Every once in a while a piece of software comes around that I absolutely love. Nasa World Wind is such a program. I wish I could remember who tipped me off to this thing. My mouth was hanging open when I first started looking at this thing. It features a high resolution image of Earth as seen from NASA’s Earth Observatory. The features are impressive. And I’m pretty sure the clouds you see on the globe are real-time clouds. But Nasa World Wind has other features that will boggle your mind.

LandSat 7 allows you to view the terrain with incredible detail – 15m per pixel. Combine that with SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) data and you can view the earth at eye-level in 3D. Oh, but I’m just getting started. You can view historic hurricanes, with animations and atmoshperic data and layering. You can also see MODIS, which allows you to see daily updated data that includes fires, floods, dust, smoke, and volcanic activity. Oh yeah, and that picture at the top is utilizing their scientific visualization module. It allows you to see simulations on different scenarios. I was viewing the impact of fires in Alaska. Crazy! You can view current or historic atmospheric temperatures. You can see soil temperatures. I just couldn’t believe the functionality of this software. Overlay place names, latitude and longitude lines, and landmarks (3D). And like the infomercial says, “But wait, there’s more!”

They also include World Wind for the moon and mars. Yep, you can go and see names of terrain features, including the famous “face” on mars. They also have a downloadable key chart under the “Manual” section on their site. If you love weather, geology, oceanography; you will love this program. Even if you don’t love these things, you will just love playing around with this thing. This gets my vote for software of the year.

Update:I just wanted to add a few links that Bull_UK had. The first is to add-ons for World Wind.(be sure to peruse the whole World Wind Central area!) The second is for the forums for World Wind.
[tags]Nasa, Nasa World Wind, Nasa world wind moon, Nasa world wind mars, SRTM, MODIS, GSFC, LandSat7[/tags]

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