Uncategorized

Today’s imagery update: Antarctica gets its first close-ups

From a post over on Google Earth Community, today, news of an imagery update that mentioned Antarctica. Finally, the fifth continent gets the high resolution treatment. I had to go take a look.

Yum. Mount Erebus is now in high resolution (albeit without DEM data), as is Australia’s Davis Station and Casey Station, UK’s Rothera, Deception Island (!), China’s Great Wall Station, the South Orkney Islands, and plenty of unmarked high-resolution tiles as well. Christmas has certainly come early for polar scientists. Here’s a quick collection of this new imagery (view it as KML in Google Earth).

(On a side note: Now that there is much higher resolution over parts of Antarctica, a lot of the placemarks turn out to be not so accurate — I wonder if there might not be a mechanism for assimilating/correcting these?)

Here is the official list from Google Earth Community:

New high resolution imagery:

  • Canada: Whistler, BC; Waterloo & Toronto, Ontario; Nanaimo, BC; and

    Fort Saskatchewan, AB

  • England: Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country, and Avon
  • Germany: Cities/Regions of Greifswald, Trier, Köln, Stuttgart, Bonn,

    Oldenburg, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Hannover, and Ritterhude

  • Austria: Villach region
  • France: Cities of Caen, Dijon, Metz, St Etienne, Toulouse and Rouen
  • Spain: Catalonia and Valencia
  • Andorra
  • US: Imperial County (CA); Yellowstone National Park (WY); Galveston/Houston (TX); Peterborough (NH); Cheyenne (WY); Burke, Wake, and Cabarrus Counties (NC); Racine and Kenosha Counties (WI); Washington, DC; St Paul (MN); and the State of Alabama
  • Japan: City/Regions of Kochi, Asahikawa, Koriyama, Miyazaki, Nagano, Utsunomiya, Akita, and Toyama

Digital Globe:

  • Large Digital Globe (60cm) update includes areas in Sudan, expanded

    Africa, Australia, Mexico coverage and smaller areas of coverage in Asia, Polynesia, South America, Canada, Europe, Middle East plus some

    interesting islands in Antarctica and Greenland.

Updated Imagery:

  • Americas: Bogotá, Columbia; Mission Viejo (CA, US); Hillsborough County (FL, US)
  • EU: Dublin, Ireland
  • Middle East/Africa: Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya
  • Asia: Hong Kong and Manila, Philippines

Updated Terrain:

  • Western US 10m
  • Canary Islands 10m

Frank Taylor lists some more specific places. Note also that Germany’s imagery now looks more naturally colored.

(Thanks to Alok Patel, Maria and Jan Wesbuer for writing in.)