Artist’s rendering, Pluto’s largest moon Charon rises over the frozen south pole surface of Pluto, casting a faint silvery luminescence across the distant planetary landscape. Source: CSIRO
The New Horizons spacecraft made its closest encounter with Pluto at exactly 9:49.57pm AEST on 14 July 2015, and sent the first ever detailed measurements and images of the dwarf planet back to Earth. The resolution of the images supplied on Wednesday morning are expected to be bettered by a factor of ten, come Thursday. Keep an eye on NASA’s New Horizons blog and the CSIRO blog to see the images first. They just might reveal the true nature of those dark spots that caught everyones’ imagination last week, and Pluto’s Google Earth images will be much higher definition.
Now, back to the “geo” of “geospatial,” here on Earth researchers at the University of New South Wales have launched their new Catastrophic Science video series with a fascinating article about how geochemistry is now being used to reveal the extent of past tsumanis and how it might predict the possible extent of damages all over the world.
A few days ago, Australia’s east coast had the perfect opportunity to witness the International Space Station’s orbit intersect with Jupiter and Venus. Now we can see the “Overview Effect” that the International Space Station sees as it passes over Earth, in this Daily overview video and live stream.
There’s been a lot of hype surrounding the “dreamcode,” which takes any image and runs it through Google’s image recognition neural networks to create psychedelic images you could stare at for hours. Naturally, it’s now been applied to maps as well, as shown on CityLab and Maps Mania.
In a court case in the States, a man was charged for shooting down a drone with his shotgun. Turns out, “The Sky’s Not Your Lawn,” as Vice’s Motherboard discussed, and Elmer Fudd was appropriately charged. Be sure to check out Motherboard’s drone racing on ice planet Hoth as well.
Think you’re techy-savvy? Well if you aren’t familiar with the terms “brogrammer,” “nomophobia” and the “dave ratio” then you’re not ready for Talk Like Silicon Valley Day. Spectrum IEEE will help you out.
Take a guess, just how many UAV systems have been successfully launched through crowdfunding this year? Dronelife takes you through the plethora that has been launched just within the last 6 months.
Some people think of maps as merely tools to help us get from place A to B, and the construction of them a rudimentary task devoid of creativity. The HERE blog has looked back at the poetry of mapmaking, and how this tradition carries through today.
