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Partly Cloudy Skies on Earth and Mars

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Mike Caprio edited this page Mar 6, 2019 · 30 revisions

Build a Prototype Server System that Gathers Satellite Data and Incorporates Daily Planetary Weather into OpenSpace

Hackathon Findings

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Hackathon Projects

Background

Please note: It is HIGHLY recommended that you download OpenSpace, install it, and play with it prior to coming to the hackathon. OpenSpace is beta software, and it may take some time for you to get it running on your laptop. Save that time and do it before the hackathon! You can get support at the official OpenSpace Slack channel, see Resources at the bottom of this page.

No planet in the Solar System is more important than our home planet of Earth, and we've learned so much about our planet since we began our exploration of outer space. Since the launch of Sputnik over 60 years ago, there are now thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth, and they are capturing huge volumes of data every day, all day long. Viewing this data allows us to do all sorts of things ranging from visualizing the entire surface of our planet to predicting the weather. NASA and NOAA's GOES satellites offer high cadence (rapidly updating) global images available as raw imagery. While looking at individual images is interesting, the real power of the imagery data are unlocked when viewing the imagery in sequence, projected onto the globe of the Earth that viewers are familiar with.

GOES GOES East Full Disk View - GeoColor : 25 Jan 2019 - 1915 GMT

Like Earth, our neighbor Mars also experiences atmospheric and geological processes. Here's a quick PBS NOVA video primer on Martian weather and some facts and figures from Space.com about Martian meteorology!

We've come to understand these processes by conducting long-term observations using imaging cameras like the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) onboard of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Over the course of its operation, MARCI has taken daily, kilometer-scale maps of the Martian atmosphere with the goal of uncovering new insights about the meteorology of Mars. Specific areas of interest to scientists include Martian atmospheric dust, clouds, and polar processes. MARCI also collects images in several spectral wavelengths, which could translate into multiple views on layers in OpenSpace.

MARCI Mars Before and After Dust Storm

What Is OpenSpace?

OpenSpace is free and open source interactive data visualization software designed to visualize the entire known universe and portray our ongoing efforts to investigate the cosmos. It contains the entire AMNH Digital Universe dataset, and dynamically fetches the latest data from myriad sources online every time it starts up.

Funded in part by NASA, OpenSpace brings the latest techniques from data visualization research to the general public. The software supports interactive presentation of dynamic data from observations, simulations, and space mission planning and operations. OpenSpace works on multiple operating systems, with an extensible architecture powering high resolution tiled displays and planetarium domes, and makes use of the latest graphic card technologies for rapid data throughput. In addition, OpenSpace enables simultaneous networked connections across the globe, creating opportunity for shared experiences among audiences worldwide. The OpenSpace project is led by the Science Visualization Group and Hayden Planetarium at AMNH in collaboration with dozens of institutions all across the globe, including top computational visualization groups at Linköping University in Sweden and University of Utah.

As noted above and below, we HIGHLY recommend that you download, install, and play with OpenSpace well before you come to attend the hackathon. You will save tons of time with setup and configuration that could otherwise be wasted during the short amount of time we have at the event.

OpenSpace is funded in part by NASA under award No NNX16AB93A. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

OpenSpace is also funded in part by the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation in Sweden and the Swedish e-Science Research Centre.

Solutions

Using OpenSpace's globebrowsing module to visualize these data sets, your challenge is to develop an interface and/or pipeline for getting this data from NASA into OpenSpace. Currently using the GDAL library, three methods of varying complexity and usability could be implemented to importing this imagery.

Some possible solutions might be:

  • Basic local projection mapping. A PNG/JPEG image on the local disk could be projected onto a globe if it is already prepared in the correct format by specifying the image file at program startup.

  • Local GDAL virtual dataset mapping. A georeferenced tiff on the local disk could be added to the globe through a GDAL virtual dataset (VRT) at startup or in real-time, using GDAL tools to prepare the raw image into a georeference tiff.

  • Real-time HTTP streaming mapping. A WebMapService (WMS) could be created to load the data in real-time on-demand over http. Using GDAL tools to prepare the raw data then convert it into a streamable format and serve the data through a WMS using Apache.

Additionally, you could potentially build off of work done by Brian Foo at the Science Visualization Group based on the platform used for the Interactive Climate Wall in the Hall of Planet Earth.

Resources

Datasets

Challenge owner: Micah Acinapura

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