Sorry if this is old news but a mate has just sent me the following link to a "Register" article:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/10/earth_images/

From the article:

"NASA opens hi-res Earth photo album
The 'blue marble' in all its glory
By Lester Haines Published Wednesday 10th May 2006 09:37 GMT

This spectacular "blue marble" image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date."

Instant wallpaper i tell ya......

Brian

I'm a big fan of the blue marble collection - it's fabulous work with the data sets to produce some excellent material.

To say it's an animators god send is a massive understatement

Doug

Absolutely great stuff, especially the new monthly versions. I've been tinkering with a solar system simulator and photorealistic renderer. These are great Earth textures. There is also great image maps and elevation maps for Mars now.

Ironically, the Moon is not as well mapped as Mars. Clementine returned pretty good image maps, but we will have to wait for LRO to get decent elevation data.

Venus has pretty good data, but you have to work hard to fuse all the different data sets together (Magellan, Venera, Radar). I don't know of any good high-res maps online.

Venus maps:

http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/vgrid.html

Phil

That's not really her best side. Can we ask them to try again facing the other way?

The only planetary animation effect for which I'm at a total loss to understand is the churning clouds of Jupiter that the BBC did beautifully for 'The Planets'

Doug