google sightseeing

The tallest statues in the world

August 6, 2014

Ian Brown at Google Sightseeing recently posted a great blog entry that took a look at the ten tallest statues in the world. Most of the statues are of Buddha or Guanyin, many located in China.

While Ian shows great aerial and Street View imagery for each of them, most of them can be viewed in 3D. The quality of the 3D models varies wildly from statue to statue, but some look pretty nice as seen here:

It’s a fun subject to look at, and Ian makes it easy to find them yourself by providing this KML file so that you can quickly fly to each of them in Google Earth.

Be sure check out the full post to see more.

Great post, Ian!

Looking at nuclear disasters in Google Earth

July 22, 2014

Sylvan Lane at Mashable recently posted an in-depth look at nuclear disasters over the years, and he made solid use of Google Earth and Google Maps to explain each event. Along with discussions of Chernobyl and Fukushima, Sylvan also took a look at Three Mile Island and Kyshtym.

You can check out the full article for yourself over on Mashable.

To highlight other nuclear facilities around the world, the folks at Google Sightseeing have put together a few “nuclear power megaposts” over the years.

The first post covered nine reactors around the world, and the second post covered seven more. As they always do, they’ve posted KML files for all of the sites that they listed in the posts (part one – part two).

Exploring kudzu infestation in the US

June 20, 2014

Living in the southeast United States, I’m very familiar with the vine known as kudzu. Introduced to the US from Japan in 1876, kudzu is spreading at an amazing rate of 150,000 acres each year. Kyle Kusch at Google Sightseeing has taken advantage of Google Street View imagery to showcase some amazing examples of kudzu growth.

Thanks to Street View’s historical imagery feature, we can look back to 2007 and see the same building with virtually no growth on it.

Check out Kyle’s full post for many other amazing examples of kudzu growth. As always, Google Sightseeing provides a very helpful KMZ file so you can explore those locations for yourself.

You can also read the Wikipedia article about kudzu to learn more about it and how to combat its growth.

Exploring airship hangars in Google Earth

April 17, 2014

We’ve shared a lot of articles from Google Sightseeing over the years. They do a great job of choosing an interesting topic and then digging in deep. Their recent article from Ian Brown on the subject of Airship Hangars is no different.

Hundreds of hangars were building airships in the last century, though most of them are gone now. The earliest building, Hangar Y at Chalais Meudon outside Paris, is not only intact but is actually in 3D in Google Earth:

Here is Ian’s take on Hangar Y:

Hangar Y was built in 1879 on what was then a military base. It is 70m long, 24m wide and 20m high (230′ x 78′ x 65′), although additional structures have since been added on both sides. It was originally a pavilion at the Paris exhibition, but was moved to house the airship La France. It later served for several decades as a museum and was used by painter Marc Chagall when he was working on large ceiling panels for an opera house.

The article goes into great detail about many of the hangars around the world, and I encourage you to read the full entry. In addition, as they usually do, they’ve also release a KML file to help you follow along.

Great work, Ian!

Amphitheatres around the world

March 21, 2014

We enjoy the work of the folks over at Google Sightseeing, as they post some excellent stories. We’ve shown you things such as fake buildings, roller coasters, hockey and many other interesting posts from them over the years.

Their latest post from Kyle Kusch tracks down amphitheatres around the world using Google Earth satellite and Street View imagery.

They look at a wide variety of amphitheatres from across the globe, and I encourage you to check out their full post here. You can also grab this KML file to view them in Google Earth.

A fun side note from the article: The Hollywood Bowl, seen above, was one of their very first posts nearly nine years ago.