It's Bug Racing Time (US)

February 5th,
Pennsylvania, USA
Light wind, 45=B0F max temperature, TOL 2000AGL at best

I know only 3 glider pilots crazy enough to take the time to learn to
reproject images for bug races. So with the others in mind I keep a
lookout for free, lat long grid images with known corner coordinates.

Bug races would look much better with clouds. Grayscale cloud images
are now available hourly for last 4 days at 1km resolution. Color
images of earth and clouds are available once or twice a day for the
last couple years at 250m resolution. The grayscale 1km images are too
huge for dial-up (whole 50-80MB image or nothing), too coarse, and they
aren't publishing the other 3 images per hour. The color clouds are
not nearly timely enough for looking at racing decisions. But it is
fun to see where we are headed in the bug racing future.

Some links:

GOES 4km or 1km resolution grayscale clouds hourly, plus some other
interesting data:

http://www.gis.ssd.nesdis.noaa.gov/index.html
ftp://gp16.ssd.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/GIS/GOESeast/
ftp://gp16.ssd.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/GIS/GOESwest/

**********

Thanks to Denis Flament and Eric for showing me these!

MODIS 2km,1km,500m, or 250m resolution color with clouds and earth
once or twice per day:

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/aeronet/?GSFC
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/aeronet/?CCNY

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LANDSAT images (4 versions):
global_mosaic_base layer is 30m resolution
global_mosaic layer is 15m, but with the colors muddied
visual style is realistic, but dim
pseudo style adds IR details and fake bright colors
adjust WIDTH and HEIGHT to desired size up to 4000*cos(LAT) by 4000
set BBOX to edge coordinates: leftLON, bottomLAT, rightLON, topLAT

http://wms.jpl.nasa.gov/gis-wms.cgi?...1.1.1&REQUEST=
=3DGetMap&LAYERS=3Dglobal_mosaic_base&STYLES=3Dvis ual&SRS=3DEPSG:4326&BBOX=
=3D-101.953125,26.71875,-56.953125,49.21875&WIDTH=3D512&HEIGHT=3D256&FORMAT =
=3Dimage/jpeg

http://wms.jpl.nasa.gov/gis-wms.cgi?...1.1.1&REQUEST=
=3DGetMap&LAYERS=3Dglobal_mosaic_base&STYLES=3Dpse udo&SRS=3DEPSG:4326&BBOX=
=3D-101.953125,26.71875,-56.953125,49.21875&WIDTH=3D512&HEIGHT=3D256&FORMAT =
=3Dimage/jpeg

http://wms.jpl.nasa.gov/gis-wms.cgi?...1.1.1&REQUEST=
=3DGetMap&LAYERS=3Dglobal_mosaic&STYLES=3Dvisual&S RS=3DEPSG:4326&BBOX=3D-10=
1=2E953125,26.71875,-56.953125,49.21875&WIDTH=3D512&HEIGHT=3D256&FORMAT =3Di=
mage/jpeg

http://wms.jpl.nasa.gov/gis-wms.cgi?...1.1.1&REQUEST=
=3DGetMap&LAYERS=3Dglobal_mosaic&STYLES=3Dpseudo&S RS=3DEPSG:4326&BBOX=3D-10=
1=2E953125,26.71875,-56.953125,49.21875&WIDTH=3D512&HEIGHT=3D256&FORMAT =3Di=
mage/jpeg

**************

TERRASERVER Extreme close up Grayscale images (color in some urban
areas):

http://www.terraserver-usa.com/OgcWm...uest=3DGetMap=
&Layers=3Ddoq&Styles=3DGEO_Grid_Cyan&SRS=3DEPSG:43 26&BBOX=3D-77.355,39.755,=
-77.345,39.760&width=3D696&height=3D425&format=3Dim age/jpeg

Jonathan Gere