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About
Earth/HRPT
Space
Arctic
Antarctica
Etna
GroundMap
Map to Geo
HRPT2004

Satellite Images, Meteorology, Weather, Space, Planets, Moons, Arctic

About:     Some background information

Something that starts out as a hobby, an interest in things or just curiosity, often gets a life of its own, as acquiring knowledge usually leads to more curiosity, more detailed understanding and in its turn again to improved knowledge and an appetite for more.

Space

It so happened with me. My fascination with Space stems from the day the world was informed of the launch of the first Sputnik back in 1957. As a 10 year old boy I experienced it as if the books of Jules Verne I was reading at the time, were starting to become reality. I then assembled a full collection of newspaper clippings on all space and rocketry related issues, a collection that made it through time till today.

I studied Electronics and Telecommunications, building my own radios, amplifiers, 80m transmitter and all kinds of switching circuitry, ending up with my first weather satellite receiver at the 137 MHz band that produced nice faxes of weather patterns. Once working at a major Electronics Company, my job took me to many different countries, and by having to relocate frequently I had to give up active work with satellite reception.

Instead I focused on astronomy, greatly facilitated by the luck of living in an era when abundant information poured in from all the spacecraft that roamed around in our solar system. Discoveries were frequent and as whole new worlds were visualized there was a lot to read, study and interpret. Trying to understand how this all came to be and why things are as we see them led directly to having to know more on the Physics associated with all of it, and especially on the origins and very fundaments of the early universe. By now Physics has become my main area of interest and development.

Earth

Once settled back in my home country at the end of the nineties, I again picked up the reception of information as sent out by all kinds of satellites, with a main focus on High Resolution Picture Transmissions (HRPT for short) from the polar orbiting weather satellites. Development went fast and in 2002 I decided to start-up my own enterprise (Earth at Large) and dedicated most of my time professionally to satellite data reception, image production and processing.

Arctic / Antarctic

During many years, in fact since childhood, I was fascinated and absorbed by the heroic stories of the great explorers, especially with those that undertook expeditions to the polar regions. It was therefore inevitable that I were to visit the Arctic myself. During my first visit to Greenland I was immediately sold to the serene, majestic and powerful nature that makes one humble and silent. I have since the first exposure visited the Arctic around the globe from Alaska to Canada, Greenland, Svalbard and Russia, including attempting to reach the pole by dog-sledge. Antarctica is highlighted on a separate page within this web site.

 

It is in view of this background that I decided to share some of the results I have obtained or collected over time on some of my interests.

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