We’ve received and verified a report of new imagery in a few places around the world. At this point, we don’t yet know the scope of the update.
The new imagery is not yet visible in Google Maps, so to help find areas that have been updated simply compare the imagery in Google Earth with the imagery from the same location in Google Maps. If they’re different, that means the imagery in Google Earth is new. If you find a new area, please leave a comment below and let us know.
UPDATED: Google has just posted their monthly quiz on the LatLong Blog. Check it out and see what areas you can discover.
New and updated imagery [UPDATED 21-OCT 07:23 ET]
- Algeria: Thanks ‘Jonas’
- Argentina: Goya and Reconquista – Thanks ‘McMaster_de’
- Bolivia: Southern part of the country – Thanks ‘Thilo’
- Brazil: Including Belo Hoizonte, Maraba and Rondonopolis – Thanks ‘Jonas’ and ‘McMaster_de’
- China: Northern part of the country – Thanks ‘Steven’
- Estonia: Thanks ‘Cristi’
- Iceland: Thanks ‘Thilo’
- India: Mumbai – Thanks ‘Munden’
- Indonesia: Surabaya – Thanks ‘okasbali’
- Kazakhstan
- Laos: Southern part of the country – Thanks ‘Donalbain’
- Latvia
- Libya
- Lithuania
- Mozambique: Most of the country – Thanks ‘Antonia’
- Niger
- Poland: Most of the country appears to be updated, aside from major cities
- Romania: Cluj and Brasov – Thanks ‘Cristian’ and ‘Twist3r’
- Russia: Various locations – Thanks ‘McMaster_de’
- Sri Lanka: Hambantota, Trincomalee and a few other areas – Thanks ‘McMaster_de’ and ‘Martin’
- Sudan
- United Kingdom: Blackburn, EastBourne, Southern Wilkshire, West Yorkshire – Thanks ‘Munden’, ‘Ozybolairy’ and ‘Damien’
- United States: Areas of Texas along the Coastline (Corpus Christi, south of Houston, among others) and parts of North Carolina
- Uruguay: Central part of the country – Thanks ‘JP’
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
entire poland with spot image….also estonia,lathvia and lithuania…..
New spot imagery in the whole country of Iceland, except for a few strips and also some in the northeastern part of China.
One of the answers from the latlong quiz is
Belo Horizonte, Brasil. The stadium seen in the picture is called ‘Mineirinho’.
India: Mumbai
UK: Liverpool, Manchester, Blackburn
Also, UK SE Coast: Eastbourne (Rookery Hill to Camber)
Spot imagery for Iceland, Libya, large area in northern Kazakhstan, northern Manchuria
UK: Yes to Blackburn, but Liverpool and Manchester were mistakes thanks to the timeslider. They weren’t updated
Spot imagery for southern Bolivia
Eastbourne, UK
GeoEye imagery in Surabaya, Indonesia
Cirebon is updated too.
Southern Laos (looks like spotimage).
Coastal areas south of Houston, Texas have been updated as well. I utilize Google Earth extensively to get to fishing / hunting spots with my GPS unit. Previously you could actualy see “ripples” in the water surface of the bays. The “ripples” were the chop across the bay. With this new update the quality has gone down considerably. It the same when I look at my home. Where I could previously clearly see the barn in my backyard, now all you see if a hazy white blob. To me, an update with poor quality images is not even an update. Huge step back in my opinion.
UK – East Sussex – the new 2009 imagery is disappointingly ‘bleached’, oddly coloured, and less clear in comparison with the 2004 imagery it replaces (see history), and it seems that this is a result of Google trying too hard to give ‘natural’ colourisation.
Beat to leave the images as photographed, when the look of the landscape changes so much through the year in any case.
Northern China has gotten new imagery.
Most of West Yorkshire has has updated Terrain imagery (Areas surrounding Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, & Wakefield)
The imagery introduced last month for Argentina has been recolorized: no more horrible blue tint!
Central Uruguay has gotten some two-month old GeoEye strips to complement previous half-year old GeoEye imagery.
Poland looks awesome lol
UK: Southern Wiltshire, including areas such as Salisbury and Stonehenge.
In Romania, there are at least two new towns with 21 September 09 imagery : Brașov and Cluj-Napoca.
It would be great to see imagery updated in South Africa!
There has been a massive update of the imagery of Mozambique, most of the country is now covered in “mid-resolution” (instead of low resolution before). The limits of the new update are visible (roughly corresponding to the borders of the country) as they are is a slightly different shade of green.
Argentina: Goya & Reconquista
Brazil: Rondonopolis, Barretos, Maraba, Imperatritz
Romania: Cluj and Brasov city with 2009 images.
Russia:
North of Chelyabinsk
Southwest of Omsk
Southwest of Novosibirsk
North of Orsk
Sri Lanka: Tricomalee and Southeastern Part
Sri Lanka (Hambantota and north of it). There may be more.
There’s also new med-res spot imagery for an area in Brazil containing the SE of the state of Pará, almost the whole Tocantins and the north of Mato Grosso. These images are identical to the ones added to Argentina last update.
Papua New Guinea: Port Moresby
Mumbai has a very odd color. Nice though.
http://mw1.google.com/mw-earth-vectordb/Imagery_Updates/October_2009_Imagery_Update.kmz
USA: Kent, Washington
USA: Licking County, Ohio
The med-res imagery for Poland is a little bit old because one of new highways is absent on photos while it was built last year.
argentina was recolored?
Okay so there was a Google Earth Imagery update on Oct 20th.
No significant coverage for Pakistan this time, except for some remote desert regions and the town of Panjgur etc.
Whats surprising is how recent the imagery is.
Panjgur imagery is from 9th August 2009…yes 2 0 0 9! And if you look at it in Google Maps, you can zoom in ALL the WAY to the END…i.e. to 100ft scale in Google Maps.
Here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=26.968372,64.101386&spn=0.001453,0.003852&z=19
Imagery for Burewala in Punjab is from 26th of September 2009…WHOA!!! Only if Burewala was Lahore or Karachi or Islamabad!
Other imagery generally tops out at 200 feet and zooming further says no more imagery at that zoom level! eg. Lahore
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Lahore,+Pakistan&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=42.174768,92.724609&ie=UTF8&split=0&hq=&hnear=Lahore,+Sheikhupura,+Pakistan&ll=31.500624,74.365774&spn=0.002781,0.007703&t=h&z=18
I’m guessing since these were desert type/rural regions and did not have that high a value, google just dumped the latest 2009 imagery there or maybe it was trial imagery? But what was the source of this I am wondering. It appears to be a satellite in a not so conventional orbit since the image strips are Horizontal and not vertical like all earlier updates so the orbit of the satellite is equatorial rather than polar.
Any explanations?
Cipularang toll road area in West Java, Indonesia have also been updated.
The latest satellite imagery for Sri Lanka has been received through the 10th Aug 2010 update basically covering the areas around Nuwara Eliya and Badulla.