satellite imagery

Giant Iceberg Looming Over Greenland Village Is the Perfect Metaphor for 2018

If you needed a visual representation of our global environmental crisis in 2018, it doesn’t get much better (well, worse) than the gigantic iceberg looming over the village of Innaarsuit in Greenland, now seen from the vantage of space. Last week, news outlets began reporting that an alarmingly large iceberg had drifted close to Innaarsuit,…

Earther Maddie Stone Jul 18

Bill Gates Backs Plan to Surveil the Entire Planet From Space

EarthNow is a new company looking to provide satellite imagery and live video in virtually real-time. Its unsettling pitch describes a network of satellites that can see any corner of the globe and provide live video with a latency of about a second. And a look at the startup’s top investors gives a lot of…

Tech News Rhett Jones Apr 19

4,000 Google Earth Photos Were Edited and Assembled Into This Dizzying Race Across the Earth

You don’t always need a wealthy record label to create a memorable music video. As YouTube’s Adnaan demonstrates, all you need is access to the massive archive of satellite photos on Google Earth, and enough time to painstakingly assemble over 4,000 of them into a frantic race across the Earth. Set to the track Midnight…

Sploid Andrew Liszewski Jun 6

These Satellite Maps of Cities Are Made From Thousands of Lego Bricks

As children, the first cities we build are often rendered in Lego. Artist Ben Hecht uses the material in a slightly different way—to recreate cities as giant Lego brick paintings inspired by satellite imagery taken from above. Creating the series, named Urbicus, is quite an involved process. First, Hecht snaps an aerial photo with his…

Tech News Alissa Walker Dec 22

Earth View Has the Perfect Photo to Replace your Old Wallpaper

Google’s got your next digital wallpaper right here. Earth View is a collection of 1,500 of the most striking satellite view photographs that can be found in Google Earth. The best part is all the images are free to download and use on your own gadgets. There’s also an extension for Chrome that will give…

Tech News Leah Becerra Sep 7

First Full-Color HD Videos Of Earth Taken From Space Are Amazing

Satellite imagery has become a part of our daily digital lives; we use stills of our planet to navigate to the mall, for goodness sake. But when those images are moving, the result is so stunning that it’s almost magical. UrtheCast has released the first full-color HD video of Earth shot from the International Space…

Tech News Alissa Walker Jun 18

Planet Earth In Infrared, At 4k Resolution

Here’s something you don’t see every day: An ultra-HD time-lapse of Earth, as seen in infrared. James Tyrwhitt-Drake is perhaps best known for his stunning microscopy work (this matryoshka-like GIF of a scanning electron microscope zooming in on an amphipod, a diatom, and, finally, a microscopic bacterium is a favorite of mine), but the University…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jan 31

How to Use Satellite Imagery to Predict the Market

You can do some crazy shit with satellite imagery. What kinds of crazy shit? Well, for one, a startup’s spying on the shadows of half-built skyscrapers in China and then selling the data to investors who want to predict what the real estate market. That’s crazy! The startup is run by former Googler James Crawford,…

Tech News Adam Clark Estes Nov 20

A Rainbow River in Madagascar

When freshwater rivers drain into the sea, the waters mix to form a backish estuary. The slowing river also starts to drop its load as its energy drops, depositing gravel and sediment into bars. This particular estuary is Bombetoka Bay, where Betsiboka River flows into the Mozambique Channel. The Betsiboka River is cloudy with sediments,…

Tech News Mika McKinnon May 12

HD Video From Space Makes the World’s Tallest Building Look Like a Toy

Static, low-res satellite imagery is so passé. Watching HD video from space satellites is the future, especially when looking down on the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. We’ve seen how footage like this makes the world look like a video game, or a Micro Machines playset! It’s sped up of course, but the airplane…

Space & Spaceflight Michael Hession Apr 18

Before and After Photographs of the Washington Landslide

The U.S. Geological Survey has posted a pair of before-and-after Landsat photographs for the landslide in Oso, Washington. The landslide collapsed on March 22nd, burying the community of Oso and briefly blocking the river. https://gizmodo.com/hazard-risk-and-the-steelhead-landslide-in-washington-1551357211 Before: January 18, 2014 After: March 23, 2014 Head over to the USGS website for an interactive slider, where you…

Tech News Mika McKinnon Apr 1

Now You Can Help Search for the Missing Malaysian Airlines Flight

The Boeing 777 that seemed to disappear into thin air last weekend has still not been found after five days of search and rescue. Now a crowdsourcing company has started a campaign where anyone can pore over satellite images to find traces of Flight 370 or its 239 passengers. The Colorado-based company Digital Globe sells…

Tech News Alissa Walker Mar 12

How Swarms of Tiny Satellites Are Creating a Real-Time Google Earth

Google Earth is an amazing resource, but if there’s one criticism that can be leveled at it, it’s that it’s permanently out of date due to the lag between when the data is acquired and when it appears online. But right now, a pair of Californian startups are putting swarms of tiny satellites into space,…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Jan 9

The Entire East Coast Looks Like It’s Under a Massive White Blanket

Did you have a hard time getting to work today? Probably so, if you live anywhere from the Tennessee Valley all the way up to New England. Just look at this image from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center—everything is white. The winter storm shows no signs of stopping until the entire eastern seaboard is blanketed…

Tech News Leslie Horn Dec 10

Google Maps Reinterpreted as Intricate Persian Rugs are Beautifully Complex

Sometimes, Google Maps throws up some striking imagery—and now David Thomas Smith has seized on some of the more striking elements to create a series of artworks that combine satellite images with inspiration from traditional Persian rug-making. The results are stunning. Smith’s first solo show, called Anthropocene, shows off eight such works, each as complex…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Apr 3

Satellite Imagery Captures Earth as Painting

What you’re looking at is a satellite image of the Dasht-e Kavir. Its mix of sand and marsh puts any artist to shame. And this shot is just one of 60 equally remarkable photos from a roundup from Webdesigner Depot. The images are from the Landsat 7 satellite, which used a combination 8 spectral bands…

Tech News Mark Wilson Dec 23

Penguin Poo, Spotted by Satellite, Reveals Location of Secret Penguin Base

Even though non-military satellites don’t have powerful enough resolution to zoom in on a particular penguin—or any critter—certain clues can help locate them in the frozen antarctic. Yes, when mapping experts spotted up the unmistakable reddish-brown smears of penguin poop—penguano?—on the antarctic ice, the jig was up for a huge colony of emperor penguins that…

Tech News Wilson Rothman Jun 2

Lowrance iWAY 600c Navi With Satellite Imagery, 30GB Drive

This is not just any GPS navigation device; this Lowrance iWAY 600c can overlay satellite imagery on its maps, giving you a view similar to what you might see in Google Earth with the roads turned on. Its maps can be mixed into the usual 2D modes and even show up in an elevated 3D…

Gadgets Charlie White Nov 1

Giant Iceberg Looming Over Greenland Village Is the Perfect Metaphor for 2018

Bill Gates Backs Plan to Surveil the Entire Planet From Space

4,000 Google Earth Photos Were Edited and Assembled Into This Dizzying Race Across the Earth

These Satellite Maps of Cities Are Made From Thousands of Lego Bricks

Earth View Has the Perfect Photo to Replace your Old Wallpaper

First Full-Color HD Videos Of Earth Taken From Space Are Amazing

Planet Earth In Infrared, At 4k Resolution

How to Use Satellite Imagery to Predict the Market

A Rainbow River in Madagascar

HD Video From Space Makes the World’s Tallest Building Look Like a Toy

Before and After Photographs of the Washington Landslide

Now You Can Help Search for the Missing Malaysian Airlines Flight

How Swarms of Tiny Satellites Are Creating a Real-Time Google Earth

The Entire East Coast Looks Like It’s Under a Massive White Blanket

Google Maps Reinterpreted as Intricate Persian Rugs are Beautifully Complex

Satellite Imagery Captures Earth as Painting

Penguin Poo, Spotted by Satellite, Reveals Location of Secret Penguin Base

Lowrance iWAY 600c Navi With Satellite Imagery, 30GB Drive

Amazon Is Sticking With ‘Rings of Power’ to the End

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