Wednesday, July 01, 2009

The Most Detailed 3D Map of Earth Yet [Maps]

The Most Detailed 3D Map of Earth Yet [Maps]

Forget Google Maps: NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy have released the most detailed three-dimensional map of Earth yet. It covers our planet between the 83 north and 83 south parallels thanks to 1.3 million stereo images like these:



The images were captured by ASTER, ! and then stitched together into a seamless map. ASTER—Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer—is the instrument taking maps of land surface temperature, reflectance and elevation flying onboard NASA's Terra satellite. Once the Global Digital Elevation Model was complete, it was divided into 23,000 GeoTIFF files, each covering 1 x 1 degree of the globe. You can download the map here. [JPL]