interactive four BILLION pixel image of Everest

novicesnapper

I thought this was super interesting and some would enjoy it.

It is an astonishing image that shows the beauty and majesty of the Himalaya region.
A climber and filmmaker has created the stunning mosaic of images to show the effect of climate change on the the area surrounding Mount Everest.
The 477 individual images that make up the gigapixel image of the Khumbu glacier were captured by David Breashears during the spring of 2012, from the Pumori viewpoint near Mount Everest.

Use your mouse to navigate around the image below, and click on the hand under the green boxes to jump to key areas (please note, this requires Flash so will not work on iPads or iPhones)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2250676/Mount-Everest-The-incredible-interactive-BILLION-pixel-image-created-David-Breashears.html

mbonocore

Pretty cool eh? I am amazed at the detail when you zoom into the tent areas. Also cool how they claim they can (and are) make it even MORE detailed.


Michael Bonocore
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novicesnapper

Yeah it is. I was scanning around, notice the climber, right under a huge shelf of snow, that has already sheared loose? Huge crack, indicating the snow has already moved and here he is, right below it. I caught myself mumbling "dude, move", lol.

mbonocore

Haha! I didn't see that guy! Looks like I got to get back on the iMac and go looking for him


Michael Bonocore
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kponds

novicesnapper wrote: »

Yeah it is. I was scanning around, notice the climber, right under a huge shelf of snow, that has already sheared loose? Huge crack, indicating the snow has already moved and here he is, right below it. I caught myself mumbling "dude, move", lol.

It's called a serac and is scary as hell. Some of them are the size of large buildings and have taken out entire groups of climbers. I think a serac fell near some climbers this year -- though I'm not sure if they were OK or not (there were several deaths on Everest this year).

The Khumbu icefall is arguably the most dangerous part of Everest, even as low on the mountain and far out of the death zone as it is. They have to cross under seracs several times on the route, he is moving as fast as he can...it's just a roll of the dice.

If you haven't read "Into Thin Air", it's a great book.

novicesnapper

Thanks Kponds. All I know he is ant sized compared to that chunk of ice. I spent a year in Canada, where for two weeks, it never got above -20 F. I like my warmer climates lol. Haha, then during that last blizzard we had here in Oklahoma, it was about the same temp for over 24 hours, -15 to -20F, colder than Alaska was at that moment. Hats off to these guys!!!

The reason I ran across this was I was researching some software from Microsoft, for panoramics to work in the browser.
Oddly enough, called ICE Image Composite Editor https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/
Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images. The stitched panorama can be shared with friends and viewed in 3D by uploading it to the Photosynth web site. Or the panorama can be saved in a wide variety of image formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to the multiresolution tiled format used by Silverlight's Deep Zoom and by the HD View and HD View SL panorama viewers.

kponds

Yeah, I am a fan of warmer weather myself. I find Himalayan mountaineering to be an endeavor best experienced vicariously through books, photos, and documentary TV/movies.

The microsoft ICE thing is really cool, I haven't played with it myself but seen several nice images made/displayed with it.