Sky this Week

I’ve updated the Aurora add-on for NASA’s World Wind. The recently released (Feb 14) version 1.4 of World Wind now monitors cache files and updates them if they are expired. The Aurora add-on needed only a minor change to expire the cache so it will retrieve the current Auroral PMAps from NOAA National Weather Service Space Environment Center. You can download the updated plugin from http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/GEpmap/

This works although the Earth/LayerSet.xsd that comes with WW-1.4 should technically disallow the markup within an ImageLayer. Apparently the LayerSet.xsd is not current.

If you haven’t given it a try yet, you might consider giving NASA World Wind a spin or two. It is somewhat similar to GoogleEarth but doesn’t have the privacy issues involved with sending all your clicking habits to Google. World Wind is not Earthbound, you may visit other world’s such as Mars and the Moon. Both GoogleEarth and WorldWind are great applications, each has their own advantages and disadvantages.

Earlier this morning, I completed an overlay for the folks at the National Weather Service’s Space Environment Center. The overlay displays the auroral power influx as measured by NOAA POES satellites, which gives some indication of auroral activity. Current version doesn’t update automatically — I’ll add that shortly.

Information and links for downloading NASA World Wind is available from http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

After you get World Wind installed, you may download the Aurora overlay from the National Weather Service Space Environment Center at http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap/GEpmap/

General information about auroras is available at http://www.sec.noaa.gov/pmap