[NOTE: Turn on Historical Imagery in GE 5 and move the slider to 2006 to see the Burning Man photo mentioned in this post.]
[NOTE: See the post for Burning Man 2007]
Looks like Google acquired an aerial photo of the Burning Man 2006 event and has incorporated it as part of the big update pushed out today. Check it out here. 
Also, you can view it in Google Maps. It looks like an aerial photo showing the event during its busiest time. The event was held on August 28 through September 4th, so this data is only a month old! How’s that for current data? The resolution of this image looks to be a little less than 1 foot per pixel. You can see people moving around as little blobs, although you can’t make out any real details.
[UPDATE: see story about Burning Man and Google Earth in a recent CNET news article.]
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
Very cool find. That is neat the that the images are so recent.
And 2005 event is presented over at Yahoo! maps —
http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/#mvt=s&maxp=search&trf=0&lon=-119.235971&lat=40.753434&mag=3
Curious about “Burning Man” never attended but would like info about procedures etc….old hippy seeking another Woodstock ?
This will probably win some tin foil hat award points for me, but still …
What happens to the concept of privacy when everything is filmable from orbit? Yes, the whole 3-d movie concept is sort of cool, but I’m not so sure that the same can be said of the implications of this technology, if it should get much better than this.
How many steps from the burning man to the “wicker man”?