Googling Earth

[Skitterpop]

Anyone know if the satellite photos are at the point in time you see them?


Curious?

Thanks......Mike

[fishaholic18]

Not that I know of, but would like to.

[Clogston29]

No they are not. They're basically a collection of aerial photographs taken from other sources. That's why you can see seams between the pictures in some locatation or changes in quality (NH has lower resolution than MA if I remember right). The Massachusetts photos are taken from the Mass GIS (Geographic Information System) for example. The photographs are taken at a scale and assigned coordinates within the global coordinate system for used with mapping software. Google Earth provides a very user friendly format for the information. I only know this because I uses the Mass GIS alot for work - a lot of usefull information on their if you take the time to look for it and can figure out how to use it.

[Skitterpop]

Good answer Clogston....Thank you!

I couldn`t Google Earth on my old computer but now I can. I was hoping it was like a live cam thing because that would be sweet. Checking for signs of changes from season to season, storm to storm.

Anyone know of something accessible by computer for the layman that is real time and no charge?

Am I hoping for too much? Probably....


Mike

[Little Round]

Some are from Satallite and some are from a plane. It depends on the city, or region you are looking at. THe quality will vary a lot too. If you look out in the midwest, the pics are poor for the most part. They cut and paste pics from all sources. But around here they are usually pretty good. San Diego, Ca. has some of the best quality pics that I have seen, I believe it as a sharp as image as a civlian can view with out being "Classified". Maybe 1m per pixal. The pics can be years old, to pretty recent. It all depends.

[King Neptune]

I know that the ones of the cape are from last winter... I can see my office building in mid-construction.

[Striperknight]

The ones for my area of NJ are 2001 vintage.

[Sluggoslinger]

I know that colorado is 2001 vintage from the trampoline I had on my porch that summer. I thought the cape was the same vintage since our deck didn't get rebuilt until 03 ish...

[jdubya]

For Massachusetts the orthophotography for the mainland is from April 2001 and for the islands it is April 2003. Orthophotography from April 2005 for the entire state is starting to become available also.