Earth's Low-Cal Mountains

Last twelvemonth Jacob Wasilkowski released an interactive map which visualized Nasa’s nighttime lights information every bit as elevation data. In other words the Earth at Night map shows low-cal pollution some the public inwards 3D every bit mountains of light.

NASA's thence called Black Marble map is made past times combining the best cloud-free satellite images of every patch majority expanse of the Earth. The trial is a map which shows the distribution of artificial lights some the world. Jacob has used NASA's information on low-cal pollution to practice an interactive map of the public which shows the brightest areas every bit high peaks together with the darkest regions every bit valleys together with plains.

Jacob has straight off released a 'how to' guide explaining how he created the map. Obviously converting NASA's low-cal pollution map into a 3D elevation map includes a let on of steps. One of these steps was to role chroma.js to convert every low-cal pixel on the Black Marble map into a let on range, which could thence hold upwardly used to visualize the luminosity values every bit elevation heights.

Using the metaphor of elevation is becoming a pop method of visualizing information on 3D maps. We've seen this virtually latterly on the Pudding's Human Terrain interactive map. The Pudding's map shows population density across the globe using 3D population pyramids. The taller a pyramid block on the Pudding map thence the higher the population.