Live Earth

Thanks to the numerous satellites we have placed in various types of orbits in outer space, it is now very easy to gain access to images of the globe, even for the average individual. From there, creating a live wallpaper using these pictures shouldn’t be that difficult.

Live Earth is an open-source application that grabs images captured by the Himawari 8 geostationary satellite and sets them as your desktop background. They are updated automatically, and the program is very easy to configure.

The Himawari 8 Japanese weather satellite is in a geostationary orbit around the Earth, with its camera being pointed at the Japanese archipelago at all times. This means that all pictures captured by the satellite will only ever show that side of the globe.

Images are taken every 10 minutes, and they are made available with a delay of around 30 minutes. Several resolutions are available, depending on what you need them for.

Live Earth is a very simple application to configure. Once installed, you need to set the update interval and the resolution of the images it should download. You should probably stick to resolutions above 1100px to ensure the wallpaper doesn’t look blurry.

Since the satellite is in a geosynchronous orbit, it captures the entire day/night cycle, which means that some of the images will be almost completely dark. However, you can apply an offset in order to view older images that show the Earth during daytime.

What’s more, the program allows you to zoom in or out, which is particularly necessary if you have selected a higher resolution.

On the whole, Live Earth is a well-designed application that uses images from the Himawari 8 weather satellite to create a live wallpaper that can be configured even by complete novices. It works great, and it runs unobtrusively in the system tray.