Vern's Weblog » Software

Blog theme updated

Vern — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:59:35 +0000

I spent some time recently to create my own WordPress blog theme. I couldn’t resist using Dan Laszlo’s excellent mosaic of Long’s peak and comet McNaught from last January. Dan is a member of one of our local astronomy clubs NCAS in Fort Collins, CO. After the comet disappeared for us in the northern hemisphere a member of the Boulder club, Paul Robinson, determined that it might be possible to still observe the tail and in fact did so. Dan was the first to photograph the comets tail extending above the horizon.

Aurora Add-on for World Wind Updated

Vern — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:49:53 +0000

I’ve updated the Aurora add-on for NASA’s World Wind. The recently released (Feb 14) version 1.4 of World Wind now monitors cache files and updates them if they are expired. The Aurora add-on needed only a minor change to expire the cache so it will retrieve the current Auroral PMAps from NOAA National Weather Service Space Environment Center. You can download the updated plugin from http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/GEpmap/

This works although the Earth/LayerSet.xsd that comes with WW-1.4 should technically disallow the markup within an ImageLayer. Apparently the LayerSet.xsd is not current.

NASA World Wind - Aurora overlay

Vern — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:31:40 +0000

If you haven’t given it a try yet, you might consider giving NASA World Wind a spin or two. It is somewhat similar to GoogleEarth but doesn’t have the privacy issues involved with sending all your clicking habits to Google. World Wind is not Earthbound, you may visit other world’s such as Mars and the Moon. Both GoogleEarth and WorldWind are great applications, each has their own advantages and disadvantages.

Earlier this morning, I completed an overlay for the folks at the National Weather Service’s Space Environment Center. The overlay displays the auroral power influx as measured by NOAA POES satellites, which gives some indication of auroral activity. Current version doesn’t update automatically — I’ll add that shortly.

Information and links for downloading NASA World Wind is available from http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

After you get World Wind installed, you may download the Aurora overlay from the National Weather Service Space Environment Center at http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/GEpmap/

General information about auroras is available at http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap