Lots of great info here.
Welcome to Earth and Moon Viewer.
Viewing the Earth
You can view either a
map of the
Earth showing the day and night regions at this moment, or view the
Earth from the
Sun,
the Moon,
the night side of the Earth, above any
location on the planet specified by latitude,
longitude and altitude, from a
satellite in Earth orbit,
or above various cities around the globe.
Images can be generated based on a
full-colour
image of the Earth
by day and night, a
topographical
map of the Earth, up-to-date
weather satellite imagery, or
a composite
image of cloud cover superimposed on a map of the Earth, a
colour composite
which shows clouds, land and sea temperatures, and ice, or the
global distribution of
water vapour.
Expert mode allows you additional control over
the generation of the image. You can compose a custom
request with frequently-used parameters and save it as a
hotlist or bookmark item in your browser.
Please consult the
Details for additional
information and answers to frequently-asked questions.
Viewing the Moon
In addition to the Earth, you can also view the Moon
from the Earth,
Sun,
night side,
above named formations on the lunar surface.
or as a
map showing day and night.
You can also make expert and
custom images of the Moon.
A related document compares the appearance of the Moon
at perigee and apogee, including an
interactive Perigee and Apogee Calculator.
Browser Requirements
To use the Earth and Moon Viewer, you need a graphical Web browser with forms
support and the ability to display GIF and JPEG images. In order to pan around
the map or globe by clicking within the image, your browser must support
"Client-Side Image Maps"—if you don't know what this means, don't worry:
if your browser doesn't support the feature, you'll see a page which explains
how to proceed.
Credits
The Earth and Moon Viewer would have been enormously more difficult to implement
without the help of the software and imagery mentioned in
the credits.
Related Software on this Site
Windows users can create images like this in real time, on their own
machines, as well as view the sky, stars at the horizon, the solar
system, orbits of asteroids and comets, and more with
Home Planet, my public domain
Earth/Space/Sky simulator available for your
downloading pleasure. Other public domain
astronomy and space software available from the same site includes:
- On the Web:
- Eclipse 2010 — Aku Aku Eclipse, Eclipse 2008 — Nuclear Ninety North, Eclipse 2001 — In Darkness: Africa, and Eclipse 1999 — Expedition to Iran.
- Moon at Perigee and Apogee.
- Solar System Live: interactive orrery.
- Switzerland from Space.
- Terranova: a new terraformed planet every day.
- Your Sky makes custom star maps for any location on Earth at any date and time.
- For Windows:
- Home Planet, Earth screen saver, Sky screen saver, Moontool, Craters screen saver, and an Excel catalogue of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey.
- For Unix (X/OpenWindows):
- Moontool, and Xsunclock.
