Google Earth Blog

The amazing things about Google Earth


Sailing

Tracking the Hurtigruten along the coast of Norway

In what’s becoming quite a popular event, the cruise liner Hurtigruten has been live broadcasting its position as it travels along the coast of Norway. The cruise line has been operating for well over 100 years, and this event has been apparently drawing large crowds at its stops, and is becoming quite the event in Norway.
The site itself is very well built. You can follow of a map of the journey, view various live cameras from the ship, and even view a live 3D model of the ship’s location: just click on the 3D tab in the lower right, then click the resulting image to see the ship in 3D.

hutigruten.jpg

As pointed out by Google Maps Mania, you can click the red icons on the map to view a replay of that section of the journey. The scenery in Norway is stunning, and this is a great way to view it all.
There are also other elements that can be added to the map, such as Flickr photos, archived video, and the location of other boats in the area. Some of the photographs in there are simply amazing, as shown here:
hurtigruten-flickr.jpg

To see it for yourself, simply head over to their site and you’ll be streaming the live feed almost immediately.
(via GMM and Ogle Earth)

Great collection of resources for the Fukushima power plant

We’ve shown you a wide variety of resources related to the disaster in Japan, including the recent feature from Hidenori Watanave and his great collection of photo overlays.
Today’s feature is focused squarely on the Fukushima power plant, and it’s a single network link from Valery Hronusov. However, the file is packed with information about the plant — photo overlays, 3D buildings, photos, videos and more. It’s essentially everything you’d want to know about the plant in one nice little package.

power-plant.jpg

To view it all yourself, check out the info on Valery’s site, or you can download the KMZ file directly here.

The Sargasso Sea Expedition

We recently showed you the Mission Blue expedition to Salaz y Gomez, and now Google is helping post data from another scientific expedition.
This time it’s the MBARI Sargasso Sea Expedition, which traveled from Bermuda to the Bahamas, to help better understand the unique ocean habitat in the area. The habitat in that area is named for the “Sargassum” algae that is found there, hence the name of the expedition. While there, the team “measured biodiversity and the impacts of climate change and carbon cycling to this ecosystem”.

sargasso.jpg

To follow the expedition, you can download the full log KML file, see their Earth Gallery, visit their Facebook Page, or read the MBARI Expedition Logbook on their website.
For more information about this voyage, check out the full entry on the Google Lat Long Blog.

Geospatial Revolution: Episode Three Released

Once again, right on time, Penn State Public Broadcasting has released Episode Three of their excellent “Geospatial Revolution” project.
If you’ve missed either of the first two episodes, I strongly suggest you go back and watch them. Episode One covered a wide overview of “how” and “why” questions regarding geospatial technologies, and Episode Two dug into more specific examples including the City of Portland and the well-known shipping company UPS.
Episode Three covers a variety of safety and war-related topics, such as:
• “Mapping the Road to Peace”
• “Waging Modern War”
• “Serving and Protecting”
• “Staying Safe”
You can watch each segment individually on their site, or watch the full 15 minute video below:


I hope you enjoy the video, and be watching for their fourth and final episode on May 3, 2011.

Follow the Mission Blue expedition to Salas y Gomez

While many of us would like to embark on a voyage across the ocean, we can’t all be Frank Taylor. Fortunately, Google Earth provides a great way to explore places virtually, such as with the latest installment in the “Mission Blue” series.
Last month, we showed you Mission Blue’s tracking of the gulf oil spill recovery effort. This month, they’re heading east from Easter Island to the tiny island of Salas y Gomez in an effort to do some research in the largely unexplored waters around the island.

salas.jpg

As with the gulf spill mission, they’re providing updates in a variety of ways. You can track it by finding the blue ship icon near Easter Island (be sure the “Places” layer is turned on), by downloading this KML file, or you can track them in the Google Earth Gallery using the Google Earth Plug-in.
Salas y Gomez was updated in the most recent imagery update, featuring imagery that is just a few weeks old. It’s a bit fuzzy, but it’s much better than what they used to have there. To check out the island for yourself, you can fly there using
this KML file.
For more, check out the full entry on the LatLong Blog or read stories from the crew on the Mission Blue News Watch blog.