Tag: satellite imagery

Google Launches New ‘Cloud-Free’ Satellite Imagery For Maps, Earth

Google announced that it’s launching new satellite imagery for Google Maps and Google Earth, and says it’s “virtually cloud-free”. This, of course, means clearer and more accurate imagery.

Google Earth Engine tech lead Matt Hancher writes in a blog post, “Our satellite imagery is usually created like a quilt: we stitch together imagery of different parts of the world. Using a process similar to how we produced the global time-lapse imagery of the Earth, we took hundreds of terabytes of data from the USGS’s and NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite—sometimes dozens of photos of a single spot in the world—and analyzed the photos to compute a clear view of every place, even in tropical regions that are always at least partly cloudy.”

“The result is a single, beautiful 800,000 megapixel image of the world, which can be viewed in Earth and Maps when you’re zoomed out to a global view,” adds Hancher. “This global image is so big, if you wanted to print it at a standard resolution of 300 dots per inch you’d need a piece of paper the size of a city block! This image is then blended into our highest resolution imagery, giving a beautiful cloud-free global view and detailed images in the same seamless map.”

Here are a couple of the before and after comparisons Google shares:

These are Central Papua, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, respectively.

The new imagery can be seen by turning on satellite view on Google Maps or zooming out while in Google Earth.

Google gets into more technical details in a post on its Lat Long blog.

June 26, 2013
Bing Maps Massive Update Confirms That Dubai’s Still Building Crazy Islands

If you’re living in the Northern Hemisphere, you have likely noticed that summer is in full effect. ‘Tis the season for ice cream trucks, watermelons, Slip ‘n Slides, roller coasters, baseball, sweat-stenched outdoor music festivals, and, of course, trips to the beach. Speaking of beaches, Bing Maps announced today that its ready to hit the shores of the world to show off its hot new body of maps.

And what an expansive collection of updated map imagery it is, tipping the scales of total map data to 165 terabytes. Bing points out in the accompanying blog post, that today’s release of new Satellite imagery and Global Ortho photography is larger than all of the past updates combined. This update was so massive, in fact, that Bing Maps has put together a couple of slide shows depicting both types of updates, which you can find at the Bing Maps World Tour App. Once you’re at the app, look at the left-hand column and click on the “Select Releases” tab. From there, you can choose either the “Aerial – Satellite Jun.2012” update or the “Aerial – GlobalOrtho Jun.2012” update.

Bing provided a map depicting all of the locations included in today’s Satellite image release, which you can as the highlighted sections below.

Likewise, you can see the areas included with the release of Global Ortho imagery.

I recommend clicking the pause button at each stop of the slide show tours because you’ll likely want to zoom in and check out the obscene level of detail in the images (also, if you’re going to click the pause button, you’ll also want to uncheck the “Show Current Release Coverage” and/or “Show Total Coverage” box because otherwise you’re going to still see the colored overlay of the region that identifies the updated regions).

Here’s a couple of examples that are included in today’s release. The first is of a place that never ceases to build completely wacky buildings and islands (yes, islands), Dubai. Gaze upon this island that Dubai appears to have constructed that resembles the trilobite fossil-like island you see anytime some publication wants to show you what a picture of Dubai looks like.

Another stop on the slide show of new releases that caught my eye is the Space Park Promenade in Bremen, Germany.

Here’s one more stop in Germany that takes you to the spectacularly baroque castle of Schloss Moritzburg. Good luck storming this castle.

I’m just going to leave you with that one because that castle is too much fun to look at.

June 25, 2012
Google Earth Engine Puts Tons of New Satellite Data Online

Today Google launched something called Google Earth Engine at the International Climate Change Conference in Cancun. Google describes it as a new technology platform that puts an "unprecedented amount of satellite imagery" and data online for the first time.

"It enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth’s environment," says Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager of Google Earth Engine. "The platform will enable scientists to use our extensive computing infrastructure—the Google “cloud”—to analyze this imagery. Last year, we demonstrated an early prototype. Since then, we have developed the platform, and are excited now to offer scientists around the world access to Earth Engine to implement their applications."

"Why is this important? The images of our planet from space contain a wealth of information, ready to be extracted and applied to many societal challenges," adds Moore. "Scientific analysis can transform these images from a mere set of pixels into useful information—such as the locations and extent of global forests, detecting how our forests are changing over time, directing resources for disaster response or water resource mapping."

Google says using Google Earth Engine, scientists will be able to build applications that mine the extensive amount of data it provides, with archives of over 25 years from most of the developing world, reduced analysis time, tools that pre-process images to remove clouds and haze, and collaboration and standardization using a common platform for global data analysis.

The company also announced that it is donating 10 million CPU-hours a year over the next two years on the Google Earth Engine platform to "strengthen the capacity of developing world nations to track the state of their forests."

On a semi-related note, Google announced the ability to measure in 3D to the Advanced Measurement Tool Suite in Google Earth Pro 6, after customers ranked Area Measurement as one of the most valuable Google Earth Pro tools.

December 2, 2010
GeoEye Gets $3.8 Billion For Satellite Imagery Initiatives

GeoEye, the satellite provider, whose GeoEye-1 provides Google with what the company calls the world’s most advanced commercial satellite imagery, was just awarded a new $3.8 billion contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) for increased commercial satellite-imaging capacity.

GeoEye highlights the following items that are included in the contract:

– $2.8 billion for commercial satellite imagery purchases over the next ten years as follows:

– for an extension of the NGA’s current ability to purchase commercial imagery from the Company’s existing satellite constellation under a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for $150 million per year.

– An additional award to purchase commercial imagery, when GeoEye-2 becomes operational in 2013, for approximately $184 million per year for seven years.

– $337 million cost share for the development and launch of GeoEye-2.

– $700 million for value-added products and services to include the design and procurement of additional infrastructure to support government operations. This also includes the EyeQ Web Mapping Services to be delivered under the SLA.

"We are very gratified by this award," said Matt O’Connell, GeoEye’s President and CEO. "With this award, we’ll continue the accelerated development of our GeoEye-2 satellite so that it is operational in 2013. We will also upgrade our infrastructure and continue expanding our Web-delivery systems so that we can deliver the world’s best commercial imagery to the NGA and our other customers anywhere, anytime."

"We have been proud to serve the NGA for more than two decades, and we look forward to continuing this strong legacy of service as commercial imagery becomes fully integrated into the national imagery architecture," said Bill Schuster, GeoEye’s chief operating officer. "We’re particularly proud that the NGA has chosen us to support their important EnhancedView program and to help ensure that the nation has access to the best commercial imagery in the world."

We haven’t heard whether Google will pursue imagery from GeoEye 2, but it would not be surprising. They won’t be counting on flying camera drones or anything.

August 10, 2010