Google Earth layers – NASA’s Earth Observation

NASA’s Earth Observation site dozens of layers of the global scientific data is formatted for viewing with Google Earth.

These are grouped into the ocean, atmosphere, energy, land, and the Life category. The layers are too many to list, but they include:

Sea surface temperature
Chlorophyll concentrations (MODIS)
Snow cover and sea ice extent
Cloud water content (MODIS)
Total precipitation (TRMM)
Water vapor (MODIS)
The temperature of the land surface
radiation
Active Fires (MODIS)
Land cover classification (MODIS)
permafrost
Vegetation index [NDVI] (MODIS)
The population density

The layers are highlighted in red above were combined into a single network link, which you can download the screenshot below. This will give you a preview of some of the available data. Visit NASA’s Earth Observing site other overlays the data.

Download .KML file

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Beautiful Google Earth Layers: The Castles of Italy

Edujoser a website dedicated to European castles, and created a collection of labelsshowing the location of 100s of castles in Italy. By Edujoser, the collection includes all medieval military buildings (castles, towers, ruins …), built to the XVI century(included) or later with defensive functions (forts, castles …). New castles palacesbuilt on the site of the previous medieval castle, are also included. Collection does not include a castle, palace or castle, built after the XVII century (inclusive) without thedefensive functions that do not meet the above criteria. The palaces of the XIX century and the revival of neo-Gothic castles are not included.

More information can be found on the Google Earth BBS and website Edujoser

Download .KML file

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Beautiful Google Earth Layers 2: Satellites database

Database of about 12,000 man-made objects in Earth orbit. These objects are tracked U.S. Strategic Command and includes various collector, retired satellites and rockets left over from the launch.

The database is updated in real time every 30 seconds, and detailed information about each object, including the owner, date of start-up and visualization of orbits can be viewed in Google Earth by clicking on the object.

Download .kml file

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Beautiful Google Earth Layers 1

 

Download KML

 

marinetraffic.com track of the vessel, equipped with an automatic identification system (AIS) transponder, which is currently required for vessels of more than 299 gross tons. Data are presented for each ship includes:

Name of vessel and flag
ship Type
Speed ​​and course
photos of the ship
Link to more detailed information about the ship

The data is collected about 500 ground-based receiving stations around the world, so it does not include ships, which far out at sea or in remote areas. But it’s still an impressive amount of data.

Many other features can be found their website, including the version of Google Maps data, which shows a bit more information and a few features missing in Google Earth.

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Hotkeys in Google Earth

 

GoogleEarthHotkeys.jpgDavid Tryse has written a variety of useful tools for Google Earth in the past few years. His latest is quite simple, but very useful — Google Earth Hotkeys.

It does exactly what the name describes; you can set various hotkeys to show/hide any of the built-in players, as well as any customer layers that you have inside of your “Places” folder.

From his site:

You can configure F1 – F12 (and shift F1 – F12) to show or hide any list of layers you want. Layer names are case sensitive, and to hide a layer start the layer name with a minus sign. To change several layers at once separate the layer names with a pipe character (|). It actually works for My Places custom layers as well as built-in content under Layers.

By default F6/shift-F6 shows/hides Borders and Labels and 3D Buildings, F7 hides all layers and F8 shows nearly all layers. F12 opens the window to edit the hotkeys.

The one downside, of course, is that it’s Windows only. However, if you find yourself often toggling various layers on and off as you work in Google Earth this could be a very useful time-saver.

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