 The following computer simulation of a high-speed flight around the Los Angeles vicinity was produced to demonstrate a capability of scientific data visualization. This animation is part of the NASA-funded research being carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The entire animation was produced from one Landsat satellite image that was merged with digital elevation information. Landsat views the Earth from 570 miles up and is capable of seeing features that are approximately 30 meters square. A 30-meter square area is approximately the same size as the area inside the bases of a professional baseball field. This is Los Angeles, California on July 3, 1985. We are now traveling toward the Pacific Ocean at about 200,000 miles an hour and will drop down behind Santa Catalina Island about 26 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. We're going to fly through the isthmus of the island and then cross the coast north of the Santa Monica Mountains. As we head south, we can see features such as Marina del Rey and Los Angeles International Airport. We see the Palace Verdes Peninsula in the center now along with the Long Beach Harbor. Now we're moving down into the Orange County area. The bow tie-shaped feature now visible are Balboa and Lido Islands in Newport Bay. We're heading toward Los Angeles and in the center of the screen is downtown. Hollywood and Beverly Hills are below as we move into the San Fernando Valley. You'll see a V-shaped lake appear. That's Castaic Lake. We will now turn and proceed to fly straight down the rift valley of the San Andreas Fault. We're crossing the east fork of the San Gabriel Mountains and we'll turn around and face those same mountains when we lose elevation into the Pomona Valley area. We can see Mount Baldy at the top right of the screen and as we pan the San Gabriel Mountains we can note in the foreground the Santa Fe Dam and Recreation Area, the Santa Anita Race Track and Golf Course. You can now see the Rose Bowl with the surrounding golf course. It took five and a half days of non-stop computer time on a machine capable of computing four million instructions per second. Over 3,000 digital frames were generated to make L.A. the movie. That represents more than 2.6 billion bytes of data. That is equivalent to enough characters to fill 1.3 million pages of text. That would be a stack of paper over 44 stories tall. Techniques developed during the creation of L.A. the movie will be used to help scientists analyze the large quantities of data being sent back to Earth by satellites. The following animation demonstrates an application of scientific data visualization using nine images taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Planetary geologists and visualization specialists created a computer simulated flight over the southern hemisphere of Miranda, a geologically interesting moon of the planet Uranus. The flight takes us over a bewildering array of landforms. As we simulate flight over the terrain at altitudes of three to 20 miles, keep in mind that Voyager 2's closest approach to Miranda was more than 18,000 miles above the surface. A study of the Earth's climate must take into account the crucial role played by clouds. Besides delivering life-giving rain to the land, clouds help maintain a proper balance in the global climate. The following digital animation combines satellite cloud data and Earth elevation data from maps to demonstrate how atmospheric scientists and visualization specialists team up to perform climatic research. The clouds were derived from infrared and microwave satellite instrument data using a supercomputer. At first glance, clouds may appear chaotic, but closer observation reveals a semblance of order. Recognizable patterns show how air moves up and down while circulating around the globe. The varied features of the Earth's surface portrayed here by color, as well as prevailing winds, have distinct effects on the formation and distribution of clouds. Computer animation to visualize clouds provides a unique insight into the structure and dynamics of global weather systems. As we add the third dimension to both the Earth's surface and the clouds, we can see the relationship between cloud tops and the Earth's topography. The cloud top elevations were also derived from satellite data. The vertical dimensions have been exaggerated 20 times to enhance comparison. Our flight first takes us along the west coast of Africa. Flying north of Scandinavia, we see Europe. Then quickly cross the North Atlantic and drop below the cloud tops off the eastern United States. We look west into the Amazon basin of South America. We circle Cape Horn and view the Andes Mountains up close. Central America passes below as we view North America. Diving below the clouds in the mid-Atlantic, we fly over the Mediterranean. Turkey passes to our right as we fly across the Caspian Sea into the southern Soviet Union. China and now Japan are below us. Southeast Asia and Australia are seen as we head for the Himalayas and Indian subcontinent. The Middle East and Africa complete our journey. The atmosphere can be considered a gigantic solar-powered engine which controls our daily weather. The Pacific Ocean, shown here, covers nearly half the Earth. It is the major storehouse of energy and source of water vapor for the planet. This is the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere, and we can observe the course of numerous storms, one after the other, approaching North America from the Gulf of Alaska. Note the belt of clouds near the equator as we rotate the Earth to observe the opposite hemisphere. This belt provides the moisture necessary to sustain the equatorial rainforests of the Congo basin in Central Africa and the Amazon in South America. North Africa, dominated by the Sahara, is characterized by its lack of clouds. Near the top of this hemisphere, we can also observe winter storms move with regularity across the North Atlantic and Europe. The data visualization techniques develop to produce Earth the movie. Represent powerful new tools that scientists will use to study our complex global environment. The fourth planet from the Sun is visible to the naked eye as a bright star in the night sky. Through a telescope, it appears as a yellowish-brown disc with indications of complex features. However, using images taken by cameras on the Viking Orbiter spacecraft, a simulated flight over Mars reveals much more detail. These are shaded relief maps of the topography of the Earth and Mars rendered onto spheres. The diameter of Mars is 4,202 miles or about 53% of Earth's. The planet's volume is about 15% of Earth's. A comparison of the relative size of each planet to the size of its surface features demonstrates the enormity of the Martian terrain. The Mars elevations were derived from stereographic analysis of the Viking Orbiter imagery. For scale, the outline of the continental United States is superimposed on a portion of the Martian terrain over which our flight will occur. Among the most impressive features on Mars are the Tharsis Montes, shield volcanoes more than two times the height of Mount Everest, and the Valles Marineris, a system of enormous canyons over 3,000 miles long. This Viking Orbiter image mosaic was used for the flight simulation. The line being drawn follows the flight path. Flight elevations vary from 500 miles to 3 miles above the surface. The relief has been exaggerated 5 times and the natural color enhanced to allow better interpretation of small surface features. For centuries, Mars has captivated observers on Earth. Unmanned spacecraft and scientific data visualization have increased our interest in and knowledge of the Red Planet. The following computer animation of the Monterey Bay environment was produced to demonstrate the fusion and visualization of multiple geophysical datasets. Both the United States Navy and NASA sponsor the development of visualization technology to enhance the understanding of environmental data. This is a Landsat thematic mapper image of the Monterey Peninsula. The city of Monterey is seen at the top. Pebble Beach is visible in the southern portion of the peninsula. Large kelp beds are visible just offshore. We now travel straight upward to a height of just over 30 miles. From here we can see the entire Monterey Bay area. The Landsat thematic mapper imagery of the ocean is now replaced with coastal zone color scanner imagery. This instrument measures the varying levels of chlorophyll in the ocean. Reds and yellows indicate higher concentrations. Blues and greens indicate lower amounts. As the coastal zone color scanner data is made translucent, bottom topography features become visible. We are now descending at a velocity of over 18,000 miles per hour. Our approach slows and we move westward to the far end of the Monterey Bay Canyon. This is a shaded relief image taken from sea beam bathymetric data. The shaded relief is overlaid with geological long-range inclined azdic or glorious side-scan sonar data. The sonographs have been computer enhanced to show ocean bottom geographic details. As we approach the shallow areas in the bay, we have shown graphically the boundary which we will use in showing the current flow through the bay. We are looking northeast across the bay. In order to show the current flow model, we have greatly exaggerated the vertical scale. The two-layer model shown here represents 17 days of ocean currents at depths 50 and 250 meters. Note the more rapid north to south flow through the bay in the top layer due to the prevailing winds. The bottom layer is flowing north toward the recesses of the canyon and toward the shore at a velocity of just under 8,000 miles per hour. We turn south and move down to our starting point on the peninsula. The ocean has been made transparent so that we can see the canyons in the bay. We finish our journey once again over the Monterey Peninsula.