The Mall during the Inauguration (from Space)

These pictures were taken by the GeoEye satellite today at Half meter resolution. That's the satellite that Google uses for Google Maps and Google Earth.






From the Shadow of the Washington Monument in the second photo, it looks to be from 10:30 or 11:00 AM.
Even that early, the crowds were looking pretty huge.

More detailed versions at
HERE and HERE.

The complete GeoEye gallery is Here.

The first photo has a piece of I.M.Pei's East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in the upper left. If you blow it up, you can just make out shadows of the Calder Mobile through the central skylight. It was the Artist's last major work before he died.

Nice find!

Geezer, you are the first person I have ever (met) that knows how to read a sundial. What was it like when the wheel first came out?

mattywizz wrote:Geezer, you are the first person I have ever (met) that knows how to read a sundial. What was it like when the wheel first came out?

I got an early wrist model for my high school graduation.




someday I'll show you how to tell direction with a dial clock, too.

Come on when it is cloudy and rainy can you tell 2pm from 3pm. I always know when its 2am; the big guy that has me by the neck says last call was 10 minutes ago.

Auto Pilot wrote:Come on when it is cloudy and rainy can you tell 2pm from 3pm.

Sure, at 3 PM I'm in the Pub.

find direction with a watch

Like that, Geez? We teach that to Boy Scouts, it's a good trick. Except nowadays all the younguns tell time with their cell phones.

That's right!

But this stuff is small potatoes. There's an old guy named Marvin Creamer who took the Polynesian idea of navigating without instrumentation and took it a step further. He sailed around the world without instruments of any kind, including a watch - just to prove he could do it. He was able to quite accurately figure his Latitude and Longitude. In the process, he made landfalls right on after thousands of miles. and he figured out how to navigate without a clear view of either the sun or stars in the Southern Ocean.


He used star rising and settings, wave patterns, bird activity, dust on his sails, wind and humidity combinations, and lots of other tricks. He even used a squeaky hatch as a navigation aid.


There's a great pair of podcast interviews with him if you are interested.


Furled sails #143
and
Furled sails #144