
Ask HN: Where to find hi-res images of earth? - 9dev
I just discovered how to create dynamic backgrounds for MacOS (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itnext.io&#x2F;macos-mojave-dynamic-wallpapers-ii-f8b1e55c82f). The author of that post built a custom background that shows the planet, lit by the sun, relative to the users location. The satellite images come from Himawari-8 though, and show Asia mainly.
Therefore, I wondered whether there are any other sources for satellite imagery like this.
======
100ideas
Related project: animate-earth

[https://github.com/dandelany/animate-
earth](https://github.com/dandelany/animate-earth)

This repository is an experiment in applying optical-flow-based motion
interpolation to processed RGB satellite imagery from Himawari-8’s AHI imager,
with the aim of regularly producing high-quality smoothed videos from these
images, and sharing them with the world. The final products can be found on
this Youtube
channel[[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Mlo4zfmEITcNoCpBKfEfg/pla...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Mlo4zfmEITcNoCpBKfEfg/playlists)],
updated nearly daily.

------
shpx
ESA's image of the week archive is nice. A lot of the pictures are false color
but you can sort by number of views.

[http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Sets/Earth_observation_imag...](http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Sets/Earth_observation_image_of_the_week)

Planet.com lets you download like 70 highres sample images of ports, farms,
oil rigs and cities if you give them a fake email address.

[https://info.planet.com/download-free-high-resolution-
skysat...](https://info.planet.com/download-free-high-resolution-skysat-image-
samples/)

NASA's composite photos of the Earth at night are classic

[https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NightLights](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NightLights)

related, there's Aerial which lets you use videos of the earth from Apple TV
as your macbook's screensaver. The readme links to a linux and Windows port.

~~~
9dev
Thank you for these links, didn't know the ESA gallery yet. However, they
don't provide a 360deg view - to compose one of these dynamic wallpapers,
you'd need sixteen shots, ideally from the same perspective. That way, your
screen would show the earth as it'd look right now, just from a little further
up :-)

~~~
100ideas
How are you thinking of making the wallpaper live? Poll the server every 15
minutes for a new image, and if there is one, use @mczachurski's script to
regenerate the background image .heic file?

~~~
9dev
Initially, I only intended to find images roughly showing Europe (I don't
travel that regularly), but hey, that'd be even cooler! Might even create a
little script so everyone can get a dynamic background of their personal earth
position! Polling every ~85 minutes would be fine though, since the 16 images
are cycled across the day every 1.5 hours.

------
100ideas
Hi! I just came across the author's repo was thinking the same thing!
[https://github.com/mczachurski/wallpapper](https://github.com/mczachurski/wallpapper)

I think the best source would be GOES-R / GOES-17 full disc geocolor images.
I'll post back with a list of potential servers.

~~~
100ideas
Colorado State provides a website that serves near-realtime processed data
from various weather satellites:
[http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu](http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu)

they offer a tool called Slider that lets users create overlays of various
satellite image streams. You can access imagery from GOES-East, GOES-West,
Humawari-8, and JPSS.

Here is a loop of Goes-17 ("goes west") Full Disk Geocolor images captured
every 15 minutes for a full 24 hours, starting 9:00 PM PST 2018-10-16 to 10:00
PM PST 2018-10-17: [https://col.st/sNSct](https://col.st/sNSct)

Note that GOES East geocolor images seem to render a synthetic city lights
texture + live cloud coverage for night-time images. Goes West is just dark.

NOAA publishes high resolution Goes-16 ("goes east") images every 15 minutes,
and seems to lag about 30-60 minutes behind the actual time of capture by the
satellite. Here's the latest:
[https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/index.php](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/index.php)

~~~
100ideas
Here is a "Master List" of GOES data sources
[http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/goesdata.html](http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/goesdata.html)

------
100ideas
lastly, @maxogden wrote a small script that downloads the latest "CIRA
GeoColor iages generated by Colorado State University from the NASA GOES-16
satellite raw imagery" for the last 24 hours, stitches the tiles into high-res
composite images, adds text overlay, then uses ffmpeg to create an animation.

[https://github.com/maxogden/goes-16-cira-
geocolor](https://github.com/maxogden/goes-16-cira-geocolor)

