Google Earth Blog

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vanuatu

Street View comes to Tunisia and a Vanuatuan volcano

Google has recently added Street View for Tunisia and the island of Ambrym, Vanuatu.

Tunisia

Tunisia has some interesting architecture, including mosques, churches and even ancient Roman ruins.


Mosquée Malek Ibn Anas de Carthage. See it in Google Maps


Cathedral of St Vincent de Paul Évêque de Tunis.See it in Google Maps


The Amphitheatre of El Jem. See it in Google Maps

The blue outlines for Tunisia are not yet visible in Google Earth, but the Street View is accessible. Still, it is much easier to explore with Google Maps.

Volcano on Ambrym, Vanuatu

Ambrym is a volcanic island in the archipelago of Vanuatu that features one of the largest boiling lava lakes in the world. Google recently visited it with the Street View Trekker. Read more about it here.


One of the lava lakes. See it in Google Maps


Camped right next to an active volcano! See it in Google Maps

The blue outlines for Vanuatu are not yet visible in Google Earth, and it doesn’t appear to be possible to access the Vanuatu Street View via Google Earth at present. So use Google Maps instead.

Cyclone Pam and DigitalGlobe FirstLook coverage

This last weekend Tropical Cyclone Pam struck the Islands of Vanuatu in the South Pacific causing widespread devastation.

We were asked by a GEB reader whether the satellite imaging companies would be collecting and publishing satellite imagery of Vanuatu. DigitalGlobe has a subscription service called ‘First Look’ that provides access to timely satellite imagery for disaster zones. It is targeted at crisis response organizations. It does not provide the imagery directly to the public. DigitalGlobe does, however, have a publicly available map showing what imagery is made available via the First Look service and it appears that satellites World View 1 and World View 2 have captured a number of images over the last few days of the island of Efate where the capital of Vanuatu lies.

In addition, the New Zealand Herald has published sections of a few of the images showing comparisons of before and after imagery.

DigitalGlobe First Look coverage
DigitalGlobe’s First Look coverage map.

Also on DigitalGlobe’s map you can see the locations of other recent events that you may not have heard of, such as the eruption Costa Rica’s Turrialba Volcano, the eruption of Chile’s Villarica volcano or flooding in Lobito, Angola.

We hope that DigitalGlobe makes the imagery of these locations available to the public at some point in the future, or even better, that they get into Google Earth.