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Satellites around the earth

February 1, 2011

A few years ago, Frank showed you a great visualization from AGI that shows the real-time positions for over 13,000 satellites around the Earth. That post, along with the page he built to show off the visualization using the Google Earth plug-in, have been some of our most popular pages ever, having been viewed nearly 200,000 times!

satellites.jpg

With that in mind, we thought we’d show you all of the great ways to view this data so that new users that may have missed it the first time around can see it as well. The Google Earth files below will automatically update every 30 seconds with the current positions of every satellite, so you can just sit back and watch.
There are three great ways to view these satellites:
1 – The official KML file
2 – Via the Google Earth Plug-in
3 – Watching the video below

As BoingBoing pointed out last year, these 13,000 satellites “represent an infinitesimal drop in the overall volume of their orbits”, but it’s still an amazing display. Thanks to AGI for providing such a great tool to view these satellites.

Filed Under: GE Plugin, Network Links, Science, Sky, Video

A ton more data from the Pakistan flooding

September 13, 2010

Last month, we told you about Google’s quest for more data to help with the massive flooding in Pakistan.
The “Unigeo initiative for Pakistan” has been developing a network link that has a ton of data related to the Pakistan flood.

pakistan.jpg

The latest version (4.1) includes a slight “pre-loaded” transparency on the layers in order to keep the underlying information visible as well as a more ergonomic search panel.
Currently, the included layers are:
• Pakistan affected districts – 2010 Aug 16
• Flooding General overview – 2010 Aug 11
• Floods in Charsadda district – 2010 Aug 02
• Situation in Kheshgi area – 2010 Aug 04
• Charsadda and Nowshera districts – 2010 July
• Situation in Hyderabad – 2010 Aug 29
• Red Cross + Red Crescent Society – 2010 Aug 29
You can get the full KML file here, or check out their site for more information.
Another great resource to check out would be local.com.pk, which has quite a bit of excellent information regarding flood relief. For example, their Hunza Landslide page is very well done, and was featured in a recent TEDxLahore talk, which you can view here.

Filed Under: Environment, Network Links, Sightseeing, Weather

Google Earth For Sailors and Travelers

August 12, 2010

tahina-logo.pngA big part of the experience of sailing around the world is meeting up with other sailors doing similar routes. In French Polynesia, we have had numerous opportunities to meet up with the crews of boats we have met along the way, and many new boats as well. As a big fan of Google Earth, I have been making sure to share tips on some of the ways I am making use of Google Earth as we sail. Many of these tips apply equally to many other forms of travel. One thing is apparent, few people realize some of the less-known, but best features of Google Earth for travel.
Here are some important tips on Google Earth’s lesser-known features that every sailor (and many other travelers) should know:
1) Google Earth can be used without an Internet connection – As we are traveling, I actually use Google Earth more without an Internet connection than with. Many people aren’t aware that Google caches the last 2 GBytes (if your cache is set to the maximum) of imagery/layers you last loaded. What I do is visit the places I’m about to travel to (in particular the anchorages) and make sure to load the imagery of those places most important to me. It’s important not to load too large an area or the cache will start forgetting the older stuff. Once we are on a passage (with no easy way to be on the Internet) we can still load Google Earth and view those last places loaded. I can view what the appraoch to an anchorage is like, and the places we plan to visit while reading other guide materials or charts we have. Read more about using Google Earth off the Internet.
2) The Ruler – I frequently make use of the Google Earth ruler to measure distances between places we are going, or the places we have already traveled. You can change the units (I frequently use the “nautical miles” units) to help convert to local measures. Also, you can trace out paths, not just single measurements (look for the tabs at the top of the window that pops up to find the “Paths” tab). This is very handy for measuring routes. As a sailor, I often use this feature to check distances on passages, determine the best places to anchor, estimate dinghy runs, and distances we’ll have to walk to grocery stores and customs offices.
3) GPS Tracks – if you have a GPS, you can take your saved GPS tracks and use many free programs to convert your track to GPX. Some GPS programs will even output your GPS tracks directly to Google Earth’s KML. But, Google Earth will read GPX files as well. Simply open your KML or GPX file of your track. The new Google Earth 5.2 presents you with a new option to save your file as a “track”. This lets you play back the track with some new features like the time slider. I also recommend a free online program called “GPSVisualizer” to generate highly customized GPS tracks for use with Google Earth.

ge-track.jpg

4) GPS in Real-time – Google Earth can connect directly to many GPSes. Look for the option under “Tools->GPS”. If you have a Garmin with a USB connection, it is very simple. You can also use the NMEA option to connect. Read more about that in the Google Earth user guide. Once you have your GPS connected, Google Earth can show your position in real-time. It makes Google Earth into something like a 3D “chart plotter”. Google Earth is not to be used for navigation purposes. The data is not intended for that, so it is not guaranteed to be accurate enough to sail by. However, using it as an additional reference has proven to be very effective. The satellite is often (but, not always) good enough to see underwater obstructions (such as coral heads, rocks, and even sunken ships). It has also been handy for seeing the best route through passes. In fact, I have often found GE imagery is more accurately placed than my electronic charts. You need to remember some of the imagery can be several years old though. The imagery is definitely not real-time (read about Google Earth imagery).
5) Many other uses – I also share our position reports, GPS tracks, and photography using Google Earth. You can share your photos for free with Google’s Panoramio – which lets you map the positions of each photo when you upload them (or you can do the geotagging with another program). The photos will later appear on Google Earth and Google Maps for everyone to see as icons when the Panoramio/Photos layer is turned on. I also take 360 Panoramas and upload them to 360cities.net, which are also viewable on Google Earth, or you can put them on your web site (see example). Most importantly, I often use Google Earth while on the Internet to do research on the places we are going to find information and pictures about popular places to visit. Turning on the Panoramio layer is a fast way to find popular places (more photos in the most interesting spots). I also showed a bunch of sailors how to use Google Earth to show the best place to watch the solar eclipse that occurred over the central Pacific waters on July 11th.
These are just a few of the many ways I use Google Earth while sailing/traveling. They are all free, and easily available to anyone. All you have to know is that they exist, and how to use them.

Filed Under: Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Navigation, Network Links, Sailing, Sightseeing

Tracking Hurricanes with Google Earth

July 1, 2010

With Hurricane Alex making landfall, the 2010 Hurricane season is underway. As we’ve shared in the past, Google Earth can be a great way to track these hurricanes as they develop.
The first place to start is the weather and storm tracking tools collection which Frank assembled a few years ago. It’s got a variety of layers that helps to view all of the current storms out there. You can read more about how he put this package together.

weather-bonk.jpg

Another good resource is hurricane-tracking.co.uk’s download page. Their files are quite useful, but they generate a new one for each storm. It’d be nice to see them wrap all of the files into a network link so that it’d update automatically, but it’s still a useful tool to have.
Last year Google created a special layer for “Hurricane Season 2009” in the main “Weather” layer folder. They haven’t created a 2010 version, but I hope they will because the 2009 version was quite useful. In the meantime, the “clouds” and “radar” information in there is still helpful, but doesn’t do a lot in terms of storm tracking.
ge-weather-layer.jpg

Do you know of other useful tools for tracking hurricanes/cyclones in Google Earth? Let us know in the comments section so others can use them as well.

Filed Under: Environment, Network Links, Weather

Track Hurricane Ida in Google Earth

November 9, 2009

Hurricane Ida is on a path for the central Gulf Coast, expected to make landfall tonight somewhere between New Orleans and Pensacola. While the storm is expected to weaken before it hits land, it will still arrive as a strong tropical storm and could cause quite a lot of damage.

Hurricane Ida in Google Earth

As you know, Google Earth has some excellent tools for tracking storms like this. You can overlay weather satellite photos, radar, storm tracks, real-time lightning strikes, pressure maps, wind maps, sea surface temperatures, and more. We’ve written about many of the tools available in the past. Here is a set of weather tools in a single network link that lets you get access to great weather data in one convenient package. Check out the many datasets starting with two different storm tracking tools. You can also read more details about the collection.
To help you understand what’s possible with these weather tools, here is a video demonstration that Frank created a few years ago:

There’s also an excellent new tool available for Google Earth which lets you follow the hurricane hunters as they fly into the storms and collect data. Check out the story about live hurricane hunter mission data.

Filed Under: Network Links, Science, Weather

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