January 24, 2001

7:38 AM

If you want to try playing with little planets or images of them, try visiting these websites...

Webearth -- builds a LIVE vrml model of the Earth as it is right now. It draws from current composite satellite photos. Or you can play with a VRML Moon, Venus, Mars or Jupiter, if you'd prefer. (Note: this site does require a VRML 2.0 compatible plug-in, like Parallel Graphics Cortona VRML Viewer.)

Here's an oldie, but a goodie... Same concept, just not live. Earth and Moon Viewer uses various static composite satellite images from many different points of view, and it lets you zoom in and out ... (to a certain extent).

Webwide World lets you zoom in on an earth-like planet... not quite the same thrill, but the images the site produces are beautifully gem-like. And the planet it produces is huge. You'll be able explore islands off the coasts of islands off the coasts of islands.

And for more satellite image zooming pleasure, you can't beat Microsoft's Terra Server.

posted by crunchland (2 comments total)

There's also this, which runs locally in your computer. There are versions for Venus, Mars and Earth. It's extremely compute intensive though and requires a fast computer with lots of memory.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:52 AM on January 24, 2001

This is great! My wife is teaching her elementary school class about studying the earth from space tomorrow. I used to play with the Earth and Moon viewer back in college (I had an image from the viewer as a desktop background for a long time), but I couldn't find it this morning when I was looking for shots of earth at night from space. My total savings . . . sheer minutes of searching.
posted by iceberg273 at 8:00 AM on January 24, 2001