Broxtronix

Just a quick update to announce that we have released our first batch of data for Google Earth in the form of a new NASA featured content layer! Simply fire up Google Earth, go to the layers pane in the lower left and select NASA under the “Featured Content” heading. Kudos really go to Matt (at Ames) for pulling this all together and the folks at other NASA centers who worked hard to prepare the original content — I only played a supporting role insofar as the Vision Workbench was used to do much of the image processing.

The layer contains two sets of placemarks: astronauts photography and satellite photography, which contain some of the most interesting imagery collected over the years of the earth as seen from space. Several of the placemarks allow you to overlay imagery on the globe itself, and in some cases there are several images that show a progression over time for a given location.

The NASA layer also contains a global base map illustrating urbanization via Earth’s “city lights” at night. You can see some very striking patterns in this map, and it really underscores how certain features immediately jump out at you when you can see things on a global scale. For example, it’s striking (though not surprising) to see how population centers remain closely clumped around sources of water, like rivers. Just take a look at the Nile! Some geopolitical boundaries are evident, and so are major transportation corridors. One of our favorite thing to do with this layer is to turn on cities and roads in Google Earth while the city lights map is enabled. As you zoom in, you can watch as the roads “connect the dots.” Perhaps most interesting of all is to see what areas are not urbanized but are clearly very populated, like parts of China and Africa.

In conjunction with the featured content layer, we also released some great global scientific data sets that are being provided as downloadable KML overlays. Go directly to the planetary content web page to access global maps of land and sea surface temperature, lang vegetation index, ocean chlorophyll concentration, and land cover classification. I also highly recommend that you follow some of the links on that page to other NASA sites that specialize in earth data. I’m a particular fan of the very slick NEO website from Goddard Space Flight Center.

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Summer is full of many pleasantries, but our recent trip to Hidden Villa to hike with baby goats was surely one of the nicest weekend outings of the year. Hidden Villa is a locally owned and operated farm where Claire works. The occasion for this particular visit was a celebration of Claire’s birthday!

Hidden Villa is somewhat similar to Terra Firma, the CSA that delivers a box of fresh fruits and veggies to our house every week. However, unlike many CSAs in the area, Hidden Villa specializes in outreach to kids of all ages. As part of this program, they have a number of farm animals including cows, a ram, and (of course) baby goats.

As it turns out, baby goats aren’t the best hikers. They are easily distracted by new green things to eat (mmm… ferns…), and they definitely resist being led around on a leash. In then end, Vytas and Lindsay both ended up carrying the goats a good portion of the way.

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