Learn
RTK, GNSS and RINEX: in plain language. After reading, get hands-on with the free tools or the map.
Basics
📡Basics
What is RTK?
Why ordinary GPS is off by metres, yet you can measure to centimetres. Base stations, carrier phase, NTRIP, Fix/Float and QZSS CLAS.
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🎯Basics
Why GPS is off, and by how much
Where the error actually comes from: the ionosphere, reflections, satellite geometry. What you can fix yourself, and where the limit of a single receiver lies.
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🌐Basics
GNSS vs GPS
GPS is the name of one system; GNSS is the umbrella term. GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, QZSS, and the benefits of multi-GNSS.
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🧭Basics
Coordinates and height
Degrees-minutes-seconds, decimal degrees, plane rectangular and UTM. Why an old datum puts you 400 m away, and why the height a receiver reports is not the height on a map.
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🔗Basics
What is NTRIP?
How base-station corrections reach you over the internet. Caster, mountpoint, client and the connection flow.
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🛰Basics
What is RINEX?
The standard format for raw GNSS observations. The difference from NMEA (the answer), .obs/.nav, Hatanaka compression, and use in PPK/PPP post-processing.
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Hands-on
📍Hands-on
Let the receiver pick the base station
2,485 public RTK base stations worldwide, served as one open list. The device measures the distance itself and connects to the nearest one. Source code included, MIT.
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📐Hands-on
Surveying with GNSS and drones
Static, RTK and network RTK: what to choose and when. How a drone gets centimetre positions, and the step everyone skips before trusting the result.
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Field
📏Field
One wrong base height, and the map is 122 m off
22 GNSS logs from Tokachi compared cell by cell: 0.53 m apart horizontally, 122 m apart in height. How the cause was isolated, with the data.
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🚌Field
The Buenos Aires map
Live buses, 6,962 stops with next arrivals, the Subte, safety data and 84 historical events, and how to ride the bus.
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Reading the data
🌡Space
The temperature on Mars
What it is actually like on the surface, read from measurements: fourteen Earth-years of readings from Gale Crater, and the night-time infrared record of the whole planet.
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📏Space
How far away Mars is right now
The distance changes every second. Computed live from orbital elements, with the light-travel time and why the number swings between 55 and 400 million kilometres.
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🚩Space
Every landing site on the Moon
All 24 places where a craft has come down, on measured lunar terrain. Apollo, Luna, Chang'e, Chandrayaan and the recent commercial landers.
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🏷Space
Every named place on Mars
2,048 features carry an official name, and the IAU recorded why each one was chosen. Craters under 60 km take the names of small towns on Earth, so villages from 106 countries and cultures sit on another planet.
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🌒Space
Every named place on the Moon
2,023 named features and the reason each name was chosen. Most are people who studied the sky. 7,063 smaller craters share those names with a letter added, listed on the page of the name they belong to.
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Maps and how to read them
🔴Map
The Mars map
Elevation measured by laser, night-time infrared, the day-night line moving in real time, and 1,952 named features.
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🌕Map
The Moon map
Measured lunar terrain with the landing sites marked, and the phase as it is tonight.
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🌍Map
What is the Equal Earth projection
The equal-area world map the UN General Assembly recommended on 4 September 2026 by 164 votes to 1. What it keeps, what it gives up, the formula, and an interactive map to compare it with Mercator.
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🗺Map
Map projections, explained
Why every flat map lies about something, the three ways to choose what to keep, what Mercator was built for, and how to use Equal Earth in QGIS, PROJ, Python and D3 with EPSG:8857.
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Japan
🇯🇵Japan
What the Japan map holds
Sixteen layers built for Japan: bear sightings, flood and landslide risk, snow depth, lightning, tornadoes, fatal crashes, bus stops, medical reach, population density and nationwide 3D terrain.
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🛰Japan
GNSS in Japan: a field guide for engineers arriving from abroad
QZSS in 2026, CLAS and MADOCA-PPP, GEONET and the free community bases, the 2025 height revision and the 19 plane zones, and the radio, survey and drone rules for equipment you bring. Six pages, primary sources.
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🇯🇵Japan
How many QZSS satellites are flying
Michibiki is described as a seven-satellite system, yet five are operating. The fifth was lost in a launch failure; the seventh reached orbit in August 2026. A timeline.
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Maps for everyday life
🐈Cats
Where a lost cat actually is
What 1,210 missing-cat cases show about distance, time and place - and the two pieces of mathematics the cat papers do not contain.
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🌧Cats
When it rains, a cat moves two thirds as far
A GPS study of 97 cats measured it: 3.6 km on dry days, 2.4 km in heavy rain. What that means for searching.
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🔦Cats
What actually finds a lost cat
Of five search methods, the survey of 1,210 cases shows which worked and which did not. Traps and cameras led; watching an open door did not.
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🙀Cats
Why a lost cat will not come when you call
It hears you. It knows its name. It knows which way you are. And it still will not come out. Five studies explain why, and what to do instead.
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Weekly data reports
🗓Weekly data reports
Every week we count the world's community RTK base stations and record what changed. The archive goes back to the first week of monitoring.
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