google satellite maps
I was recently complaining that Google hadn’t made their recently purchased Keyhole software available for Mac yet. Well, they responded by adding satellite imagery directly into Google Maps. It is incredible.
Keyhole is still pretty great, with fly-overs, terrain mapping, and angles and realtime zooming and stuff, but this satellite feature directly in the Google Maps web app is awesome.
Here’s my apartment in the current Google Maps:
In satellite mode:
[via everywhere.]
The satellite image is pretty old because there’s a building on my block that hasn’t been there for 12 months. I wonder how recent it is.
Cool feature nonetheless.
First, a friendly correction… They are not satellite images, they are aerial images. Meaning that they were taken by airplanes.
Second, the images ages probably vary. The images of my area are about 3 years old.
How could they be aerial? Have you zoomed out? That’s one high altitude plane…
It’s both: a combination of satellite and aerial photography.
“Keyhole continuously updates its database with the average age of imagery ranging from 18 to 24 months. Imagery can vary in age from as new as 2-3 months to as old as 2-3 years. Keyhole is increasingly taking advantage of satellite imagery to update the Keyhole database more aggressively. ” - keyhole.com
“Using a combination of aerial photography and satellite imaging, Keyhole (www.keyhole.com) has mapped the globe, allowing users to take a virtual magic carpet ride.” - http://www.eijournal.com/Data_on_Demand.asp
“Keyhole hosts over 12 terabytes—slated to jump to 20TB by the end of this year—of aerial imagery from all over the globe. It stitches together its database from numerous aerial-photo providers and from satellite imagery.” - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1658775,00.asp
Thanks Chris for posting those quotes. I was about to go all hostle on Andrew. I was, of course, referring to the image you posted.
I imagine that we have satellite imaging cameras powerful enough to clearly read license plates from space, however, I really doubt that the millitary would be willing to expose their technology with us lowly civilians.
To determine an image is aerial vrs. satellite, look for tall landmarks. If the side of the landmark can’t be seen, it’s probably a satellite. If you look at this location in satellite mode, you can planely see the west side of the Arch yet the east side of the buildings to the Arch’s west. This image was taken from an airplane.
If you zoom out far enough, you can see where the aerial images stop and the satellite images begin. (typically a little green) Also, if you center on the “satellite” image area, and zoom in, you can’t zoom in closer than the top three ticks on the slider.
I’ll admit, I probably should have said that both were used, but I was referring to the image Chris had posted.
As to the age quoted. The images around St. Louis are easily 3 years old, possibly older. It could mean that they are soon to be updated, but a co-worker moved into his house about 2 and 1/2 years ago, and his house wasn’t even build yet in the image. Plus a road improvement was in it’s final stages when the image was taken and that was easily 2 years ago, maybe more like 3.
It’s not an easy task to get the images and piece them together. Plus it must be pretty expensive.
quite nice findings:
http://www.googlesatellitemaps.com/