[UPDATE OCT 11: The imagery is now also visible in Google Maps]
Google pushed out a new imagery update today – mostly 60 cm resolution satellite imagery. They haven’t given out specifics yet, but the updates are in U.S., Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, Australia and New Zealand. Google has posted some clues to some of the locations in their post at the Google Lat-Long blog. The post does indicate that the imagery update touches over 130 countries and that it is a “significant amount of new or updated 60cm satellite imagery“.
If you find some of the new imagery, post a comment to this post and I’ll create a running list in this blog post.
Also, here are the clues – and answers (completed at 1545 EDT):
- I don’t mean to “flatter,” but this remote Northwestern cape is very beautiful. Answer: Cape Flattery – see here
– answer by Lauren S.
- You can now explore the ruins of this ancient Mayan city, first discovered in 1934. Answer: Becán, Yucatan (see here )
- This small Peruvian village attracts many tourists each year for the Incan ruins atop nearby hills. Answer: Pisac, Peru – See here – Answer by Lynne.
- This city claims to be the southernmost city in the world, with approximately 64,000 residents. Answer: Ushuaia, see here .
- Home of the Russian Pacific Fleet, this city is also Russia’s largest Pacific coast harbor. Answer: Vladivostok, Russia – see here .
- Named after Saint Irene, though sometimes referred to as Thera, this island is a popular Greek tourist destination. Answer: Santorini, island off Greece – see here – Answer by David Newton.
- The Trojan horse from the 2004 movie Troy is visible in this city. Answer: Canakkale, Turkey – see the horse here – Answer by: Lynne, placemark by me.
- This city is the second most populated metropolitan area in Africa, second to Cairo. Answer: Lagos, Nigeria – see here – Answered by Lynne.
- For better or for worse, the testing done at this site changed the world forever. In 1965 it was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark. Answer: Trinity test site – Atomic Bomb – see here – Answer by Pat Edinger.
- Odessos was the original name of this large city, then a trading colony. Answer: Varna, Bulgaria – see here – Answer by Alex G.
- This was the first port on the Shandong peninsula to be opened to the west in the 1800s. Answer: Penglai City – see here .
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.
A few I found
Eastern Ontario (many small cities and towns)
Fergus and Elora, Ontario
Number 3 is probably a village near Machu Pichu. Number 6 is definitely the Greek island of Santorini near Crete.
Number 1 is Cape Flattery, the most northwestern point in the contiguous US (the little tip of the Olympic Penninsula in Washington).
New imagery for parts of Trinidad and Tobago, which were low-res before
10 Odessos was the original name of this large city, then a trading colony.
the answer is Varna (Bulgaria)…I think
9. For better or for worse, the testing done at this site changed the world forever. In 1965 it was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark. – Trinity site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_site
Germany seems to be color enhanced again and the Munich airport has different imagery.
3) Pisac, Peru
7) Canakkale, Turkey
8) Lagos, Nigeria
9) Trinity Site, New Mexico
10) Varna, Bulgaria
Ufa, Chelyabinsk in Russia are now in Hi-Res
Taiwan:Taichung area has updated to 2007, which THSR started to operate. New with Hua-dong Zonggu or wide of China.
Austria: A square in Styria, northwest of Graz, dated 2003-03-26; Upper Austria, the city of Linz! Imagery from 2006-10-10; Lower Austria, Drasenhofen from 2003-08-12.
Israel has got some new imagery, now covering most of the country in 2m resolution.
I found some parts of Poland also updated.
130 countries and yet still no improvement for Ireland, I am so dissappointed that Ireland, Wales and Scotland still has such little coverage. I would have thought first world, english speaking european countries with high internet usage would have a lot of google earth users, yet the coverage is amongst the worst in europe.
The most important slice of Phuket Island, Thailand, that had been missing for ages.
A bit more of Zulia State in Venezuela was updated… now the International Airport “La Chinita” is seen with a better resolution.
About time there as another update!
No updates for Melbourne, Australia this time round but there is now new aerial photography for Bendigo as well as a massive update over South Gippsland and Tralalgon / You Yang Coal Power Plant with loads of new high-res instead of the low-res NASA imagery. There is also a new strip stretching from the north of Melbourne to east of Echuca.
The super high-res imagery (not the aussie day stuff but the other which is slightly less of the aussie day stuff) of Sydney is still not back either.
One new long strip east of Phnom Penh Cambodia stretching into Vietnam
East of area 51 (main gate)
the area around Kao-hsiung, Taiwan are also updated
Just north of Kharg and Kharkoo island in Iran
Thousand Islands, Laos (very south)
Strip west of Luang Phrabang, Laos
Plenty more coverage for Laos – sorry Joe, but Laos more beautiful than Ireland 🙂
Western part of Kraków, Poland, is available in hi-res at last. Not much more from Poland, Slovakia nor Czech Republic though 🙁 Slovenian Alps with Triglav are nice too but I’m not sure if they came with this update.
i found a DOWNGRADE!
Basel is a city in Switzerland just at the boundary with Germany and France, maybe this is the reason of many image data unclean overlays. Sometimes at updates the road data is of about 40 meters. Since this last update the road data is sync, but i discovered that the image data has fallen back almost 4 years. There is a small high rise that was sequentially to be view in construction stage (2002) and finished (2004). Now the image has fallen back to at least 2001, before the construction. Check with Google Maps the ‘old’ image data.
Find the location through here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basler_Messeturm
> 130 countries and yet still no improvement for Ireland, I am so dissappointed that Ireland, Wales and Scotland still has such little coverage.
Ditto the rest of the northern Europe except for Denmark. Even parts of Siberia have better coverage. Northern location can’t be the reason since the largest swaths of high resolution imagery are located in Lapland.
What to Google have against scotland, when you look at the uk all of england has great images but from the border to the north of scotland only a some cities have good images.
I know i’m biased but scotland has some amazing historical sites and views we just can’t see.
Pretty much evereywhere exept sweden then. As usual.
No ireland & no scotland?? .. maybe its only countries who make the semi’s of the rugby world cup!! NZ got heaps of update!! .. check out the beautiful Marlborough sounds. Go the All Blacks!!
Google Earth Hacks has at least one Ireland overlay for better resolution at
http://www.gearthhacks.com/dlfile19191/Ireland-overlay.htm
I’m just checking it out, so there are very likely to be more things like this available.
Some parts of Thailand has been updated (Krabi, Sukhothai,…)
Northern Pennsylvania is STILL completely devoid of high res, including Scranton-Wilkes Barre, a huge metro area! Pretty ridiculous!
Does anyone know what was added in the US? They mention new US imagery, but it wasn’t in any of the clues and no one seems to have found any yet.
Hate to sound ungrateful but the updated satellite imagery for central Singapore is far worse now. Looks like the picture was taken during the strong haze last year. It’s quite obvious given that the surrounding pics are hazeless. Nevertheless, great job Google Earth!
Coongie Lakes National Park – Ramsar Convention Wetlands in the far Outback of South Australia –
27deg 11min S 140deg 09min E.
An amazing fresh-water wetland (fed by the Cooper Creek) surrounded by sandy desert.
Sorry to be ungrateful, but Vienna, Austria still has images from 2003 (a shopping center opened in 2004 is not even a construction site at those images), and clouds are covering huge parts of the city. New updates of Austria hasn’t ben much better, Linz is very low res, the area north of Graz too, and it is vry cloudy, and major cities like Graz (300,000 people) and Innsbruck (150,000 people) still completely low res…
Some parts of Belarus now updated – Nyasvizh, Novgorodok…
Keep ’em coming Google! Bit disappointed per lack of coverage in the British Isles bar England, and Sweden.
Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire (West Africa) is now in high resolution. This this the official capital of the country and also hosts the world’s tallest basilica.
Italy has better resolution, some parts of Tuscany (Toscana). Go Google Earth!
New content for Johannesburg, South Africa. To my New Zealand friend, a few posts up: Watch out for those green and gold South African “Bokke”
Hi-res around Victoriaville, QUébec, Canada
Hungary:
– east perimeter of Budapest updated with 2007 imagery
– Hortobágy and the Puszta
– new strip from south of Szolnok to east of Szeged
– area to the east of Baja
– area between Kaposvár and Pécs
Area 51 is updated, a few weeks ago the “oasis” north of the airstrip had running water going into the lake, now it doesnt
Not much for new terrain imagery in the United States. Areas in North Texas and Oklahoma are several years out of date. This is an especially glaring problem in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and downtown Oklahoma City.
Still no update for Auckland in New Zealand!!!
current photos are from 2003-2004 GRRR
HA even tho we (the all blacks) lost the world cup, we still number 1!!!!!!!!!! yay yay yay
Parts of West Virginia have been updated.
Desperate! Trying to download the newest version 4.2 already since it appeared. The site does not react. How the hell do I get this version?
(Graphics card updated as suggested by Google)
Major problem: how to contact Google?
I think they also updated potions of Illinois. There are several small towns near Chicago (Earlville and Paw Paw are two examples) that I know were extremely low-res over the summer, but now the towns are high-res. The surrounding farmland is still low-res, though.
Whetstone AZ just got updated. We are 10 miles north of Sierra Vista AZ in the SE part of the state. The photos look like they were taken in Dec. 06.
It seems, that South Ukraine got a couple of updates, though I cannot specify nothing specific. Shame though, that the center of Odessa is yet in bad resolution.
Now I can see my Home, my school etc. Part of Western Ghat close to Munnar a Hill station in Kerala, India is in high resolution now.
Great news that maps are being updated for Istria (Croatia) also. Now it is worth using it to precisely point wanted objects. Excellent.
I’m in Vancouver. Not sure if the resolution of the images is better, but the configuration of the planes at YVR (the airport) is different so I’m sure that the images are different than they used to be.
Keep thinking I should have the date in big letters on my roof and change it everyday so I can tell what the day the image is when its updated…
I am interested in Belize. I see some pictures are five years old. Alot has happen in this growing little country since then. It would be nice if these pictures could be updated. Thanks
Does not santa live in Lapland? Can I please see it?
I also see update on the southern part of Ilo-ilo, panay Is., Philippines. I hope someday they will update more on Mindanao, esp. the allah Valley area.
The imagary of the city of Izhevsk, Udmurtia, Russian Federation for the area aroung Kirov Street and Pushinskij street is new and very clear.
Also updated imagery for Ulan Ude, port of entry for INF treaty during 1980’s.
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Good to know they have updated it, they seem to put new images up about every two years or so, can’t wait for the day they are “live” images, but that might be many years away!