still from first draft
An animation showing the EOS DB sites which will be used in the EOSDB movie.
I downloaded the list of current EOS DB installation sites from http://directreadout.gsfc.nasa.gov/links/eos-db_sites.html. For various reasons I ended up having to look up the Latitude/Longitude coordinates for every site. I mainly used the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names On Line to find city center coordinates for each site. I also added 5 sites from this listing of Scanex installations.
This text file listing of DB antenna sites and Lat/Lon locations has the values I am using for the animation. Any additions or corrections will be incorporated in subsequent drafts of the animation.
This first example animation shows the EOS DB sites as red dots on a rotating globe that uses Reto's MODIS texture. A mirror-like effect makes the sites flash white when they line up with the camera.
still from first draft
I generated test render of this effect for a full 360 degrees of rotation, it is available as a medium size 1.3 MB quicktime and a small size 400 KB quicktime.
I've finished two draft movies, either of which could be used on the plasma screen. The movies start with a short title slate that states what EOSDB is and that there are now 60 installed ground stations. Here is the text of the slate:
The first version of the animation is basically the same as above - the DB antennas sites are shown as red dots that glint as they pass under the camera.
After several people commented that version one made them think of nuclear explosions!!! I made a second version, changing the DB sites to yellow dots that flash as white stars as they pass under the camera.
