Earth Vistas

My main site, where I post regular images made for the Mars Exploration Rover images is found here

The heavy cloud cover makes it next to impossible to match up some images. So there is a large amount of guesswork and fudging involved in this.

Half resolution (3100 x 3100) (964kb)
Quarter resolution (1550 x 1550) (248kb)

Following the successful HAPS-1 launch last weekend, another balloon launch was made for Cambridge before dawn on Friday 29th August 2008. There is a HUGE about of data from this that I haven't even started to go through. (It's still downloading as I type!) Here is a 360 degree horizon panorama to be getting on with while I digest this data properly.

Congratulations to the team for pulling off another amazing flight. (And for staying up all night!)

Full resolution (19924 x 3784) (5.5Mb)
Half resolution (9962 x 1892) (1.4Mb)
Quarter resolution (4981 x 946) (512kb)




Full resolution (5100 x 5100) (2.0Mb)
Half resolution (2550 x 2550) (504kb)
Quarter resolution (1275 x 1275) (132kb)

Using some stills extracted from the video also taken, I have been able to (almost) fill in the remaining missing parts of the panorama at low resolution.

Quarter resolution (1500 x 1490) (360kb)

As HAPS-1 plummeted back to Earth after the balloon burst at 32,000m (106,000ft) the camera was able to capture some shots pointed towards the ground. Some of these are quite blurry as the gondola was spinning rapidly. It was also descending quite fast and so the point of view changed quite rapidly limiting the number of images that could be used. So this image has quite a few imperfections but still gives a nice impression of the view from 100,000ft above England. And is much more than I ever hoped for from this first attempt with a single camera.

Full resolution (19580 x 6046) (10.5Mb)
Half resolution (9790 x 3023) (3.0Mb)
Quarter resolution (4895 x 1512) (904kb)
One Eighth resolution (2448 x 756) (288kb)




Full resolution (5804 x 5806) (3.3Mb)
Half resolution (2902 x 2903) (1.0Mb)
Quarter resolution (1451 x 1452) (304kb)