ResearchBuzz

This is still under development but sounds way cool. There’s a search engine on the way that will allow you to input a photo and will tell you what celestial objects are in the photo. Furthermore, the photo will be added to a database of sky images.

The site’s at Astrometry.net and it’s in really early alpha. There is a Web-based version of the search tool available, but at this writing it’s in closed alpha testing (there is an e-mail address available to apply for access.) There’s also a downloadable version of the tool you can get at http://astrometry.net/code.html . From the README file it looks like it’s Linux only.

You can get an overview of what the search engine is intended for at the project summary, check out the gallery of solved images (yow!), and, while you’re waiting for this project to get underway, browse links of related interest.

There is a lot of astronomy-language here; I think you’ll need to have a bit of background in it to get the most of it.

Google has announced a new version of Google Moon, which has been available for a while doesn’t get as much attention as other Google properties. This new version has a variety of updates, including high-resolution imagery, photos from every Apollo landing, panoramas of the moon’s surface, and text search (of course!) Google Moon’s at http://www.google.com/moon/ .

The first thing you’ll notice at the site is a series of little astronaut icons with flags. These are sites for Apollo landings. You can click on them to get summaries and pointers to more zoomed-in views and information on the missions. (Go to the Apollo 11 mission and click on placemark 10 for a panorama view. Awesome!)

And there is a text search as well. A search for crater found over 1800 results. Results are listed in text on the left and mapped on the right. Note that it appears that explanatory text from the missions is being mapped as well as feature names. You’ll also get varying amounts of results depending on how far you’re zoomed in/out. Zoom all the way out for max results. (And for some fun results, search for joke.)

There is a lot to see here but apparently Google is not satisfied and wants more. The company is offering a $20 million first prize to the team that can “successfully land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and survive long enough to complete the mission goals of roaming about the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending a defined data package, called a “Mooncast”, back to Earth.” (The quote is from the Web site for the competition, http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/ .)

This post came from ResearchBuzz, a site with news and information about online data collections. Visit us at ResearchBuzz.com .

Arizona State University and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston have teamed up to make high-res scans of original Apollo flight films available online. The new archive’s available at http://apollo.sese.asu.edu .

There is a minimum amount of content available on the Web site at the moment — the project has just started and will take about three years to complete. About 36,000 images in total will be scanned, including about 600 35mm frames and about 4,600 panoramic camera frames.

You can see a preview of how the pictures are going to be scanned at http://apollo.sese.asu.edu/METRIC_PREVIEW/index.html . Each frame has a Web page, with several different sizes of images to download (I saw one original scan that was over a gig.) The frames have extensive details about where and when they were taken as well.

This is just the beginning for this archive, but one to keep an eye on.