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Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
- neave 6y agoSome details: It combines near real-time images from multiple geostationary satellites, updated every 10 minutes (with a delay of ~30 minutes). NASA GOES satellite for the Americas, Japan's Himawari-8 for Asia and Meteosat in Europe/Africa. Zoomable up to 500m per pixel. Beyond that it uses historical imagery from Microsoft and Esri. It also tracks the latest storms and hurricanes https://zoom.earth/storms/ https://zoom.earth/storms/
- jrichardshaw 6y agoCan you use ESA Sentinel satellite imagery as an intermediate step? It's 10m ish resolution updated on a roughly weekly cadence. I use it frequently (via https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/) to help plan backcountry trips around here, as it's great for seeing the local snow conditions.
- neave 6y agoI’d love to, but their API is currently cost prohibitive for a free-to-use website.
- jrichardshaw 6y agoOh, that's interesting. ESA says they distribute the Sentinel data free of charge as far as I can tell. So I guess the issue is that you'd need to download and host the data yourself, rather than just do an API call to someone else's archive? Anyway, it's a cool website, nice work!
- taylorlapeyre 6y agoAnother great site for viewing earth weather patterns: https://earth.nullschool.net https://earth.nullschool.net
- supernova87a 6y agoI wouldn't call it the "live" you would expect (although depends on what you were expecting -- I wasn't honestly expecting a live view of "anywhere on Earth", but at least some level of detail). As soon as you zoom in to any level of <100km detail it reverts to years-old imagery. I guess it's understandable -- since when you get to that level, clearly they are picking/choosing the imagery that's cloud-free, etc. It's more like a "live" view if you were to look at the entire Earth at once from the Apollo capsule...
- qeternity 6y agoWell the only way to get “live” imagery at any level of perceptible detail is to be a three letter agency. Even the highest levels of private sector aren’t tasking satellites with that level of latency.
- supernova87a 6y agoSure, that's fair. But what / who then are they trying to sell the idea of with the phrase "live"? Is any average person really interested in a "live" view of the whole Earth, such that it would be meaningfully different or changed compared to the static blue marble photo we're all familiar with? I think we all know what we're interested in when we think of "live"... things at the <<1km level.
- qeternity 6y agoLarge weather patterns are the first thing that jump out to me. But perhaps the knowledge that the blue marble you’re looking at is mere minutes old builds a stronger connection and appreciation for it. Either way I think it’s cool, even if it lacks the Jason Bourne resolution.
- neave 6y agoI'm the developer of Zoom Earth. "Live" is shorthand for "near real-time". But, you're right. Most visitors simply want to see their house from space. Which is understandable, but also kinda depressing. They could look at _anywhere in the world in near realtime_, but they wanna see what their roof or garden looks like. Meteorologists love it though.
- arkanciscan 6y agoPlanet does it better https://www.planet.com/gallery/ https://www.planet.com/gallery/
- kyle_morris_ 6y agoHow is planet better? Clicking on https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ takes me directly to the overall imaging of the earth. Planet seems to take you to a landing page with interesting things to look at. Not that that's bad, but interested to hear what's better about it
- arkanciscan 6y agoPlanet gets new images every day.
- geuis 6y agoThere’s a Planet Explorer, https://www.planet.com/explorer/ https://www.planet.com/explorer/. I worked on building it a few years ago. Unfortunately you have to have a Planet account and I believe those are paid only.
- blhack 6y agoThere's a free trial account.
- arkanciscan 6y agoSo did I! Did you work with Trevor, or Alessandro?
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoI have to disagree. That giant frame on the bottom looks to be unremovable. We lose that whole half the screen to "HEY LOOK AT THIS". With that is a sticky top that keeps dropping down to cover what little viewing room we have. Maybe I'm missing something but this looks like one of the worst layouts I've ever seen.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoAs a Floridian, I look forward to live viewing death from above, sometime soon. Hurricane season is one of the few things I like about this state - that and the 15 minutes of not-summer.
- geuis 6y agoDid we hug the server too much? I’m getting a blank screen.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lmilcin 6y agoThumbs down. Picture for where I live (Warsaw, Poland) seems from more than a year ago.
- neave 6y agoHigh resolution will be older imagery. You won’t be able to see your house in near real time unless you pay to task a satellite from a commercial provider like Planet Labs.
- maskedinvader 6y agoI thought it was super cool. Love the other suggestions on other comments too. We should encourage such posts if not for anything but for allowing a tiny space for such discussions. Really hoping hackernews doesn't change its rules and member enforced etiquettes.
- chrisshroba 6y agoThis is awesome! If only it could show the world as a globe to add even more realism.
- kranner 6y agoJust checked my neighbourhood. The latest image seems very old, as a house that was constructed last year only shows up as a plot of land. Sure enough, in the top-left it says the latest image is from November 2018.
- neave 6y agoYep, it will be old at that zoom level. Zoom out to level 8 and you’ll get near real-time but you won’t be able to see your house.
- flipflopsrawr 6y agoI looked at a 2018 picture of my house and it is 100 percent not from 2018. Cars and patio furniture from past owner 4 years ago
- azinman2 6y agoLook at the bottom attribution... zoom in enough and it’ll switch to a big data provider with stale maps.
- ctdonath 6y agoNeed current "live" feed of Three Gorges Dam. Could get real interesting soon.
- njsubedi 6y agoQuite interesting! It felt good to see a satellite imagery without an overlay of labels, roads, and border lines that we are accustomed to. It's not really real-time if you zoom in, but it's good nevertheless.
- greggman3 6y agoThis only goes by years not in 10 min increments but it animates https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse
- basicplus2 6y agoThis reminds me of a story.. A friend of mine was putting in a subdial and phoned up some gov department to find out the lat and long for his property.. after being put through about 5 different departments the last guy he got said "where do you want it?" And he repeated his address, the guy rhen said " no I mean where in your back garden? Go out side and stand where you are going to install it and i will give you the exact lat and long" yes this guy was watching him live! this was back when the first home phone detatchable handsets were out.. a long time ago. He never did find out who he ended up talking to..
- momirlan 6y agonice prank
- oriettaxx 6y agofunny, but what is a "subdial" ?
- basicplus2 6y agoSundial
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 6y agoFirst of all, this is super super super cool. But also... I'm super confused about the nighttime imagery. Looking at daytime imagery from this afternoon over the US, everything looks legit -- it looks "real", shadows from clouds get longer as the sun gets lower in the sky, shadows on mountain ranges change, etc. But as soon as it transitions to night, all realism goes out the window. Urban areas are absurdly bright, clouds are still blindingly white on top, the pattern of lights don't change even a tiny bit throughout the night... it's like it's no longer using photos but combining a static nighttime image with radar-detected clouds drawn on top. The gradient between daytime and nighttime also seems highly artificial. Do other people agree that the nighttime imagery is totally simulated, not photographs at all? I'd just kind of like to see a version that showed real nighttime imagery, even if it was mostly super-dark (but they could HDR it which would be fine too).
- ancientworldnow 6y agoThis is using GOES imagery for "live" North America which uses multispectral IR for night [1] but True Color for day. Once you pass a certain zoom level, it switches to historical imagery from Microsoft. Side note, you can receive GOES images straight from the satellite yourself with a $30 SDR, a $30 LNA, and an antenna made from scrap (or ~$100 if you're not handy). [1] https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16 https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16
- crazygringo 6y agoAh ha that explains it perfectly, thanks. I've always been curious what a real day+night satellite image looks like. The simulated ones always show urban areas as absurdly bright. Does anyone have links to satellite imagery that shows the actual full real transition from daytime to nighttime, at a constant camera exposure so without exaggeration?
- jmgao 6y ago> constant camera exposure Sure, just take an image and color the night part completely black. Street lighting is around 10 lux -- sunlight is 100,000 lux.
- matthewhartmans 6y agoThis is super cool! Can you see planes in flight? Could be good for tracking missing planes.
- neave 6y agoNot quite, but you can see the contrails. Example: https://zoom.earth/#view=40.174,-136.065,7z/date=2020-07-20,23:00 https://zoom.earth/#view=40.174,-136.065,7z/date=2020-07-20,... Change the date to see them being created.
- aussieguy1234 6y agoTried from Australia, the imagery of my neighbourhood is from 2018
- Tronno 6y agoPast a certain zoom level it displays historical imagery. Zoom out to get recent photos.
- mgoetzke 6y agoThe location information seems to be a little off though, compared to google maps. By about 20' - 30' in my attempts to locate things
- sidyapa 6y agoFor where I am, the latest image was taken in May, 2018
- neave 6y agoYes, images of your house/area will be older. Near real-time imagery is only available at lower zoom levels. It takes a long time to take satellite/aerial photos of everywhere on the planet in high resolution, so 2018 is quite good in the geospatial industry.
- supernihil 6y agoWhat about free amazon 52cm sqaure resolution satelite images? https://registry.opendata.aws/spacenet/ https://registry.opendata.aws/spacenet/
- hnarn 6y agoThere's nothing live about the images you get when you zoom in, so at some point I guess "live" (within 24 hrs?) just goes out the window and is replaced with Google Maps or similar.
- neave 6y agoYes, near real-time is available up to 500m/pixel (level 8 zoom). To see higher resolution you can use planet.com but that’s a commercial service.
- cocoggu 6y agoIt's explicitly written under the website title that passed a specific level of zoom, images are updated daily. Still quite a nice service.
- mnw21cam 6y agoI'm sorry, but that "Let us use cookies or you can't use this web site" button is not legal. If you're trying to appease GDPR, then that is not enough. You need to be able to use the web site after refusing cookies.
- mrtri 6y agosatellites can zoom into objects as big as cars from space and even show humans, but no telescope on earth can show satellites in space, astronauts spacewalking , spacejunk etc.
- dr_dshiv 6y agoI've always wanted a physical globe with real-time high-res clouds. That is my personal marker of "oh, the future has arrived"
- ookware 6y agoNot something in your own house just yet but how about this: https://informal.jpl.nasa.gov/museum/CP4SMP/dynamic-globe https://informal.jpl.nasa.gov/museum/CP4SMP/dynamic-globe
- soylentcola 6y agoI'd imagine you could build something like this but it would get harder the smaller it is. Some sort of plastic sphere with rear projection from multiple projectors inside, warped to fit the globe (the more projectors, the more even focus would be around the full area of the globe). Project live sat imagery on inside of globe and view from outside. I guess ideally it would use some fancy-pants spherical OLED to get around projection issues but I don't know if such a thing has ever been fabricated yet. edit: just looked this up and apparently there have been spherical OLED displays and most search results are, indeed, demoed with globes.
- seesawtron 6y agoWhat I liked about this is the forecast feature of the movement of clouds/cyclones in the oceans: For example here: https://zoom.earth/storms/douglas-2020/#layers=labels https://zoom.earth/storms/douglas-2020/#layers=labels
- Jemm 6y agoSailor here. Thank you.
- culopatin 6y agoI may be mistaken but seems like you can see the dust cloud moving south from NYC if you go to 9/11/2001 AM
- chkaloon 6y agoVery cool. Always amazed at how much cloud cover there is. Using Google Earth and maps, you forget about that.