Google Satellite Images

[patnray]

The pictures appear to be several years old. Just checked the view of the San Jose Airport, which is undergoing a major expansion project. Judging from the roads and runways, it appears to be about 2 years old...

 

[phildonnia]

Ooh what a shock! It only covers the US.

Shocking indeed.

An American company based on the West Coast of America using American satellite imagery is so America-centric as to mainly show populated areas of America in a beta trial program, without any sensitivity to the fundamental rights of the native cultures of Liverpool.

 

[phildonnia]

Quiz time!

Where is this?

 

[Terry]

Area 51?

--Terry.

 

[Hutch]

Well, they had my neighborhood right, but the picture is several years old and they ID'ed not only the wrong house but the wrong street!

Scary to think of the detail of the 'spy' satellites with all the 'sooper-sekrit' stuff.

Edited to add--another neat trick is to enter the 3-digit code for any major airport--like ATL for Atlanta or ORD for O'Hare and a shot of the airport comes up. Try MDW and find out why landing at Midway is so much fun...

 

[Patricio Elicer]

Well, they had my neighborhood right, but the picture is several years old and they ID'ed not only the wrong house but the wrong street!

I tried the JREF but I'm not convinced they got it right (I was there for TAM1).

201 SE 12th Street, Fort Lauderdale, FL

 

[WildCat]

This site is so cool! It's been taking all of my free time lately. When you search for zip code 60625 my 2-flat is right smack in the center of the pic. Just follow the street below the soccer field south until it ends at the cross street. Mine is on the south side of that cross street directly in line w/ the other one. The river is the north branch of the Chicago River. The pic must be a few years old, because some of those buildings have since been torn down and are being replaced w/ condos.

I'm gonna have to pay for the Keyhole service...

 

[WildCat]

Heh, they caught Soldier Field in mid-construction. Just east (right) is a still-functional Meigs Field, before Mayor Daley sent bulldozers to tear it down in the middle of the night.

 

[Terry]

I'm gonna have to pay for the Keyhole service...

Try before you buy. They don't cover the whole country in the same resolution.

--Terry.

 

[WildCat]

Try before you buy. They don't cover the whole country in the same resolution.

--Terry.

I know that, but Chicago is in glorious high-res! Free trial is only a week.

 

[Lisa Simpson]

Here's my hometown at the top lefthand side you can see the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Depot. When I zoomed in on my house, I realized the pictures are at least a year out of date. We remodeled our house, but the satellite image shows the pre-remodeled version.

 

[Brown]

Be sure to check out:

The Hollywood Sign
Mount Rushmore
Augusta Golf Course
Mount St. Helens (Wow!)
Meteor crater in Arizona (low-res, but still interesting)
Diamond Head on Oahu
Las Vegas
Downtown Toronto
Niagara Falls
Devil's Tower, Wyoming
Hoover Dam
Disneyland in Anaheim
Magic Kingdom and Epcot in Florida
Cape Canaveral

I am disappointed by the poor quality of the shots of Yosemite.

 

[insertnamehere6]

but can i put aluminum foil in my microwave?

I like Microsoft's Terraserver better. Clearer images, even if the navigation is clunky. The funny thing is--responding to the "send up your own satellites" quip--that Microsoft's images are from an old Soviet Union spy satellite. What does it mean when Microsoft starts buying the Cold War?

 

[TeaBag420]

If you enjoy the Google Maps feature, you might want to download the NASA World Wind software. It lets you zoom in anywhere in the world, with different overlays to choose from. Urban areas have super high-res 0.1 meter resolution available. A cool thing about World Wind is that you can view the scenery from different angles, it shows the relief of the terrain in 3D. It does this by taking the flat photo data and combining with the USGS topographic info, to stretch the photos and render them 3D. It's definitely software that makes you want a higher-horsepower computer.

0.1 meter resolution is less than 4 inches, so I'm calling BULLSH|t on that.