provides NASA with any info about the "quality" of the pictures.
posted by beagle at 7:25 AM on May 11, 2013

Yeah, this is nowhere near as fun as geoguessr. It's too pointlessly arbitrary. "Well, it has snow, so I guess I'll try Canada. Oh, it's Switzerland? Too bad." "That's sorta deserty, I'll try the Sahara. Nope, Australia. Too bad."
posted by jacquilynne at 7:40 AM on May 11, 2013

703! Although it seems to only go up to 100 for a flawless guess.

(Tip: it's timed, so look and guess in seconds. Don't overthink it.)
posted by Jehan at 7:43 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Some of the "hints" are wrong, like the one I got that said it was of a point in the northern hemisphere. It was Madagascar.
posted by neilbert at 7:58 AM on May 11, 2013

The globe overlaps the hints on my screen so I can't even READ them.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:28 AM on May 11, 2013

This was developed during a worldwide hackathon by a group of participants - it's a demonstration of what the possible use might be for the application they built in response to a specific challenge. It's not a NASA project asking for the public's help to identify or pinpoint the location of the images. The goal is to demonstrate that it could be used for that purpose.
posted by citron at 8:37 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

I wonder if the post title needs to be changed so someone doesn't spend several hours on the site thinking it's helping NASA.
posted by crapmatic at 8:39 AM on May 11, 2013

It cannot be used for that purpose. It only works because the location of each image is already known. Like others have said, the photos do not contain enough info to be placed accurately on earth by anyone without special training.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 8:39 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm all for people doing neat space apps, but I feel it's rather misleading for their About page (which I can't link to directly, sigh) to suggest that this is an official NASA project. Yes, it's a hack and maybe it wasn't meant for public consumption, but it wouldn't kill them to put a little disclaimer at the bottom, especially given that they want votes.
posted by adrianhon at 8:40 AM on May 11, 2013

Like others have said, the photos do not contain enough info to be placed accurately on earth by anyone without special training.

I don't know, now that there is so much satellite imagery out there there are some places that regular people can recognize. I nailed San Diego, for example.
posted by TedW at 1:40 PM on May 11, 2013

After about 7 fast run throughs, getting pretty good at it, I could potentially see someone compulsorily doing this game for a whole 24 hours and coming out an expert.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 3:07 PM on May 11, 2013