UTILIZING GIGAPANS AND GOOGLE EARTH TO CREATE "VIRTUAL FIELD EXPERIENCES"

GigaPans are gigapixel panoramas presented via a web interface (http:/www.gigapan.com) that allows users to examine them through a wide range of magnifications. When acquired in the field, they serve as records of field sites and sources for additional data analysis. Combined with images acquired at different scales (including hand samples, thin sections, or satellite images), they can act as virtual field experiences useful for both geoscience education and research.

Many GigaPans are acquired using a GigaPan robotic camera mount, which uses a digital camera (ranging from point and shoot up to DSLR, depending on the model of GigaPan) to record details down to the limits of the camera's resolution (depending on amount of zoom). To acquire a Gigapan, the user first identifies the upper left and lower right corners of the desired panorama. The robot then adjusts the pointing of the camera to collect a grid of overlapping photographs that cover the full image. The photos are compiled using the GigaPan Stitch software into a final panorama, which can then be uploaded to the website. Once online, the GigaPan image is given a title and caption, tags to assist in locating pans via searches, and can be georeferenced and linked to Google Earth to provide spatial context. Specific areas of interest in the final image can be indicated using "snapshots", which record a specific location and zoom level within the image for quick recall later: snapshots can also be captioned and commented on by other users.

Although ideal for recording landscapes and outcrops, the camera mounts can be used to create panoramas of smaller scale features like hand samples. The GigaPan software can also be used to stitch grids of images from other sources (a series of images of a thin section, for example) or to upload large images (such as satellite images) for use in the online viewer.

“Virtual field experiences” can be created using sets of GigaPan images linked via URLs in captions or embedded in webpages. In an educational setting, these can be useful when field trips are not practical, as they allow students to explore outcrops and landscapes interactively at multiple scales. Snapshots can be used to ask questions or to guide inquiry. Examples of these exercises are linked at http://www.physics.ccsu.edu/piatek/pans.html.