Toggle light / dark theme

Canon made a site that lets you ‘take photos’ from a real satellite

Rather than releasing any new cameras for CES 2021, Canon is doing something different: Letting you take pictures from space. The company has unveiled an [interactive site](https://redefinethelimits.us/space/cornerstone/experience) that allows you to use its CE-SAT-1 satellite, equipped with a lightly modified 5D Mark III DSLR, to grab simulated photos of locations including New York City, the Bahamas and Dubai.

Canon launched the wine barrel-sized microsatellite back in June of 2017. It holds an EOS 5D Mark III camera that’s fitted with a 40 cm Cassegrain-type (mirror) 3720mm telescope. Orbiting at a 600 km orbit (375 miles), it provides about a 36-inch ground resolution within a 3×2 mile frame, Canon claims. (By contrast, the world’s highest-resolution satellite, [WorldView-4](https://apollomapping.com/worldview-4-satellite-imagery?gcli…rT_D_BwE), can resolve down to 12 inches.) It also houses a PowerShot S110 for wider images.

Take ‘photos’ of Earth from space with Canon’s 5D Mark III camera.

Canon.

The interactive demo allows you take images from multiple locations, with each shot showing the location and altitude of the image. However, it uses pre-captured imagery, so you’re not actually grabbing live or unique photos. If it was live, CE-SAT-1 would be zipping around the Earth at nearly 17, 000 miles per hour, circling the globe in just over an hour and half. The demonstration does give you a feel for the satellite’s capabilities and resolution, however.

The experience is narrated by astronaut Marsha Ivins, who explains the satellite’s purpose and design. The microsatellites are much smaller and cheaper than regular satellites, and Canon hopes to build a [billion dollar business](https://en.canon-elec.co.jp/space/) around them by 2030. After launching the CE-SAT-1 in 2017, Canon attempted to launch an updated [CE-SAT-1B](https://www.engadget.com/watch-rocket-lab-canon-satellite-launch-191456033.html) last summer. However, it was lost when RocketLab’s Electron rocket [failed](https://www.engadget.com/rocket-lab-13th-mission-failure-142717244.html) shortly after launch.

High-Frequency Traders Push Closer to Light Speed With Cutting-Edge Cables

The cable, called hollow-core fiber, is a next-generation version of the fiber-optic cable used to deliver broadband internet to homes and businesses. Made of glass, such cables carry data encoded as beams of light. But instead of being solid, hollow-core fiber is empty inside, with dozens of parallel, air-filled channels narrower than a human hair.

Because light travels nearly 50% faster through air than glass, it takes about one-third less time to send data through hollow-core fiber than through the same length of standard fiber.

The difference is often just a minuscule fraction of a second. But in high-frequency trading, that can make the difference between profits and losses. HFT firms use sophisticated algorithms and ultrafast data networks to execute rapid-fire trades in stocks, options and futures. Many are secretive about their trading strategies and technology.

Scientists Propose Permanent Human Habitat Built Orbiting Ceres

Would you like to live on a space station? 😃


If that sounds familiar to fans of the popular sci-fi book and TV series “The Expanse,” that’s because in that fictional universe, Ceres Station plays a pivotal role as one of humanity’s first human off-world colonies. In the series, however, the space rock itself was spun up to create a crewed habitat on its surface with artificial gravity.

In a paper uploaded to the prewrite repository arXiv this week, the team argues that Ceres would be prime real estate because it has nitrogen, which could enable the creation of an Earth-like atmosphere.

In fact, they argue that the environment could even be “better than Earth,” since there’s no adverse weather or natural disasters, and plenty of living space to grow into.

Nestron Cube Two Is the Tiny House With Its Own AI Assistant

The tiny house we’re going to discuss today won’t buy you freedom like trailer-based models, but it compensates for that with its own AI assistant. It’s smart, it’s tiny, it can be solar powered if you want, and it’s still very chic. It’s dubbed the next-generation tiny house: the Cube Two from Nestron.


You don’t have to actually live large in order to live large. Tiny houses are a good option when it comes to minimizing your footprint, downsizing costs and not sacrificing anything but space you probably wouldn’t be using either way.

21 Residents of Retirement Home Get Coronavirus After Receiving Vaccine

Some 21 residents of a Bat Yam retirement home tested positive for the coronavirus after they were vaccinated but before they had developed antibodies, according to Ynet.

The other 150 residents of the home will be tested for the virus.


Health officials have stressed that the two-dose Pfizer vaccine regimen means that the vaccine is only fully effective about five weeks after the first dose. This means it could take until sometime in February for enough elderly and high-risk people to be vaccinated to help lower the spread of infection and start reopening the economy.

Moreover, the risk of catching coronavirus after the first jab has been confirmed in that some 15000 patients who received the first dose of the vaccine were screened and 428 were confirmed positive for COVID-19 and some 12 people were hospitalized, according to reports. It is possible that some of them were exposed to the virus even before being vaccinated.

On Friday morning, Israel’s one millionth citizen was vaccinated against the novel coronavirus in the presence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Yuli Edelstein.