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Scary Satellite

Started by Ed, December 26, 2006, 08:42:38 PM

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Ed

Look at this - http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Holly+Ave,+Cheadle,+Stockport+SK8,+United+Kingdom&ie=UTF8&sll=51.949344,-3.966751&sspn=0.647522,1.716614&t=h&om=1&z=17&ll=53.389951,-2.211975&spn=0.004895,0.01693&iwloc=addr

...and see how close you can get :o  They have, or are going to, photograph the entire country to such a high quality you can almost identify the cars on the driveways.  Is that slightly scary, or what? :scratch:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Geoff_N

that's not a satellite image, but an aerial photo taken from an airplane. They can merge the digital images from the two sources as you see there on Google Maps and have been on Google Earth for a couple of years. The best publicly available satellite images are from polar orbital Landsat images, which give resolutions of around 20metre side pixels. Even these can pick out drives but not cars. Spy satellites can zoom into vehicle size, but not the car-registration reading images seen on films, although aerial photo recon can and have been able to do so for decades.

Even if and when satellite images are good enough to pick out  more detail, I don't it is necessarily scary, unless you have a stolen car on your drive!

Geoff

neilmarr

***Even if and when satellite images are good enough to pick out  more detail, I don't it is necessarily scary, unless you have a stolen car on your drive!***

C'mon, Geoff, I know you have more imagination than that. Bestest. Neil

Geoff_N

Quote from: neilmarr on December 28, 2006, 03:10:55 AM

C'mon, Geoff, I know you have more imagination than that. Bestest. Neil
I can hardly say No I haven't, can I?  Hah!

Maybe you are referring to my Hot Air thriller where balloonists flying over Bath spot naughty goings on in a suburban garden...

But what I was referring to is that digital images from the 900 miles-up polar orbits rarely get better than the 1 metre pixels used for long stay orbits for particular non-military mapping tasks  - or the very best 10 cm pixels for short stay orbits (usually less than 24 hours lifespan of the satellite and only used for specific wartime missions). But even the 1 metre pixels cover a very small area - say a small field or part of a suburb. So there's little chance of random viewing of Ed trimming his dodgy horticultural garden or of me superglueing local butcher shop doorlocks... :)

Geoff

Ed

 :scratch: Hmm.  I'm not sure you're right about that, Geoff.  On the page, they call it a satellite image and the area where I live hasn't been fully mapped yet, so all we have is a lower resolution image, which includes clouds.  So I can only assume it's taken from space, or from a fairly high altitude.

I'm aware of all the problems the atmosphere causes for photographic imaging, but with the outstanding progress being made in the field of digital photography and computer enhancing (and that's just in the commercially available stuff we know about), I think it's possible that satellite photographs could have reached this level of resolution.  Could well be wrong, but even if these are images from sweeps by a plane, it's one hell of a project, isn't it?  Just think how long it must have taken, how much data it must be, and how much it must have cost to do.  It's a collossal undertaking.

I suppose we should be thankful the pics are taken from directly overhead - it's ones from the side that would be the most potentially embarrassing :afro:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Geoff_N

Quote from: blunt on December 29, 2006, 06:29:45 PM

I suppose we should be thankful the pics are taken from directly overhead - it's ones from the side that would be the most potentially embarrassing :afro:

They are taken from the side too, both satellite and aerial from planes - they are known as obliques, but obviously are not so easily knitted together for the larger mosaics required for Google Earth. 

So, what are you hoping they haven't seen, Ed? In my case it's my awful attempts at home decorating... :bleh:

Geoff

Ed

I have a Velux roof window above and across from my en-suite toilet.  Kinda nice on a starlit night, if you're caught short in the wee small hours, but it's probably not so good a view from the opposite direction and plastered all over the internet :grin:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]