Satellite Image Comparison from Coastal Remote Sensing

Success with this applet may depend on your browser. Internet Explorer 3.0 and Netscape 3.01 have been tested and work well. Earlier versions are may have problems.

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We're sorry, but this page requires a browser that can run Java applets. If your browser knew Java, you would see a panel of controls here.

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Instructions:

1. Select an area of interest from the 'Area Selection' choices.
2. For each image, select the type of data desired using the 'Data Type' choice boxes and use the slider bar to choose the dates desired.
3. Decide if you want to see just the thumbnails or the full images. The thumbnails are much smaller, resulting in faster loading. They are also useful for deciding if the data is worth examining in greater detail. For large areas (such as the Full U.S. and Gulf of Mexico) you should probably always have the thumbnails on. Very large images will take a long time to download and can overload your system resources. Currently, the difference image is not calculated for the thumbnails. There is a nice 'Image Panner' for navigating the full images.
4. Hit the start button! The images will begin to download and a new window will appear. The window is initially sized to fit on a 640x480 screen, but you'll want to resize it if your screen allows.

These images may also be viewed in on individual pages, or with an animator. The animator is very useful for helping to chose which days to view with this page.

Once the animation has begun, you will be able to change the speed using the scrollbar at the bottom of the animation window. The animation flickers between the two images.

Moving Around

Scrollbars are supplied to move around in the images. However, scrollbar movements will only take effect when the 'Do Scroll' button is selected. This reduces the extreme slowdowns that occur if the applet attempts to recrop and repaint the window with each small movement of the scrollbars. For the full resolution images, an 'Image Panner' window is provided to aid navigation. This window consists of a thumbnail of image #1 with a box representing the currently viewed area of the full images. Drag the box to the area you wish to see and the full images will scroll. Resizing the main window will resize the box in the 'Image Panner'.

Development of this visualization tool is ongoing. If you have some constructive comments for improvement, please send them to Kirk Waters (kwaters@csc.noaa.gov).