For most of us skywatching is an outdoor sport and one little tool I couldn't live without is www.wunderground.com 's radar maps . Many , many options to choose from and configureand customize , but just the bare-bones default and changed to the Google Maps satellite view is all I ever use . The maps update frequently also , which is very key (every 2-3 minutes here) . To get there quickly visit http://wunderground.com and choose 'Wundermaps' from the home page , or type in your nearest city and select it from the list , then scroll down and click on the 'Wundermaps' icon or do a mouse-over on the thumbnail radar map showing and then click on the 'wundermap' logo to go straight to the satellite radar map . - When you get to the map view , choose 'Satellite' from the map's top-right pulldown . - Then update the view using the calendar pulldown at the map's top-center and select 'reset to now' and instantly the map is updated . If the map is cluttered with wind/temp/precip data , simply unselect 'Weather Stations' from the far-right control panel . Zoom in and out at will or choose 'animate' from the control panel at far-right . With a zoomed in view I can watch a storm approach and pass and see if there is another cell on the way or not . I can see it storm on the far side of the city while it is still calm over on this side . There is also a satellite radar option on the far-right panel too . Cloud cover is an obvious issue and I find wundermaps a little weak here so I choose theweathernetwork.com 's radar maps for my area and select 'cloud cover' once it loads . The drawback here is that updates are slow to come and are often over an hour old which is pretty much useless if you're just trying to sneak out to see if you can spot that -7 Iridium through the high cloud layer (I have several times) . I'd be curious to know how well wundermaps work outside of N/S/C America and if they are a good choice for Europe/Asia/Australia/etc . Cheers & hope this API helps your viewing performance . gc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/private/seesat-l/attachments/20120804/59b4c14c/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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