Visualizing Our Planet
The latest in big-screen science arrived at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology on Tuesday, 12 October. Don Middleton, head of SCD's Visualization Laboratory, joined forces with Fritz Hasler (pictured at right), of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, to bring model output and satellite images to life on a 12-by-36-foot screen. Dual projectors were driven by an SGI Onyx2 InfiniteReality supercomputer.
The show was sponsored in part by the UCAR members universities'
meeting and UCAR/NCAR's 40th anniversary celebration. In keeping with that theme, it
zipped through over four decades of weather and climate visualizations--from the first
satellite view of earth to new output from NCAR's climate system model to simulations of
ocean circulation and clear air turbulence. The show was an unqualified hit: The NIST
auditorium was packed with over 600 people, and at least 200 more had to be turned away.
Photo by Carlye Calvin.
Article edited by Bob Henson for UCAR Staff Notes Monthly, November, 1999.