Tuesday 30 June 2015

Whales!

I think satellite remote sensing is about as close to seeing whales as I am ever going to get. Another weekend spent waiting for news from the boat captain in Baltimore, West Cork. Cancelled at the last minute due to bad weather. That is the 4th or 5th time it has fallen through I think? I wouldn't mind but today is supposed to be the start of a heat wave!

I'm not giving up though - October is supposed to be the best time of year for whale watching in SW Ireland and I will be back then.

Tuesday 23 June 2015

Sentinel 2a in orbit

About a year and a half ago I stayed up to watch the launch of Sentinel 1a and make sure it made it safely into orbit (not as if I could influence that much). I have just received an email from GIM International informing that Sentinel 2a has stolen a march on me as I thought the launch was not until tomorrow.



So while I was up watching the first episode of the new series of 'True Detective', Sentinel 2a was entering sun-synchronous orbit without my help. Unlike Sentinel 1a, Sentinel 2a is an optical multispectral satellite and will be very useful in the coming years with a MS resolution comparable with SPOT 4 and 5 (10metres).  Up until now the highest spatial resolution, free MS imagery that you could get without applying for it was the 30m bands on the Landsat series.

Watch this space.

Monday 22 June 2015

Meeting the Challenge of Climate Justice

Mary Robinson just finished her keynote speech at #climatejustice2015. This is the conference I posted the video for a few weeks back.


Pros
Very good speaker and a great sense of humour.


Cons
Very good speaker = minimal elbow room.

Friday 12 June 2015

Scale

Someone directed me to a great quote during the week on the subject of scale...

................................

"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"

"About six inches to the mile."

""Only six inches!"exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"

"Have you used it much?" I enquired.

"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well"

from Lewis Carroll - The Complete Illustrated Works.

Wednesday 10 June 2015

Scientists can have hobbies too

I posted a while back about completing the release candidate on a software package to send to our distributor. Well the final version was released yesterday and it is getting some great feedback already. As the lead on the QA team I am just happy that it didn't crash everyones PCs.

Don't tell any of my geomatics friends that I am a closet historian...

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Discovery Programme

I am a big fan of the Discovery Programme. They are always one of the highlights of any remote sensing conference with such beautiful, high quality models. I use their images in my LiDAR lectures and show the students the free to access, online, great collection of 3D models for most of the heritage sites around the country.

Here is a great shot of their DĂșn Aonghusa model. You can also look at RGB point clouds and pan and zoom as you like.





So I was very glad to see the formal launch of their project getting a mention in thejournal.ie a few weeks back. The DP also have some full scans of Skellig Michael, I wonder did they use them for the new Star Wars movie? I know they were filming there.



About Me

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My name is Conor. I am a Lecturer at the Department of Geography at Maynooth University. These few lines will (hopefully) chart my progress through academia and the world of research.