6 posts tagged “google earth”

This is a group of people who decided to form some sort of power circle in the middle of a street in the middle of Las Vegas, just as the satellite was going overhead.  There is no church or school nearby.  Okay, people, I need a story.  What were these people doing?  Make it up, so long as it's good.

This house in Austin, Texas, has "SOS" painted on the roof, as can be seen in satellite imagery from Google Earth.  As the house doesn't appear to be sinking into the ocean, I can't imagine what the emergency is.  Calling 9-1-1 would seem faster.

Anyone here live in Austin?

I finally got around to downloading the latest version of Google Earth today, and I was amazed to find that it now has an astronomy feature.  With the click of a button, you switch from viewing the surface of Earth from space to viewing space from a virtual point on Earth.  I'm sure this is old news to some of you, but I'm astounded at the detail in it!  I've never been one for practical astronomy - standing out in the cold with a telescope trying to make out fuzzy things in the sky - but I absolutely love the concepts in astronomy, and I'm a huge fan of images from space, particularly those brought to us by the Hubble Space Telescope.  Google Earth's sky mode overlays images of the sky, so that as you zoom in you get more and more detailed images, many of which were originally taken by the Hubble.

So, without further ado, here are some of the images I found just by messing around in Google Earth today in sky view mode.

Stars are born in nebula.  The gas of a dark nebula condenses over time, drawn in by gravity.  Eventually, a star forms.  Once the star has sufficient mass, fusion reactions begin at its core, and the energy emitted by the new star blows away the gas from the nebula.  Here, young stars at the center of what used to be a nebula are surrounded by the gases that served as their womb.

My god, it's looking at me!  A nebula is a gas cloud, usually with a star or cluster of stars at the center of it.  The light of the star illuminates the gas cloud, bringing out amazing colors and detailed structure.

Nebula are among the most beautiful objects we can see with telescopes, so I spent a lot of time looking them up.  The Cat's Eye Nebula is one of the most amazing objects in the universe, in my opinion, just for its sheer beauty.

One of the many globular clusters in our galaxy.  A globular cluster is nothing more than a group of stars held in close proximity by mutual gravitational attraction.  How many are there in cluster?  I don't know, this is an image of the core of the cluster, so not even all of the stars are shown.  Go ahead, count them.  How many have planets?  Another good question.  We need a bigger telescope.

I don't name 'em, folks.  This galaxy is being torn apart by the gravitational effects of a neighboring galaxy, with materials flying out of it and new stars being born in the center of it as an amazing rate, with the nebulae being compressed by the tidal effects.  It's also gorgeous.

Another gorgeous nebula.  Each one is different because of the composition of gases, the types of stars within them and around them, and what other forces may be acting on them.

That's all for now, just a sampling of what's out there.  Every time I look at astronomical pictures, my awe at the size and grandeur of the universe is renewed.

The Keyhole BBS has posted a file of censored locations on Google Earth.  These are locations that the GIS sources for Google Earth pixelated the images for security reasons.

This is dumb on a number of levels.  First of all, by censoring specific locations, the powers that be have succeeded in drawing attention to them.

Second, the pixelation is very slight.  Apparently, they didn't want to draw attention to them, so they made them just slightly less focused than the surrounding areas.  The result is that the pixelation doesn't really hide anything in most cases.

The Bear Mountain Bridge in Rockland, NY, is an example.  They pixelated the bridge.  Why?  This isn't a secret installation.  It's publicly visible to anyone who wants to go look at it.  You can't see the structure or anything sensitive from a straight-down satellite view, anyway.  What's the point?  The only thing they've done is managed to say, "Hey, Terrorists, check this bridge out.  Consider this for your next list of targets."

Third, much more detailed images are very easily obtainable from a number of sources on the Internet.

Chalk it up to paranoia, I supposed, but don't mess with my toy.

 

Check out The Degree Confluence Project.  I was telling Ladeewolf about this today and kind of got the details wrong, but the basic idea is correct.  A degree confluence is wherever latitude and longitude intersect with no spare minutes or seconds.  For instance, 37°00'00" North and 108°00'00" West is on the border between Colorado and New Mexico.  The pictures of what the world looks like at those exact coordinates is on the Confluence Project's website.

What I told Ladeewolf based on my cursory view of the website was that it was something a particular person was doing (it's not, anyone can submit pictures of their nearby confluences) and that it was nearly complete (only 30% of the world's eligible confluences have been submitted).  I say eligible confluences because they aren't counting ones near the poles that would be damned hard to get to or the ones in the ocean.

Still, it's a really cool idea, and I'll have fun following new confluences as they're added.  Incidentally, I discovered the Degree Confluence Project because they have mapped the confluences and put links to the pictures on Google Earth.

If you have a broadband connection and haven't checked out Google Earth, yet, do so!  I could literally spend hours playing with this program.  It is so cool!  It allows you to look at satellite photos of every place on Earth.

Here are a few of the things I've looked at on Google Earth:

 

Only part of the NAPI, or Navajo Agricultural Products Industry, which is a farm owned by the Navajo Nation that also happens to be the largest contiguous farm in the United States.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fajada Butte at Chaco Canyon National Historic Place, as seen from above.  It looks a lot different from the picture I took!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pueblo Bonito, the largest of the ruins sites at Chaco Canyon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My old alma mater.  I think it's awesome that if you zoom in on the football field you can actually make out the words "Missouri State" from space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Shiprock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can still see construction going on on the west side where the plane hit it on Sept. 11, 2001.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, that should give you a general idea of why it's so easy to spend literally hours playing with Google Earth.