Hi, I've tried without luck to track down the source data for this image Hubble/ESA Earth poster. It's fairly artificial looking, but a few people told me/speculated it was not CGI. It's so high rez I'm guessing Blue Marble series with lots of color work but unsure.

thanks,
stephen

It's CGI

That's a rendering, check out the polygonal look of Earth's limb. There are other giveaways, like the way the specular glint off the ocean transitions to land masses. It obviously uses some actual Earth imagery for the texture map, but it couldn't have been taken by Hubble. Other than that, I can't help you with the source, either.

Thanks, I respect both of your eyes and despite a reputable source I will leave unnamed insisting it was photographic data photoshopped, I'm not going to use it. I saw the the highlight and limb issues which are very artificial too but I had slim hopes those were sloppy fixes. The clouds look like Blue Marble source but I tend to agree, it's looks a rendered composite and probably a mishmash of textures and CGI - which is why I can find no matching source imagery except for the clouds.

I've been using it as stand-in shot while we work on VIIRS data trying to get rid of its artificial look including its unpleasant looking highlights. It's actually surprisingly hard to get high resolution images of Earth as nice and natural as we have of Saturn.

Check this thread for a whole bunch and a nice discussion, Stephen.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4005

Thanks! I perused it but other Gordan's excellent LRO colorized which I already have, there is not much high resolution (by my needs) and I really need something at least 2X times that one. Blue marble stuff is artificial composites. Hopefully, we will make good progress with VIIRS.

VIIRS isn't going to give you globe - it's a pushbroom sensor from which new texture for blue-marble like graphics could be made (and indeed have for night-side imaging) but it won't inherently give you what you're looking for. Not even slightly. This - http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegaller...ature_2159.html -for example, is a CGI rendering no more real that what you posted in the first post of this thread.

The best you are likely to find is Rosetta OSIRIS imaging from its Earth flybys - that's two 2k x 2k framing cameras that have taken some full earth views.

I've been exchanging a number of emails with Norman Kuring about them. His process is a problematic from a realism standpoint. My volunteer programmer and I (Kevin McAbee, a Mike Malaska recruit), have been looking through the data, no firm conclusions yet. But we are mulling if it can be adapted for Landsat or other satellites for partial globe shots with some of the stuff Adam Kiil had done for the film with LRO stitching.



I do wish Rosetta had taken some Cassini style Earth mosaics shots. Gordan's LRO shot, although artificial color, is not bad - but the Rosetta camera is very accurate color wise but resolution is really low overall - even the 2k is not that sharp and about 1/4 of what I would really need. Some of the Apollo shots are not bad but not found a grade A scan off the negative yet. I may have to resort to some of the bait and switch techniques when moving closed that I developed with Cassini. Although with Cassini it's the same sensor and much easier to do that accurately.

I will figure something out - necessity is the mother of invention has been the rule for this project.

Update - I've been working with Gordan's LRO Earth shot which appears to be the best of images available. I was able to use some Photoshop work to increase the usable resolution without artifacts. The scaling in Photoshop CC is much improved and outperforms my specialty software. Still not high enough for all the shots and I will have to work with some Apollo & Rosetta shots for matching limb shadows.

Gordan - is there any LRO imagery with Earth not full disk?

Doug (or anyone) - I've looked all over for Rosetta OSIRIS mosaic data but I've not found anything where it imaged a disk mosaic. Have you?

I haven't been paying close attention, but I expect if there were it would have been announced/released publicly. I'm only aware of two low phase shots, one has part of the Earth clipped off and the other one is the one I colorized.


As far as I know, there are no disc mosaics of Earth. The highest resolution stuff is of the crescent Earth where it fills up most of the 2K by 2K detector, but most of that disc is in darkness so...

Thanks a ton for the info. I will do the best I can with Apollo photographs. If I can find phase and geography match, I will just use the darkness as, well it's dark. The trick will be transition, but I developed some exposure techniques with matching disparate Cassini mosaics using linear light in 32-bit floating point which make things behave according to laws of optics in nature. Hopefully that will work well enough. If not, then I will be limited to full disk Moon shots