Hats off ISRO : Bhuvan Rocks !!!

Note : Please click on the links at the end of this post in case you are not able to see the screen shots .

News channels  were abuzz with launch of Bhuvan an geographical imaging service from Indian Space Research Organizations (ISRO http://www.isro.org ) .

At present its a web based interface that offers geographical images that we are used to see on Google maps .

But Bhuvan is much more than what Google map offers in terms of service and significance .

The main punch in Bhuvan is its Indianess .It isn’t a news per se , India had launch satellites with remote sensing satellites under aegis of ISRO for quite some time now . And Bhuvan as a gesture of capability demonstration is very important for Indians .

However its Indianess doesn’t stop here .

It offers zoom in facility till 10 meters .

It has comes in multiple mode/variations that can display soil types , monsoon coverage apart from state,district boundaries , national highways and the most needed navigation information .

In fact Bhuvan goes further than this and allows in line graphical overlays for town planners and more .

Of couser it hides sensitive information like Gate Way of India in Mumbai and rightly so ,being a Govt of India  enterprise   .

One has to go to site http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/index.html and register himself there to use Bhuvan .The present implementation mandates us to download and Active X component and its hoped that Bhuvan assumes collaborative features like Google Earth soon ( features like people tagging places on the map ). I alos hope that ISRO offers its as a service for other sites to embed Bhuvan widget in their pages and the wish list goes on .

Its worth a look guyz .And yes …

While registering at Bhuvan website today , I was asked about my name , password and the default information.

One of the column was “Purpose for Browsing Bhuvan” … National Pride ! I replied .

Hats Off  ISRO , Bhuvan Rocks !!! .

Here are some Screen Shots .

This screen shot shows India as a country zoomed in onto Bhuvan main page .One can add multiple layers like national , state ,district boundaries on it ( see the menu on  the left of the screen shot ) .

This Screen shot shows status of monsoon/ rain in India .It also has facility to select years and month for the display selection .

Bhuvan has the proverbial city navigation feature .However ISRO block sensitive places like Gate Way of India etc. I have captured Colaba ,marine drive area of Mumabi city ( for easy identification 🙂 ) . Of course this can be zoomed to greater extent than this But but but , its not collaborative yet  , so you will fine names for only those places which ISRO has mapped .Hope a commercial open version of Bhuvan is launched soon .

The screen shot is the best one . It shows how best Bhuvan captures geographical details like soli and tarrian . What you see here is place close to my native 🙂 . Its a place called Lonar in Maharashtra . And the circle you see is a crater made by Meteoric collusion from Jurassic Age ( No kidding )

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/NMEzhTVgeP1sltypmEDWDg?authkey=Gv1sRgCJnh29yk6azDDw&feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/JOtY-9_8nxdIjAOWiUs56g?authkey=Gv1sRgCJnh29yk6azDDw&feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/utJIw8xYuTguu7Xi2ofHGA?authkey=Gv1sRgCJnh29yk6azDDw&feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/zdMGL6jjUN6isRbfnpK0Pg?authkey=Gv1sRgCJnh29yk6azDDw&feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/GBSxmkSJs7VuDo2kFkGl0Q?authkey=Gv1sRgCJnh29yk6azDDw&feat=directlink