Over the next few weeks, the earth will be seeing a series of unique celestial events. Tomorrow many of us we will be able to see a a solar eclipse, June 4 will feature a lunar eclipse, and June 6 is the Transit of Venus. As you might expect, there are great Google Earth tools to help you make the most of all three events.
For the solar eclipse, the eclipse viewer from HeyWhatsThat.com is a great way to see where the best locations for the viewing the eclipse are located.
You can use the dropdown box in the lower right corner of the site to view other simulations, both past and future. You can learn more about the features available on their site by reading this text file.
Every week, the Google Maps team hosts "office hours" -- a streamed Hangout on Google+ where you can ask the team questions and learn more about what they're working on. Their latest installment featured Josh Livni and Peter Birch, and covered quite a bit about Google Earth. They discussed the history of Google Earth, the history of Earth on mobile, and some of the directions for the future.
Now, thanks to the new "Hangouts On Air" feature that can stream and record Google+ Hangouts, the entire 30 minute video is available for you to view. If you're interested in the current state of affairs of Google Earth and Google Maps, it's a great video to watch.
If you'd like to join them live in the future, stay in touch via the +Google Maps API page on Google+. While you're out there, be sure to add +Google Earth Blog to your circles as well!
Dr. Andrew Shears is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin - Fox Valley, and this past semester he led a great project in his GEO 106 class - modeling the entire campus!
He first divided the campus into five sections for his 20 students to tackle, then set them to work. The end result is an excellent model of the campus that all of us will get to enjoy:
The models have been submitted to Google for approval, though they aren't yet showing up in the base layer of 3D Buildings in Google Earth. I'd expect to see them arrive in the next week or two.
Dr. Shears has written a very detailed blog entry that walks you through every aspect of the modeling process. It looks like it was a great class, the students learned a lot, and the resulting model is something that they can all be proud of!
Less than two weeks after their previous update, it appears that Google has just pushed out some more fresh imagery to Google Earth. Thanks to 'Munden' for letting us know about it!
As is almost always the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!
United States: Illinois (Neoga, Quincy), Michigan (Traverse City), Minnesota (Minneapolis, St. Paul), Ohio (Akron, Cleveland, Youngstown), Pennsylvania (State College)
If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!
We've talked about Pedro Domecq Aguirre, better known as "PeterG", quite a few times on here. Most recently we showed you his amazing 3D model of Saint Basil's Cathedral. He recently got some big news, and him and his teammate Josetxo Perez Fernandez were announced as the winners of Google's 2012 Model Your Town Competition!
Of the six finalists in the running, their models of Getaria, Gipuzkoa, Spain were voted as being the best. As you can see from the image below, they certainly did an awesome job:
Their awesome work will help to show the world how great Getaria is, and it also earned a $25,000 prize to a local school!
To see more about the work that they did, check out this short video flyover of the city:
To read more about the competition and their victory, check out the full blog entry over on the Google Lat Long Blog.
We often get questions from users wondering how to access the "real-time Google Earth imagery". As you probably know, that doesn't yet exist. In fact, if you understand how Google Earth imagery works, you'll realize that we're a long way from a real-time version of Google Earth.
However, we're a small step closer to that goal with the release of a 121-megapixel image from a Russian satellite, the highest-resolution non-stitched image of the earth that has ever been captured:
It seems likely that the only way to achieve a real-time Google Earth will be to have satellites capturing incredibly high-resolution images and transferring them back down to earth. While this image is certainly remarkable, it's roughly 1000 meters per pixel. Decent imagery in Google Earth is 1 meter per pixel (or better), so cameras will need to capture imagery at much higher resolution to make it work.
In addition to that, there's the issue of transferring the imagery to earth, properly aligning it, dealing with clouds, etc. We're still years away from a real-time Google Earth, but this has brought us one small step closer to it!
We've talked a bit about Google's Fusion Tables product before -- a great way to turn a table full of data (such as an Excel spreadsheet) into a fully functional map!
The maps can easily be shared through a Google Maps interface or even in Google Earth, but the mobile support for Fusion Table projects has been pretty weak. That's where the folks from Build-A-Map have stepped in, with a new product called My Fusion Tables.
My Fusion Tables a mobile application that allows you to browse, view, and map data from Google Fusion Tables on both mobile phones and tablets. You can find it in the iOS App Store or on Google Play.
Have you built any interesting applications with Fusion Tables? How well do they work in My Fusion Tables?
We get a lot of emails from users asking us to correct data errors in Google Earth -- incorrect road names, mis-marked addresses, etc. We can't do that directly, but fortunately Google has a great solution to help you out.
To start, you don't actually fix the errors in Google Earth; you fix them in Google Maps, and those corrections are synced into Google Earth over the course of a few weeks.
To suggest a correction, simply right-click on an area inside of Google Maps and choose "Report a problem". The following screen will pop-up and will walk you through the process:
I've suggested quite a few edits to my local area, and all have been accepted into Google Earth/Maps and helped make my town more accurate. It's a great tool to help make Google products more accurate for everyone. To learn more about how this process works, you can visit this page in the Google Maps support system.
Over the years we've mentioned 360cities.net quite a few times. They have a great product that is easy to use, and even have their own layer inside of of Google Earth. The panoramas that they allow people to create can be quite stunning:
Historically, 360cities has only supported fully spherical images for use in panoramas. This means that the image must not only have a 360 degree view, but must include imagery when looking straight up or down. The result is amazing panoramas such as the one below:
The problem is that people often have 360 degree imagery, but it doesn't have the complete image directly above and below the camera. In the past, you needed to pad the image with black strips along the top and bottom in order for their site to accept it, but that's no longer necessary.
To try it for yourself, simply head over to your upload page and upload a new panorama. To explore more of the works on their site, dig into their layer on Google Earth (found inside of the [Gallery] folder) or check out some of the editor's picks on their site.
We've shown you work from 3D modeler 'PeterG' quite a few times here on Google Earth Blog. He built one of the first great 3D interiors that we saw, some nice 3D tours of Mount Urgull, and quite a few other models.
His latest work is the remodeling of Saint Basil's Cathedral in Red Square, Moscow, Russia. It's a stunning model that you need to see to believe.
To go check it out for yourself, you can fly there by using this KML file. Be sure to have the [3D Buildings] layer turned on to view the building.
He has also built a nice video to show off the model, so if you're not able to access Google Earth right now, this video will give you a good look at what he's done:
Over the past few years we've seen a variety of 3D University maps in different formats, including Harrisburg, Cantabria, Central Florida, Duke, Northeastern, Bowling Green and many others. The latest is a slick 3D map developed by Exist.inc from a variety of Universities in Indonesia, including Tebuka University.
Along with the excellent interface using the Google Earth Plug-in, Exist is also the company behind all of the excellent 3D models for the campus. All of the models are in the main 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth, and they look great!
You can explore them for yourself by using this KML file. Be sure to check out Google Earth Plugin-powered version at www.ut.ac.id/unit/3d.
The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has been mentioned on Google Earth Blog quite a few times. They make excellent use of Google Earth as a way to visualize the vast amounts of data that they process.
They've recently released a collection of nearly 8,000 shoreline surveys that have been collected over the past 171 years. Using Google Earth, you can preview and overlay any of the surveys in a very intuitive manner. Thanks to the way that Google Earth handles image overlays, wrapping the imagery over the terrain, the results can be pretty interesting:
To view the data in Google Earth, you can load this KMZ file, which will show the outlines of all available areas. Use the timeslider at the top to choose a range of years, then click on the outline of an area for details. The "Preview" option for each item will load the data directly into Google Earth, filling the space that was outlined.
Thanks to sharp-eyed GEB reader 'Andre', it appears that Google has just pushed out a fresh imagery update.
As is almost always the case, you can use Google Maps to determine for sure whether or not a specific area is fresh. This new imagery isn't in Google Maps yet, so you can compare Earth vs. Maps to see what's new; the fresh imagery is already in Google Earth, but the old imagery is still in Google Maps. If you compare the two side-by-side and they're not identical, that means that you've found a freshly updated area in Google Earth!
Austria: Vienna
Gambia: Near the coast
Germany: Flensburg, GieBen
Italy: Mugello
Mongolia: Nalayh
United States: New Mexico (Albuquerque), North Carolina (Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem), Texas (Camp Wood, Leakey, Utopia, Uvalde)
If you find any other updated areas, please leave a comment and let us know!
While I was at Where 2012 last month, I sat down with Misha Leybovich to discuss a new product he was working on called Meograph. At the time there wasn't anything to show, but they've just launched their first demo and it's looking quite impressive.
They call it "Four-dimensional storytelling", adding geospatial information to go along with photos, audio, video and text. The result is a very compelling way to share a story, as seen here in this screenshot from the Whitney Houston demo.
While you can't yet create your own meographs on the system, that ability is coming soon. They're hoping to open it up for registration sometime this summer, though journalists can request alpha access right now by emailing journalism@meograph.com. Ultimately it will be a great tool for telling stories about the news, which can be embedded on your own site. It reminds me a bit of the Google Earth Diorama, in that it gives you an easy way to embed other media into the Google Earth Plug-in.
At this point it appears that Meograph will be a bit easier to use, while Diorama will be more powerful. However, both products are still being developed and it'll be interesting to see how they progress.
I was cruising around on Google+ when I came across these great pictures from Artur Mazur, comparing a 3D model of his in Google Earth to the real-life location:
While Artur hasn't created a ton of models, he's had 39 models accepted into Google Earth and the quality of his work is quite impressive. Another great example is this model, found in southern Poland:
Most of his work can be found in remote areas, so I encourage you to view his collection of models in the 3D Warehouse and see them for yourself in Google Earth.
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is a great way to see where the best locations for the viewing the eclipse are located.
