DYNAMIC WAYS TO VIEW AND USE GIGAPAN IMAGES FOR TEACHING GEOSCIENCE

A GigaPan (a contraction of “gigapixel panorama”) is a very large composite photograph that users can explore via an Internet connection. GigaPans may convey geologic information at scales ranging from landscape to outcrop to hand sample to thin section. Though most GigaPans are viewed on the GigaPan.com website, alternate viewers do exist, and they offer additional functionality, such as annotation and facilitated comparison. One viewer has been developed by Four Chambers Studio, and may be found online at gigamacro.com. This viewer can “pull” image tiles from the GigaPan.com website. It allows two GigaPans to be viewed simultaneously, either side by side or with one overlaid on the other. One may be made more or less transparent, or viewed through a “porthole” in the overlying image. In addition, measurements may be made and temporary drawings may be made on the image. In a beta version of the viewer, annotations can be made with “Google Earth”-like placemarks, lines, rectangles, circles, and polygons. In this talk, we will demo both viewers and compare them to the standard viewer. We will show how they can create a robust viewing experience for geologic processes (a river in flood stage vs. normal flow; before vs. after a given event such as a landslide), thin sections (XPL vs. PPL), hand samples (front vs. back), and annotated vs. raw/unadorned images.