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SATGLOBE4 - Visualizing Earth from Space: 3-D Rendering of NASA Satellite Imagery

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SATGLOBE4 - Visualizing Earth from Space: 3-D Rendering of NASA Satellite Imagery

by Michael Kleder

 

26 Aug 2004 (Updated 13 Dec 2005)

Draw a satellite view of earth at 4 pixels per degree, with political boundaries and gridlines.

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Description

SATGLOBE4 - This file is a higher-resolution version of "SATGLOBE," provided at the request of several users. SATGLOBE4 renders a fully manipulatable satellite view of earth at a resolution of four pixels per degree, with added international political boundaries and gridlines. The imagery was obtained from NASA, and the globe was rendered using the MATLAB Mapping Toolbox.

The Mapping Toolbox is not needed to use this file.

In order to save storage space, this m-file loads image data from the file satglobe4.mat, and then creates the graticule mesh itself. This process allows users who do not have the MATLAB Mapping Toolbox to render the figure, but it does take a few moments to compute the mesh. Using this trick, the data storage is reduced considerably; however, once the figure is rendered, you may wish to save it as a regular MATLAB figure file to increase speed.

Notes:

(1)The uploaded zip file contains the satglobe4.m file which you will execute using the command "satglobe4", and also the satglobe4.mat file which must also be on your MATLAB path.

(2) You may wish to try different renderers for better performance. The default is zbuffer, but you may wish to try "set(gcf,'renderer','opengl')".

(3) I have observed that Aerospace and Defense companies have begun widely using this type of imagery in certain presentations. For higher resolution imagery or for more information, please contact the author. If there is interest, I will upload a higher resolution version at a later date.

Michael Kleder, 2004

MATLAB release MATLAB 5.3 (R11)
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Comments and Ratings (4)
25 Oct 2004 Federico Forte

Very interesting! Is it possible to have a higher resolution?

19 Nov 2004 Michael Kleder

Higher resolution is possible, but for the entire globe it requires enormous memory and CPU resources. 4 pixels per degree seems to be the limit beyond which additional resolution is largely imperceptible (for the entire globe). For smaller portions of earth, however, higher resolution would be desirable, but then the smaller region would require fewer resources.

29 Mar 2007 Simon Jin

great job! Can I get the m file to generate the 'satglobe4.mat' file?

01 Nov 2007 Alex Crane

Does exactly what I was looking for. It would be nice to have an option for different projections available.

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Updates
13 Dec 2005

A user asked for a reference citation for a research paper, so I updated the title to something more descriptive.

Tag Activity for this File
Tag Applied By Date/Time
specialized Michael Kleder 22 Oct 2008 07:30:51
plotting Michael Kleder 22 Oct 2008 07:30:51
earth globe satellite view Michael Kleder 22 Oct 2008 07:30:51

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