back to article Russian satellite beams home 121-megapixel pics of Earth

Russia’s ELECTRO-L weather satellite has used its 121-megapixel sensors to send home the highest-resolution set of space pics yet. Even NASA admits it can't match the Russian bird for sheer mega-pixelage, which is yours to peruse thanks to an animated GIF proivded by the Russian Federal Space Agency. The original is a little …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hey!

    I can see my house!

    1. No, I will not fix your computer
      Joke

      Re: Hey!

      At 1Km to a pixel you must have a feckin big house!

  2. Graham Wilson

    Whew.

    Great pics.

    Wonder how the Flat Earth Society membership is holding up these days.

    1. Greg J Preece

      Re: Whew.

      You'd be suprised. Just recently I was laughing my ass off at a creationist geocentrist dipshit who thought he had disproven gravity with a toy helicopter and a pickup truck.

      1. NogginTheNog
        Alien

        Re: Whew.

        Why, is gravity not one of The Lord's wonderful gifts then..?

    2. Richard Ball

      re Flat Earth

      Just a bit of pincushion distortion, that.

      Camera too close, messes up the perspective.

      Sorted.

      1. James Micallef Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: re Flat Earth

        Discworld!!!

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: re Flat Earth

          That's why they never show you the other side with the turtle

    3. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Flat Earth Society

      The American branch, in particular, think the image is a fake.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Whew.

      Pretty well, actually. This kind of image is easy to explain - have you never heard of fisheye lenses?

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whew.

      Nice pics, but how do we know their not rendered...?

      Has anyone checked with Shuttleworth or Symoni that this looks like the real deal?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Headmaster

        Re: Whew.

        "...how do we know their not rendered...?...

        Whose not rendered?

        1. borkbork
          Headmaster

          Re: Whose who's?

          Whose what now?

  3. Greg J Preece

    Watching that video, with that music, feels like I just unlocked a wonder in Civilization II.

  4. Don Jefe
    Meh

    Cold War

    That's what we need. Once again the Russians are making the US look bad.

    Without another Cold War we'll never catch them this time. All the $ will be spent defending creationism & anti-abortion God peoples.

    1. frank ly

      Re: Cold War

      If someone else does something good, it doesn't make me look bad; it makes us all look good and makes me happy that it's been done.

      1. NogginTheNog
        Coat

        Re: Cold War

        If everyone spent less time worrying about how they looked... well the world might be a better place, though my Loreal shares would be fecked!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        Re: Cold War

        Yes, but presumably you're not American and therefore aren't nursing a superiority complex of such collossal proportions that you perceive any achievement by any other country anywhere as a personal affront.

        1. Don Jefe

          Re: Cold War

          You are correct. No one but us (see what I did there) can do anything better. My original post was supposed to be funny. Sarcasm doesn't translate well online I guess.

          P.S. Our rocket is bigger than your rocket :)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      making the US look bad

      I suppose that matters if you are an American, no one else gives a toss.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cold War

      As I am fond to say: If I haven't seen further, it is only because giants were standing upon my shoulders...

    4. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Re: Cold War

      The Russians never got Scotty into space so there's that.

    5. Stevie

      Re: Cold War

      Agree. This so-called "peace satellite" is in reality isolating the cell phone towers and Google server farms that will be targeted in Operation Red Dawn, or as the Russians would say Operatrionski Red Dawn.

      People will be too busy futilely trying to pull up Wikipedia or upload photos of invading troops to organize a proper Segway-mounted resistance.

    6. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

      Re: Cold War

      Fixed it for you Dom

      All the $ will be spent defending creationism & anti-abortion God peoples bombing the crap out of third world countries, trying to overthrow legitimately elected leaders 'cos they're god hating commies, invading third world countries (but only if they have oil)

  5. Karirunc

    Note to self: update the spinning earth gif on website

  6. error handler

    Excellent

    See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ (time lapse photos from ISS as it orbits)

    Anyway, thanks El Reg. Now I'm feeling overcome with cosmic awe, and I have to go to work.

    "THE SERVERS ARE MELTING!"

    "I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's all too beautiful."

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Excellent

      At a local venue in town (the Fleece in Bristol), they have a projector showing random videos, and posters for up coming gigs between bands. Now they've started looping various videos from out of the windows of the ISS, swhich look bloody great on a large screen, and are just the thing to pass the time waiting for the band to finish setting up.

  7. Goat Jam
    Holmes

    Eh, what planet is that?

    It doesn't have the USA on it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Eh, what planet is that?

      I believe it's called Utopia....

      1. Chris Hawkins
        Linux

        Re: Eh, what planet is that?

        You mean "EUtopia", of course!

    2. Adam 1
      Facepalm

      Re: Eh, what planet is that?

      If you look closely you can see South Africa and The Iraq

  8. wiggers

    "kilometre of Terran surface into each pixel."

    That was the resolution of the original NASA Blue Marble imagery. The BM Next Generation is half a kilometre per pixel.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "kilometre of Terran surface into each pixel."

      Yes, but in order to get the Blue Marble, they had to send some guys into space with a hassleblad medium format camera, then return them - safely - to Earth and bath the film in a bunch of chemicals to get an image. This is automatic, every half an hour and doesn't involve returning anything other than radio waves back to Earth.

      1. wiggers

        Re: "some guys into space with a hassleblad medium format camera."

        Blimey! I didn't know MODIS was some blokes with cameras!

        http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/bmng.pdf

        http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "some guys into space with a hassleblad medium format camera."

          @Wiggers - what you're talking about is a re-make of the original Blue Marble photo, which was Apollo 9 IIRC?

          MODIS (which my partner works with, incidentally) is capable of scanning the Earth once every one to two days. This does it every 30mins.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "kilometre of Terran surface into each pixel."

      Shouldn't that be one (or a half) square kilometre per pixel?

      1. wiggers

        Re: "kilometre of Terran surface into each pixel."

        > Shouldn't that be one (or a half) square kilometre per pixel?

        Spacial resolution - linear rather than areal.

  9. Nigel 11
    Unhappy

    Can do / can't do

    the USA won the space race, and just about everything else in the 1950s and 1960s, because of a can-do attitude. How times have changed.

    Today, the West is tying itself up in ever-increasing tangles of bureaucracy and red tape run by people whose attitude is 100% can't-do. If it's not explicitly allowed in the rulebook, it can't be done, so there's no point trying and it's our job to stop you if you disagree. My feeling is that the USA's version of this is rather more agressive than the UK/EU version, but both impede progress most successfully.

    I expected the can-do magic to pop up somewhere else in the world. Russia?!

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: Can do / can't do

      *moon* race. Fixed that for you.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Can do / can't do

        First man to the moon, not first to the moon, that was Russia...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Can do / can't do

      @Nigel 11 - I just don't buy this "the red tape stops us", it's defeatist talk, and excuses people from bothering to try. It's all very much a la Daily Mail "Health and safety gone mad", when you actually look at what people complain about 90-odd % of the time it's either perfectly sensible or being enforced by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.

      This is also besides the point that the US make some (most) of the best Earth Observation satellites in use at the moment.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Can do / can't do

        That's not what Neal Stephenson said ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/09/lets_send_3d_printers_to_the_moon/

    3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Can do / can't do

      All they have to do is invade Germany and kidnap a few scientists again

      If only they had managed to pinch a few car designers and brewers as well......

  10. Kevin Turvey

    North America

    Nice to have a shot of the world not centred on North America for a change!

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: North America

      A little tricky for a geostationary satellite to be centred over anything other than the equator.

      That's the reason for the failure of Yorkshire's space program - you can't put a satellite in geostationary orbit over Barnsley

  11. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    Russians are awesome.

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