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Google's New Satellite

MacFan782040

MacFan782040

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 1, 2003
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And the very first photo it took? A shot of my school, Kutztown University, a mid-sized state school in PA. :D


The 4,300-pound satellite collected the image at noon EDT on Oct. 7 while moving from the north pole to the south pole in a 423-mile-high orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, or 4.5 miles per second. The spacecraft can take photos at a resolution of up to 41 cm -- close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond, according to Mark Brender, GeoEye's vice president of communications and marketing.
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Full article: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/geoeye-1-super.html
 
Wow, that is one high-quality image for a satellite shot. Hopefully this leads to some greater quality Google Maps and Earth images.
 
iGary said:
That's excellent - hopefully they will start updating some areas that have really low-res coverage and updating areas with older images, too. I use Google Earth about 6 hours a day - glad to see this.
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What do you do that requires 6 hours on Google Earth? Or are you just bored, because I could only look at things from space for about an hour a day out of boredom.
 
iGary said:
That's excellent - hopefully they will start updating some areas that have really low-res coverage and updating areas with older images, too. I use Google Earth about 6 hours a day - glad to see this.
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Same here, they have finally gotten to updating a bunch of the images around where I live. For the longest time the image was about two years old and was in the winter, so everything seemed gray. I'm glad that they updated the image, but it is nowhere near the quality of the image of the one in the article.
 
iGary said:
That's excellent - hopefully they will start updating some areas that have really low-res coverage and updating areas with older images, too. I use Google Earth about 6 hours a day - glad to see this.
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Why do you use it 6 hours a day?
 
r.j.s said:
What do you do that requires 6 hours on Google Earth? Or are you just bored, because I could only look at things from space for about an hour a day out of boredom.
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deriko100 said:
Why do you use it 6 hours a day?
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We use it to make sure the facilities we list (mainly marinas and marine service facilities) are properly located on the government charts we reproduce in our publications.

I also use the EarthNC layover for to ensure our navigational directions are correct. It's a Google Earth overlay of nautical chart data.

I loves me some Google Earth. :)
 
iGary said:
We use it to make sure the facilities we list (mainly marinas and marine service facilities) are properly located on the government charts we reproduce in our publications.

I also use the EarthNC layover for to ensure our navigational directions are correct. It's a Google Earth overlay of nautical chart data.

I loves me some Google Earth. :)
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Ahhh, makes sense now.
 
Tilpots said:
The article didn't explain why it started at your U. Is it because it's smack dab in the middle of the poles?
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Nobody seemed to know either, until I found this Washington Post article today. Rumors were originally that a KU alumni was working for the Google project, but turns out it seems like it was a stroke of luck...

Why the choice?

"When we opened the camera door at noon on Oct. 7 and looked down on the Earth 423 miles below the school was underneath us," Mark E. Brender, GeoEye's vice president for communications and marketing told us by e-mail. "It is truly our first image."
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washbizblog/2008/10/geoeyes_eye_on_kutztown.html
 
MacFan782040 said:
Nobody seemed to know either, until I found this Washington Post article today. Rumors were originally that a KU alumni was working for the Google project, but turns out it seems like it was a stroke of luck...



http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washbizblog/2008/10/geoeyes_eye_on_kutztown.html
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First comment I saw on the WP article:

The next image was the coed dorm
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.

Pretty funny. Well, congrats to Kutztown! It's always nice to see your school in the spotlight for something positive.:)

Edit:

PS. Just saw your sig. I opened the Millennium at Blue Knob. I think that's pretty close, right? Beautiful country out there.
 
Tilpots said:
First comment I saw on the WP article:

.

Pretty funny. Well, congrats to Kutztown! It's always nice to see your school in the spotlight for something positive.:)

Edit:

PS. Just saw your sig. I opened the Millennium at Blue Knob. I think that's pretty close, right? Beautiful country out there.
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Blue Knob (if you're talking about the Ski Resort) is on the other side of the state, near Pittsburgh. The Poconos has resorts like Shawnee and Camelback. It's still nice up there, but the last 15 years have turned it into a traffic-congested, crime-filled area from all of the people visiting and moving in from NY and NJ. Kutztown is in a rural section between Allentown and Reading and is about 90 miles NW of Philly. We made national headlines last year b/c a student was beaten up and killed on our main street, a block away from my apartment. It was the first homicide in the town in 30 years. Nice to see Kutztown back in the news for a better reason. :) Take care.
 
Actually it's GeoEye's satellite. Google is just the biggest vendor for the imagery so far.

I would just settle for imagery that shows this year's local roads instead of last year's.
 
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