Earth and Moon Viewer
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.
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
FTPing pleasure. Other public domain astronomy and space software available from the same site includes:
- On the Web:
- 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.