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Development of Soccer Ball type Satellite Globes
Soccer ball type satellite globes (left: 12cm in diameter, right: Size 5 type)
Do you know that there is a soccer ball type terrestrial globe?
There are two types of the globe such as Size 5 ball to be usable by a match and mini-size to put on the desk (a diameter of 12cm).
These globes were made by the image processing of meteorological satellite NOAA. Although we have image processed many satellite terrestrial globes so far, it was the first time.  It doesn't differ that both a terrestrial globe and a ball are spheres, but forms of the  peaces for making soccer ball are extremely different. In order to make a terrestrial globe, cymbates which was transformed by multi conic projection for every longitude are   usually used, but as for soccer ball, it is consisted of 32 pieces of polyhedrons such as 20 pieces of hexagons and 12 pieces of pentagons. Therefore, we have to convert a satellite image into 32 pieces of images as shown in right image. This image is different from a final product, and it is removed a cloud to understand land area well.

Now, there is a quiz here. You can see hexagons are arranged in mostly correct order, so how will you put them together to make a correct soccer ball globe?