Beautiful Geology from space

In my post Our Earth truly is art I talked about Earth as Art, NASA’s  e-book collection of wonderful satellite images of our planet, and posted my top 3 picks.

In NASA’s Perpetual Ocean animation I talk about a beautiful convergence of maps and art: The Turbulence of Van Gogh and the Labrador Shelf Current, and NASA’s Perpetual Ocean animation.

Here’s another gem: Van Gogh from Space Landsat 7 Acquired 7/13/2005, winner of NASA’s public contest to select the Top Five ‘Earth as Art’ Winners

670107main_van_gogh_from_space

NASA Worldview satellite image browser adopts MyCarta perceptual rainbow

I was thrilled this week to learn from Ryan Boller that his team at NASA’s ESDIS Project included MyCarta’s perceptual rainbow (the CubicYF) as one of the palettes for the Worldview satellite imagery browser.

If you’d like to try it, once on the viewer you can load an overlay and then you can choose from among several color palettes. The perceptual rainbow palette is listed here as “Rainbow 2”.

I am including below an example using the Land surface temperature for April 13 2013 from MODIS Aqua mission:

Land_surf_temp_130413

This is really exciting news as NASA’s adoption will increase the palette’s exposure and its chances of becoming more mainstream. This is also as close as I will ever get to realizing my childhood dream of becoming an astronaut. Thanks ESDIS, and thanks Ryan, on both accounts.