Moon Globe Depicts the Most Famous Satellite

Years ago, Replogle took a break from their favorite subject, Earth, and ventured to the Moon. Replogle’s Moon globe is a 12” representation that takes advantage of our extensive knowledge of the lunar surface.

Since the 1960s, NASA has collected massive amounts of data on the Moon’s topography from numerous personal visits, extensive orbital photography, and telescopic observation. The resulting data has allowed Replogle to produce an amazingly detailed and accurate lunar globe that has earned the approval of NASA itself.

The Moon globe includes all of the significant craters, trenches, plains, mountains, etc. Also labeled are important locations from the various lunar landings along with key dates.

While the Moon globe will not fit well into the collection of a purist globe collector, the Moon globe is a nice complement to a globe collection and can serve as an excellent reference source for an astronomy fan.

Search Tips for Globe Collectors

Searching for globes on the Web can be a frustrating experience. Any globe collector who has tried to locate a rare globe on the Web has been forced to sift through thousands of irrelevant links. Often, the task is overwhelming, and the globe collector quits searching in frustration.

Searching for globes on the Web is complicated for a variety of reasons. First of all, there is the issue of synonyms for globe. Some companies that produce globe-related products use Earth or world to describe their products. Often, the word globe appears nowhere in their descriptions. Because of this, globe collectors must sometimes run searches for globe, Earth, and world to find the majority of relevant results.

To further complicate the lives of globe collectors, the word globe is commonly used by many different industries to describe a wide variety of products. For example, there are water globes, snow globes, gazing globes, lighting fixture globes, etc. If you are searching for regular globes, you probably would rather not have to sift through search results for these items to find the globe you really want.

There is also the problem of the seemingly ubiquitous semi-precious gemstone globes. Any time you type the word globe in a search engine, your results will be flooded with links to gem globes.

There is also the irritation of the globe collector’s worst online enemy: The Boston Globe. If you search for globe and almost any other word in the English language, you are bound to have your search results clogged with articles from The Boston Globe.

To ease your searches for globes, below are some helpful tips for getting more focused content in your search results.

The first thing you want to do is make sure that you will get most of the relevant search results for globe-related products. You can search for the words globe, Earth, and world simultaneously to find links to pages that mention any one of these three words. All you have to do is include "OR" between the words. You can copy and paste the following search phrase into your search engine’s search box.

globe OR earth OR world

Note that you will want to build on this search phrase by adding specific terms. For example, if you were looking for crystal globes, your search phrase would look like the following.

crystal globe OR earth OR world

Another thing you may want to do is weed out a lot of potentially irrelevant links. You can accomplish this by excluding certain key words from your search. You can exclude any word by putting a negative symbol before the word. For example, if you do not want to see links to snow globes in your search results, include “-snow” in your search phrase.

Below is a sample search phrase including several words that frequently clutter search results for globes. You can copy this phrase and paste it into your search engine’s search box. This search phrase can be edited to suit your specific needs.

-water -snow -boston -gem -lamp -light -gazing

Note that you will want to build on this search phrase by adding specific terms. For example, if you were looking for crystal globes, your search phrase would look like the following.

crystal globe -water -snow -boston -gem -lamp -light -gazing

If you are feeling really adventurous, you can use any combination of the search phrases shown in this article. For example, if you wanted to see all crystal globes, crystal Earths, and crystal worlds while excluding words that commonly clutter search results for globes, your search phrase would look something like the following.

crystal globe OR earth OR world -water -snow -boston -gem -lamp -light -gazing

These search phrase examples are here just to demonstrate how you can easily make your searches much less frustrating. These search tricks will not work 100% of the time, but they will do a lot to filter out a large portion of the typical search clutter. The best way to get familiar with these search methods is to use them on real searches. Experiment with different combinations, and see what you get.

For your convenience, there are Google search boxes near the top and bottom of the right-hand column of this page. Make sure to click the “Web” button to search Google across the Web. If you search with the “Globe World” button selected, your search will return results only on the Globe World site. Happy globe hunting!

The Bowling Ball Globe, Brunswick Globe Viz-A-Ball

You know you are a diehard globe collector if you have ever gone bowling and stood at the ball return wondering, Why on Earth doesn’t someone make a globe bowling ball?

Wouldn’t it be fun to hold the world in your hand and hurl it down the lane to knock down the ten pins for a strike? Well, you can do that now, because somebody at Brunswick had a bright idea to turn Earth into a bowling ball. I recently inspected a randomly and anonymously acquired sample of the Brunswick Globe Viz-A-Ball, and here is what I found.

The image on the Brunswick Globe Viz-A-Ball takes the natural approach with an unlabeled satellite representation of Earth. The surface is covered with a clear, high-gloss finish that resembles the Earth’s atmosphere and gives the ball a clean, shiny, and polished appearance.

On the sample I reviewed, the image quality was a little disappointing. The image was a little too dark and a bit grainy. The dark blue oceans did not contrast well with the dark green landmasses; however, the tan desert areas of Africa and Australia did show up well. What also showed up well against the dark oceans were the clouds. The cloud coverage was representative of a typical day on Earth. The problem is that normal cloud coverage obscures too much of the land, and this bowling ball would have been better with about a third less cloud coverage.

On the bowling ball I reviewed, the image did have a noticeable seam that ran along the prime meridian and the international date line. The image was a little misaligned, causing a vertical image differential of about a half an inch at the seam. This problem was visible only when looking at the seam and was primarily noticeable near the poles.

The designers of the Globe Viz-A-Ball thought ahead when laying out the image on the bowling ball. The heavy spot (CG), serial number, and logo were located on Antarctica. This is the perfect location for display or actual bowling. On display, the printing and holes will be mostly out of site. Bowlers will like having the holes at the South Pole, because when the ball is held in the ready position, the globe image will be upright with the North Pole facing the ceiling.

The most obvious issue when discussing bowling balls is the finger holes. The Globe Viz-A-Ball comes undrilled like most quality bowling balls. This is good for serious bowlers, because they always prefer to have their bowling balls custom drilled to perfectly fit their hands. This is also good for globe collectors, because collectors have the option of having the balls drilled or leaving them smooth.

Before ordering your Globe Viz-A-Ball, you need to decide what you plan to do with it. The big choice is weight. The ball comes in weights of 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 16 pounds. If you are buying the ball for actual bowling, you will obviously want to buy whatever weight ball you normally use.

If you are a globe collector buying the ball for display only, you might want to consider ordering a much lighter ball than you would normally purchase for bowling. Since bowling ball weights are varied by core composition and not size, the outer dimensions of bowling balls do not vary. Since size is not a consideration, you might want to save a little money on shipping by going with a lighter ball. Also, you probably don’t want a 16-pound bowling ball sitting on your display shelf.

When you get your bowling ball globe, make sure to display it on a good sturdy stand. You do not want that bowling ball to get loose and come crashing down. Just imagine what would happen if your bowling ball fell a few feet from a shelf, and let’s certainly hope you wouldn’t be sitting under that bowling ball at the time.

If you are both a bowler and a globe collector, you’re probably thrilled with the thought of a globe bowling ball, and you might consider buying two Globe Viz-A-Balls. This will give you one ball for display in your collection and one ball that you can use to impress your friends at the bowling alley without having to worry about all of the scuffs and scratches that will eventually accumulate on the ball after hundreds of high-speed trips down the lane to crash into pins.

Hungarian Globe Puzzle: The Rubik's Cube of Globes

The Hungarian globe puzzle is one of the most unusual globes on the planet. Imagine a cross between a globe and a Rubik’s Cube, and you’ve visualized a Hungarian globe puzzle.

This spherical puzzle is usually made of metal and plastic. The Hungarian globe turns in all directions like a Rubik’s Cube. Large divots on each moving part provide a good grip and give the globe sort of a golf ball appearance.

Hungarian globes are currently out of production, but used Hungarian globes can sometimes be found on the Web.