Big Green Marble

The best thing about the space program (and please, no jokes about diaper-clad astronauts in sordid love triangles) is the perspective it has given us on our own planet. A new tool from the NASA Earth Observatory broadens that perspective by making it accessible to anyone with a PC and a broadband connection. NASA Earth Observations, or NEO, allows users to download satellite imagery from a variety of datasets (e.g., snow cover, cloud fractions, chlorophyll concentrations, etc.).and in various formats, including kmz files that open directly in Google Earth. For the armchair (or desktop) geography buff, nothing could be cooler. Check it out.