Yesterday we created a KML file that allows you to preview the latest sentinel imagery using a KML file of all the sentinel tiles. We noticed that some tiles do not have any images available, so we thought it would be interesting to do a map of Sentinel coverage. There are 56,686 tiles, so it took a little while to check all of them to see whether they have imagery and what the date of the latest image is. It turned out that only about half the tiles (27,256) actually have imagery.
We have colour-coded the tiles based on the age (in weeks) of the most recent imagery. As you can see, there is a distinct stripy pattern and the shape of the sun-synchronous orbit is clearly visible. Also of note is that imagery off the coasts and of Antarctica is not as recent as that over the continents.
To see it in Google Earth, download this KML file
. Click on any tile to see the date of the latest image available (as of August 15th, 2016).
While creating the above KML we identified a few bugs in yesterday’s KML file, most notably that tiles starting with ‘0’ were incorrectly reporting no imagery. We have fixed the bug, so if you plan to use it then please re-download it from yesterday’s post.
About Timothy Whitehead
Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
Hi, would be possible to have such KML updated? Thanks mate!
regarding this KML file, updating quite makes sense. I guess we can take full advantage of AWS and python scrappy library to search the whole database then acquire the coordinates and time stam, based on which to write a new KML file. but I think it might be quite slow because traversing the database…
I mention some thoughts to update a new KML file like you did in the post, so what is your methodology? Can you post something about implementation? Thanks a lot, Tim.
yet another interesting question…How about sentinel-1 SAR. I know ESA release some KML like this one here: https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions/sentinel-1/observation-scenario/acquisition-segments/archive.
How can I write my own KML since S-1 isn’t in AWS’s storage.