A relatively new technology now allows consumers – that’s you and me, kids! – to take absurdly high-res panoramic photographs. That means you can take a panorama of a forest, and zoom in to see ants on a leaf. Or pictures of cities and zoom in on that guy who always masturbates on his couch by the window. Not that anybody would.
Originally developed by NASA for the Mars Rover expeditions, two robotics experts from NASA, Illah Nourbakhsh (also of Carnegie Mellon) and Randy Sargent (a NASA computer scientist) then went on to create a consumer product that would allow non-nerds to use the technology. Once you set up the camera (made by GigaPan Systems, a joint venture between Nourbakhsh and Sargent), it takes a high-resolution photo, rotates minutely, takes a second one…and on, until it’s created a complete panorama. The effects are stunningly gorgeous, and extremely useful. The Mars Rover, obviously, can send detailed images of the planet back to Earth, allowing scientists to see the landscape with amazing precision. Researchers studying Middle Eastern petroglyphs can take a photo and then retire to their luxurious studios to analyze a massive scene in style. The technology has even been used to study collapsed bee colonies.
The upside for you boring proles is that GigaPan sells the cameras at cost. Since the data contained in each image would cripple your shitty Dell, you can upload them directly to http://www.gigapan.org/ and then the rest of us can search your cityscapes for hot exhibitionists.
