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The amazing things about Google Earth


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View Details on July 22 Total Solar Eclipse in Google Earth

HeyWhatsThat is a site which has many tools for viewing things from your position on the Earth including things like nearby mountain peaks, or night sky objects, or even solar eclipses. On July 22nd, a total eclipse of the sun will occur in the asia pacific region. The path of totality crosses some highly populated areas in China – like Shanghai. The author of HeyWhatsThat, Michael Kosowsky, wrote to let me know of several tools he has which can help people visualize the event. But, the one that’s most cool is the simulation of the event you can watch in the Google Earth plugin. Check out the time animation simulation of the solar eclipse here . Here’s a screenshot:

Solar Eclipse Simulation in Google Earth

HeyWhatsThat has also provided a map to view the path of the solar eclipse which will show you whether you can see the eclipse. A way to see the sky view of the event (from your location) with Google Maps using the Cosmic Visibility site. And, you can use his planisphere mode to see the eclipse which uses the Sky mode of Google Earth.
You can also use this excellent eclipse calculator site by Xavier Jubier to view more details on the solar eclipse in Google Earth . In addition to showing the July 22nd path of totality and partial eclipse, you can move your view to any location and, after a brief pause, get a placemark which will show you how long the eclipse will be available for that location (and other details). Xavier also has a version for Google Maps.

NASA Doing Robotic Recon with Google Earth

NASA K10 RobotNASA is conducting research from their Ames Research Center in California with a robot called “K10″, located in northern Arizona, to simulate tele-operations for exploring the moon. They are using Google Earth extensively for both planning, visualization, and operations. In other words, Google Earth is a visualization tool for telepresence. NASA uses a black and white higher res image of their target area overlayed in GE (maybe the black and white makes it look more like the moon?). They look at the imagery to determine reconnaissance objectives and plan routes. They have developed a planning tool that works interactively with Google Earth (using network links and overlays) to develop and assign tasks for the robot and put placemarks and routes on the map. Then the task plans are sent to the robot. The robot sends back photos to NASA which are also placed in placemarks in Google Earth, and a track of the robots path is also updated continously. You can read more details and see more screenshots at the Robotic Recon web site. I’d like to get my hands on a sample KML file to see what it looks like. There is a large team of engineers involved in the Robotic Recon project, including folks from different NASA centers and several universities. And, the Robotic Recon blog shows lots of screenshots of Google Earth in use.

NASA Robotic Recon with Google Earth

By the way, this story is particularly interesting to me because more than 15 years ago I developed similar tele-presence simulation software at NASA Johnson Space Center to visualize remote-operations over the Internet using a Silicon Graphics workstations. I developed the 3D software for the visualization parts, and the Internet client/server communications. In 1992, while at International Space University in Japan, I used a workstation to control a robot arm NASA had back in Houston over an Internet connection using a crude frame-grab camera (single-frame webcam) to verify position. This is so déjà vu! Part of the reason I was instantly attracted to Google Earth when it first came out, was its similarity to the software I had written. Full circle.

Tour de France 2009 in Google Earth

Tour de FranceOnce again, Thomas Vergouwen is the first to send GEB the complete tracks for the 2009 Tour de France for viewing in Google Earth. The organizers did not release the full details on the routes of the stages until recently, so it took longer then usual for maps to be created. The race begins this Saturday – July 4th. Thomas describes the situation and provides lots of details on each stage of the race at his web site, and he provides both Google Maps and the Google Earth file on the routes.
Viewing the Tour de France routes in Google Earth is one of my favorite examples of the power of Google Earth. With GE’s 3D terrain, you can tilt your view and truly get a feeling of how challenging this race really is – even if you have never been to see it in person. Just load Thomas’ file for the 2009 Tour de France in GE . Then, make sure you tilt your view I’m hoping there will be some more real-time tracking this year that will let you watch the position of some of the racers in Google Earth as they go along.

Le Tour de France in Google Earth

Huge Waste of Energy Visible in Google Earth

Recently I happened upon a thread of posts at the Google Earth Community entitled “The largest waste of energy in history”. I was initially skeptical, and still am not convinced yet it is the largest, however this is indeed a serious issue. A by-product of getting oil out of the ground is often a huge amount of toxic natural gasses. These gasses can be harmful to the oil mining process, so the oil manufacturers burn the gasses to get rid of them in a process known as “gas flares“. These are usually giant chimneys with scorching flames shooting many meters into the sky and burning toxic gas residues into our atmosphere. It turns out that BILLIONs of cubic meters of natural gas have been burned continuously around the world for decades simply because the oil manufacturers find it easier to just get the oil to make their money. The real travesty is that while trying to get to the oil, the oil industry is burning away huge amounts of energy (and polluting the atmosphere on a gigantic scale), that could be used to help provide energy (instead of using up all the oil!).

Gas Flares in Google Earth

GEC member ‘spotter2’ began by posting some placemarks where you can see the flares burning in the satellite imagery in Google Earth in the Persian Gulf . But, he later started compiling examples for many countries around the globe. And, he and others have pointed out some other interesting facts.
It turns out the World Bank has an initiative called the “Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership
” to try to find a way to reduce this terrible waste of energy. They have even helped promote some data from NOAA which shows the locations of global gas flares based on night-time satellite imagery. Watch this video:

You can examine this data yourself inside Google Earth with this network link which lets you zoom in on the NOAA data. Once you locate a flare, you can turn off the link and check the underlying satellite imagery to see if you can find the flares yourself.
The best solution would be to put the natural gas to use as another energy source and properly process the energy without damaging our atmosphere (as much). There’s a company which was featured in Scientific American called Synfuels which is attempting this.
There is some data analysis from the DOE on how much energy is being wasted through gas flares. However, some GEC members have pointed out the data is based on oil industry data which is most likely using the lowest possible theoretical figures in their estimates. It would be interesting to see more scientific studies on what the environmental impact and natural gas energy waste has been through this process.

Links: North Korea, Network Links, National Geographic

  • North Korea – The news about another atomic test in North Korea has prompted some to use Google Earth to help analyze and provide maps on where the testing occurred. See an excellent summary of the recent test and Google Earth maps by Stefan Geens at OgleEarth. Another KML file for Google Earth made big news last week. This one posted by Curtis Melvin is called “North Korea Uncovered ” on the Google Earth Community and was featured in a Wall Street Journal article. The file has been downloaded over 45,000 times – and contains a vast amount of placemarks resulting from painstaking analysis of satellite imagery and other information to understand North Korea’s infrastructure. I recommend reading the WSJ article to understand the background on what has been accomplished.

  • Network Links Explained – Matt Fox at the Google Earth Library site has written this nice explanation of how Google Earth network links work. This serves as a nice compliment to the more basic overview of GE Network Links written in 2007 here on the GEB. For other basic information about Google Earth – read the “Basics” page here at GEB.

  • National Geographic – Last week I visited the headquarters of the National Geographic Society. National Geographic has long been one of my favorite publishers – and possibly one of the main reasons why I love geography and Google Earth so much. While there, I spoke to Ford Cochran who writes National Gegraphic’s “BlogWILD”. Ford wrote about one of the Google Earth files I thought he would be interested in seeing: the collection of placemarks which categorizes animals found in the National Geographic Megaflyover images found in Google Earth. Definitely worth checking out… a lot of people don’t realize you can see so many animals in the Google Earth aerial imagery.