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Space Shuttle Endeavour atop a 747

September 24, 2012

Late last week, the Space Shuttle Endeavour flew atop a 747 into White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The shuttle continued its journey to Edwards Air Force Base in California. In October, The Space Shuttle Endeavour will be moved via road to a special display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
During the flight, DigitalGlobe captured an amazing image of the shuttle, which can be seen here:

shuttle-endeavor.jpg

You’ll notice that the color is a bit off in the image. The reason for that, as explained by DigitalGlobe:

In this image, the color offset of the aircraft occurs when a fast moving object is imaged by the satellite as the panchromatic image is collecting just slightly before the color image of the same location. When the image is merged together to make a color high resolution image, there is a slight offset on fast moving objects.

If you want to check it out for yourself, you can view it in Google Earth with this image overlay KML file that I created.

Filed Under: Flying, Science, Sightseeing Tagged With: digitalglobe

Google Earth A to Z: DigitalGlobe

June 26, 2012

You hear people refer to the “Google satellites” from time to time when discussing Google Earth and Google Maps. In truth, Google doesn’t have any satellites up in space to capture imagery. While they capture imagery via planes and cars (and even boats, trains and snowmobiles, the satellite imagery is purchased by Google from large providers such as DigitalGlobe and GeoEye.

digitalglobe.jpg

These satellites operate just a few hundred kilometers above the Earth. This means they only see a small part of the Earth with their camera as they orbit over. They typically go around the Earth every 90 minutes, but only cover about 1% of the Earth on each pass – but, most of the area covered in a pass is water. Not only that, but imagery for Google Earth is only going to be good if the sun is at a high angle when the satellite goes over (fewer shadows), when there are no clouds, and as little haze/pollution as possible. Believe it or not, the times when these factors all come together are pretty rare.
Once the imagery is taken, it takes time to process the data before it is available to customers. Google is one of these customers (a really big one). Google has to evaluate the new imagery against the current imagery to determine whether the new is better than the current. I assume they are trying to automate as much of this as possible. But, for important areas with large populations the process most likely involves people. This process takes time – especially when you think about the quantities of land mass of the Earth. Once an image is selected, it has to be processed into the format and coordinate system of Google Earth’s databases. Then it has to go through a quality control process and fed into a processing system before it gets distributed to the live Google Earth database servers. This is one reason why you usually do not find any imagery younger than about 3 months in Google Earth and why updates only happen about once every 30 days.
For more about how Google Earth imagery is captured and processed, you can read this excellent post that Frank wrote a few years ago.

Filed Under: Sightseeing Tagged With: digitalglobe

Satellite imagery and 3D model of the cruise ship Costa Concordia

January 19, 2012

By now you’ve likely heard all about the wreck of the Costa Concordia, the cruise liner crashed off the Tuscan coast last Friday, killing at least 11 passengers.
DigitalGlobe has since captured aerial imagery of the site of the wreck, which can be found in their gallery or viewed below.

digitalglobe-cc.jpg

I’ve added that image to Google Earth as an image overlay, which you can view by downloading this KML file.
Another great way to view the ship is thanks to Paul van Dinther from PlanetInAction.com. A few years ago we showed you the amazing collection of cruise ships that Paul created for CleanCruising.com.au. One of the ships that Paul created for that project happened to be the Costa Concordia.
costa.jpg

Since he had a 3D model of the ship and the skills to make some great tours, Paul put together this short video showing a bit about what happened.

Thanks to the generosity of the folks at CleanCruising.com.au, they’ve allowed Paul and PlanetInAction.com to release a full KMZ file of the stricken ship, which you can download in this KMZ file. Paul’s model is amazingly accurate, and he includes various notes in the file to show the path of the ship.
Great work, Paul!

Filed Under: 3D Models, Sailing, Tours, Video Tagged With: digitalglobe

Sweden is upset that they’re visible from space

September 26, 2011

A few weeks ago, we showed you how France had tried to hide the location of a nuclear plant, after that plant made news after a minor explosion. We showed you how it was hidden in Google Earth by their imagery provider, but was clearly visible by using historical imagery.
A similar situation has just come up in Sweden. Stefan at Ogle Earth has written a great summary of the story, but it goes something like this:
• Some of their “military secrets” are visible on Google Earth, but not on their local mapping sites (Hitta.se and Eniro.se).
• Google uses imagery from Lantmäteriet to cover parts of the country, and Lantmäteriet sensors some sensitive areas.
• There are two main underground control centers for Sweden’s air force; one is visible in Google Earth, the other isn’t.
• The one that is visible is because Google is using imagery from DigitalGlobe for that part of the country, and they’re not censoring it.
Stefan goes on to point out something even more interesting — historical imagery of the obscured area from a few years ago clearly reveals the facility, and the imagery was also from Lantmäteriet; they just weren’t obscuring it yet!
The bigger problem is the method of how the imagery is being obscured. In many cases, such as the Netherlands and the French nuclear plant we mentioned above, imagery is simply blurred to hide details of the buildings, like this (KML):

netherlands.jpg

In the case of Sweden, they modify the imagery to look like fields and forests. While this could potentially help hide their secrets more effectively, it also puts into question the accuracy of all of their imagery.
Stefan shows the example of the village of Hästveda, seen below before and after the photoshopping that removed it from their imagery.
sweden.jpg

As I asked last time, is it becoming futile to try to hide imagery like this? Or should they keep pressing on in order to try to prevent people from discovering the location of sensitive areas?

Filed Under: Sightseeing Tagged With: digitalglobe

Explosion at French nuclear site; use historical imagery to see it in Google Earth

September 12, 2011

There was an explosion at a French nuclear plant this morning that took the life of one worker and injured a few others. Fortunately, no leak has been reported and things seem to be under control.
I went to view the site in Google Earth (found via this KML file), but the view of the area is obscured in Google Earth.

marcoule-blurred.jpg

However, a quick click of the historical imagery button reveals the full plant in high resolution, dated back to 2002.
marcoule.jpg

The plant first went operational in 1956, and while things may have changed slightly in the last 9 years, the aerial imagery from 2002 seems to closely resemble the shots being shown on sites like Yahoo news.
So what’s the purpose of blurring the imagery if it’s that easy to obtain clear shots? Here are a few thoughts/ideas:
1 — Google itself doesn’t blur imagery; only their providers do. With that in mind, it seems unlikely that Google would ever go back and blur historical imagery if it was provided to them in an un-blurred state at some point. Another potential complication is that the most recent imagery was provided by GeoEye, while the older (clear) imagery was provided by DigitalGlobe.
2 — Perhaps some construction at the site has been under way and things are different now than they were in 2002, or perhaps they are simply blurring the plant going forward to hide any changes that take place in the future.
3 — The imagery in Bing Maps is only slightly blurred; it’s still easy to see where the various buildings are located, though Bing doesn’t provide a precise date on their imagery.
Any other thoughts? Is obscuring imagery becoming futile with so many imagery and mapping providers out there now?

Filed Under: Science, Sightseeing Tagged With: digitalglobe

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