Clark Planetarium - Distribution - FLIGHT TO THE MOON: LRO and LCROSS
On June 18, two unmanned spacecraft, the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) and LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) launched together in one Atlas 5 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center. The LRO spacecraft will map the moon in unprecedented detail. LCROSS will deliver the Centaur impactor into a lunar crater, creating a plume for the spacecraft to fly into and collect data to see if water is present.
Clark Planetarium has worked with NASA to create a production depicting these events in a full-dome, three-dimensional mini-show allowing audiences to be visually transported to the moon.
This news brief has both a fulldome video version and a flat-screen video version (480p, 720p and 1080p). Thanks to funding from NASA, this fulldome show can be made available for the cost of processing and shipping ($200). The flat screen versions, either on DVD or as QuickTime files, are $29.99 (shipping included). The impact of the Centaur booster rocket is expected to impact a permanently shaded crater on the moon's south pole in mid-October. The exact impact time will be revised as the orbital elements are refined. After impact, a new version will be available to reflect those results.
Installation - wave-protocol - Installation Instructions - Project Hosting on Google Code
La Jornada: Ejidatarios de Oaxaca se alistan para luchar contra presa de CFE
Yes, lots of ways to do it, unless Time Warner blocks you (as appears to be the case in the one I've been struggling with).
Add more power to 10.5's screen sharing | Utilities | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld
ScreenSharingMenulet makes quick work of Screen Sharing Review | Networking | Mac Gems | Macworld
Not mine, but inspiration.
Behold! My Mac mini media center
Great shots, full resolution. Of course our (parents') tax dollars did pay for them. Where do we go next?
Edwin Aldrin Jr. Moon Walk on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
It was a bad idea to start with - completing the highway between Tabasco, Mexico, and Flores, Peten, Guatemala. Supposed to generate tourism between Palenque and Tikal, it gave drug smugglers a landing strip and others easy access to settle protected areas. Now both governments have shut the El Ceibo crossing to people and vehicles.
Rumbo de México - Editorial Mac - Cierra Guatemala frontera con Tabasco, en El Ceibo
Funny, I was just thinking about those peepholes for doors. Here's a video showing how to hack a fisheye lens with one.
YouTube - $5 Fish-Eye Fun - Make A Wide-Angle And Fisheye Photo Lens
UPDATE: I got one, and there are some tricks to using it effectively.
- Hold peephole against rim of camera lens.
- Set camera to “macro”. (the image is actually displayed on the inside face of the convex lens of the peephole. The camera must focus on the foreground image rather than the background image.)
- Zoom in to the point that the viewable “circle” is framed almost evenly.
- For best results, brighter lighting will avoid unwanted noise (grain)
I'll add links here that give more information or show the results.
Peephole fish eye « Flickr Blog
Flickr: The World Peep Hole Photo Association Pool
Uses the Collada file that is in the KMZ. Looks good for leveraging the ease of modeling in Sketchup.
alexvaqp - From SketchUp to Blender
Two sources I've found:
and Little Bird Electronics
Make: Online : Arduino wifi shield
Andy’s Life » Basic Environment Monitoring using Arduino and Pachube
Looking forward to the 2009 Domefest in Albuquerque. Here's an online version of the show I saw last year at the Adler Planetarium.
DomeFest 2008: The Juried Show on Vimeo
How To: Building Your Own Render Farm : Introduction - Review Tom's Hardware
Doing it with Xserves:
Apple Qmaster Render Farm Setup | Geekzine.org
Paul Bourke's work continues to amaze. Here he shows some 360 degree fisheye views.
A useful note on his "normal" technique:
> I have to photograph the inside of a building and recreate this in a fulldome master so it looks like we are standing inside the building.
> would I be better using something like stitcher to create a cubic image and then compositing this in after effects with a fulldome plugin or is it better to create a spherical stitched panorama and possibly convert this to a circle in photoshop?
In general I prefer spherical panos, generally assembled using AutoPano Pro using either lots of standard camera shots from really high resolution, or 3 fisheye shots. Then I have personal tools to directly create fisheyes from that, but you can equally apply the spherical pano to a sphere in your favourite 3D package and render fisheye views. I'm sure there are lots of other ways also. The Frozen show by Peter Morse used this technique
http://vimeo.com/groups/fulldome/videos/1618365
Tom Casey's approach:
A more straightforward approach would be to use a fisheye lens to get the fulldome circle directly. There is a technical paper on how to do this from a session at the last IPS conference here...
http://www.homerunpictures.com/fulldome/Digital_Image_Capture_for_the_Planetarium.pdf
You might also try doing this as a high dynamic range image, taking the various range of exposures and then combining in Photoshop to get more detail across the interior's brightness range... since interior images tend to be low on contrast.
Matthew Mascheri's suggestions:
Paul and Tom are putting you on the right track. Here are just my two cents on this as well. We shoot 3 fisheyes and stitch them in PTGui. When shooting, shoot in RAW and bracketed for high dynamic range (HDR). This will give you the best look on the dome, as you can combine the exposures, and even tone map to bring out some of the details. You can do this in either PTGui or Photomatix. Once you get your equirectangular image, you can map it to a sphere in your 3D application of choice and render away.
There are some examples of our technique (for both real-time and pre-rendered) on our website http://www.Dome3D.com in the FullSphere™
Gallery.
And a link to other great images.
Flickriver: Most interesting photos tagged with hugin
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Most complete Earth map published
ASTER Global Digital Elevation Map