[X] My Assistant

[jmknapp]

Well said!

Re Google Mars API support: in the USENET Google Maps thread talking about a possible Google Mars API, the following post was made tonight:

From: Bret Taylor
Date: Mon, Mar 13 2006 9:56 pm
Email: "Bret Taylor" <...@gmail.com>

This is a good idea... A few technical hurdles to overcome (and Mike is
right about the syntax), but we have a lot of interest from API users,
so let me talk to the Mars folks and see what we can cook up for you...

Bret Taylor
Product Manager, Google

[Chmee]

Hey with Google Mars, I can finally follow all the terrian and references in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series!! Wahoo!

[Pando]

Apparently there is also Google Moon (moon.google.com). Funny thing is, try to zoom all the way in to the Moon

[gorelick]

I hope for your server's sake that that code scales.

You'll notice I didn't actually mention WHERE our naif server lives. :^)

Seriously, this is a nice outreach effort but I'm not sure what Google's motivation or long-term commitment is.

I think their motivation was just doing something cool. They're a company FULL of PhDs and geeks (just like my group and yours), so they like this sort of thing and from what I've learned about google while working with them, that's all it takes.

As for long-term commitment, I hope they continue to do this (and more!) for a long time, but in reality, it's no sweat if they don't. Their new Maps API lets you use your own tile servers (or someone elses; there's a version that speaks WMS), and there's now several clones of their API if for some strange reason they stopped providing that.

And what's with all of those gaps in the IR mosaic?

We manually examined every image and rejected about 1/3 of them as being too cold and therefore too noisy. (thank you GRS) That was last August. Since then we've started on the 100m version and that'll include 9 more months of images specifically targeted to fill the holes.

I guess I have to take the blame for the MOC mosaic looking like crap in spots.

You don't have to, but you might as well, since we blame you for it. :^)

If you could drill down to individual MOC NA frames, that would be cool!

Gee, you're good. Can you guess what else I'm working on?

[jmknapp]

In lieue of the Google Mars API, here's an example of something that could be done, showing the subpoint of MRO over Earth:

MRO Google Map

It shows the real-time position at the time the page was loaded. Reload the page to update. If you zoom out, the DSN stations are marked.

Here's a similar map that automatically updates every minute:

continuous MRO Google Map

Interesting to play with anyway... not sure what kind of mashup would have a real utility.

[djellison]

So are we likely to see, eventually, Google Mars with Themis, MOC and Hirise imagery in there?

If so - will the MOC-NA and Hirise imagery be referenced in such a way that one can refer back to the orig released imagery outside of Google?

The Themis and MGS MOC browsing maps are not too bad actually ( Themis just get's the nod, but obviously these systems take quite a lot of time and thus money to get working properly, and the MOC one is simply older) - but a unifed system is so overdue - and JMars is a clunky evil beast to use

Doug

[gorelick]

So are we likely to see, eventually, Google Mars with Themis, MOC and Hirise imagery in there?

If so - will the MOC-NA and Hirise imagery be referenced in such a way that one can refer back to the orig released imagery outside of Google?

This is certainly possible, but I don't know how plausible it is yet and I'm not sure if I can convince google to do it. There are also numerous technical hurdles to overcome. Want to help?

The Themis and MGS MOC browsing maps are not too bad actually ( Themis just get's the nod, but obviously these systems take quite a lot of time and thus money to get working properly, and the MOC one is simply older) - but a unifed system is so overdue - and JMars is a clunky evil beast to use

There's (still) only so much you can do in a browser, and as advanced browser technologies become standardized (AJAX, SVG, etc), we've been moving to use them. We're also always working to improve JMARS, so send us feedback about what you want fixed/streamlined/replaced/etc.