Imagery | Mapsys.info

Google Earth: Imagery Update – April 25th

The Google Earth and Google Maps Imagery Team has just published it’s latest batch of satellite and aerial imagery and as always, there’s all kinds of fascinating sites and features to see.

This release will be our last for April and this month, in particular is always associated in the northern hemisphere with spring and new beginnings. We can trace the meaning of the word April to the latin word aperire, “to open,” and what better way to describe “open” than the start of another Major League Baseball season! Below you can see in high-resolution glory, the 2010 World Champion San Francisco Giants warming up at their Scottsdale, Arizona spring training park for opening day and defense of their title. In this image, they were hosting the Milwaukee Brewers. As the Giants’ home field is only an hour away from Google’s HQ in Mountain View, they are often the talk of choice in our offices!

Scottsdale Stadium, Scottsdale, Arizona

Below is another example of new beginnings. In this high-res aerial example, we can see Plymouth Rock (lower left), landing site of English Separatists and Anglicans looking for a new life, and the Mayflower 2 (upper right), a replica of their ship the Mayflower, both of which are located in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Plymouth Rock, Plymouth, Massachusetts

Finally, here’s an aerial image of the Sendai Airport in Sendai, Japan as they’re preparing to re-open. To see how the clean-up and rebuilding has progressed at the airport and adjoining neighborhoods, use Google Earth’s Historical Imagery slider to see earlier post-quake imagery of the area. It’s impressive to see.

Sendai Airport, Sendai, Japan

Do you have a place you love that you’d want to receive notification from us when the Earth and Maps Imagery team updates your beloved site? We’ve got just the tool: the Follow Your World application!

As always, these are but a few examples of the types of features that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring!

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Phoenix, Tuscon, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Wichita, Austin, Cape Cod
Japan: Sendai

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Antarctica, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chad, China, Croatia, Egypt, England, France, Georgia, Germany, Haiti, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uruguay, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia

These updates are now available in both Google Maps and Google Earth. To get a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

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Google earth: Imagery Update (and Kansas Basketball)

We’re in the middle of college basketball Madness here in the U.S. and the best is yet to come. Tomorrow night, the Kansas Jayhawks will play the Richmond Spiders in a Sweet Sixteen match-up at the Alamodome in Texas. I’ll proudly admit that I’m a Kansas fan and hoping to see my home team make it to the Finals. But I’m not the only college hoops fan at Google. In fact, our Geo team put together a special page that shows an up-to-date schedule with schools and stadiums.

In our latest imagery push, we (coincidentally) added new imagery of Lawrence, Kansas and a new 3D model of the Allen Fieldhouse, possibly the best basketball venue on Earth. As a longtime Lawrence resident and KU alumnus, I still remember my first games in the “Phog” when I was in junior high school, watching from the upper bleachers. The Fieldhouse has aged well with the new Booth Family Hall of Athletics and the parking additions.

When I’m feeling like I need even more of a dose of home, it’s also great to be able to check out some of my favorite places back in Lawrence through Google Earth and Google Maps. With the new high-resolution aerial imagery, you can now see many changes including the updates to Memorial Stadium and the large practice fields.

Additional basketball-related updates include Gainesville (Florida), Tallahassee (Florida State), and Manhattan, the Little Apple (Kansas State [5]). We’ve also updated many other locations around the world that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery including major updates in Sydney, Tokyo, Stockholm and significant parts of Ireland.

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Boca Raton, FL; West Palm Beach, FL; Port St Lucie, FL; Crystal River, FL; Ocala, FL; Gainesville, FL; Tallahassee, FL; Valdosta, GA; Savannah, GA; Jackson County, GA; Bedford County, PA; Cumberland County, PA; Manhattan, KS; Topeka, KS; Lawrence, KS
Wales: Northern Half
Scotland: Hawick
Japan: Tokyo; Kawasaki; Yokosuka
Australia: Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Antarctica, United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Panama, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Madagascar, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Central Africa, Niger, Ivory Coast, Togo, Liberia, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Taiwan, North Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Croatia, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greenland

These updates are now available in both Google Maps and Google Earth. To get a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

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How Google Earth displays dates on their imagery

As you probably know, when you’re looking at an area on Google Earth, the date the imagery was captured appears in the lower-left corner, as shown here:

However, what does that date actually mean? As some of you have pointed out, the date doesn’t always correspond with the imagery (snow on the ground in July, etc).

For standard satellite images, it’s simply the date the imagery was taken, which makes sense. Easy enough. The discrepancies arise when Google loads imagery for a large area from a commercial aerial provider. In those cases, they’re given a range of dates for the imagery. The date you see on the screen is the “oldest known date” for that imagery, while the tic mark in the Historical Imagery sliders is the “newest known date”. In many cases, those date ranges can be up to a few months apart.

To confuse it further, some providers don’t even have exact dates for a batch of imagery; they might simply say “April-June, 2010″. In those cases, Google considers that to be “April 1 – June 30, 2010″, and then displays the date as explained in the previous paragraph.

While the system obviously isn’t perfect, it’s certainly improving. Google Earth didn’t start showing the date in the corner until version 5 came out (so you had less of an idea of when the imagery was captured), and the Historical Imagery tool was certainly a great addition to Google Earth.

As the pace and quantity of imagery updates continue to increase, I expect we’ll see some refinements to this system over the coming years to help it become even more accurate and useful.

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You Can find out where the Street View cars are currently on the road

Google has just released a major update to their Street View site with a handful of great new features. Notice that this isn’t new imagery, but it’s still quite cool for a few reasons.

Along with greater detail about the various Street View vehicles and your privacy, they’ve added an oft-requested feature: where the cards are currently driving. People often ask when imagery for their city will be updated, and now we get a nice glimpse at the answer.

Beyond that, you can learn the details of how the imagery from cars gets converted to Street View or check out their gallery of locations, which includes some amazing views.

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New Google Earth imagery of post-earthquake Japan

GeoEye is moving very fast after the major earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan yesterday, already pushing out some fresh imagery from Tokyo, Kamaishi and Kushiro.

[UPDATE: Fukushima and Yokohama now available as well]