High-resolution satellite images of almost anywhere, including your own home. Just go to the site, zoom in and center, then click the "Satellite" link in the upper-right corner.

[Via email from Howard Gluckman]

Surprisingly recent satellite images, actually. The last time I saw a "search for your house on a satellite photo", the images were from the 1980's, and none of the images of the industrial and technology complexes in the area were accurate. The images on Google maps, however, look pretty recent. The mouse-panning on the maps is pretty smooth and quick, too.

You know, this would be a scary thing- Great intel data, possibly.

I checked again, and some of the images in Illinois aren't all that recent, though they're less than 2 years old. The images of Iowa are at least 7-8 months old, as there is a building across the street from my office that has been in the works for at least that long, and only appears as a vacant lot on the satellite image.

Data that old is definitely worthless from an intel standpoint.

Earth Satellite Corporation (my employer) supplied the 15 meter medium-resolution satellite imagery. This orthorectified pansharpened color-corrected product is a global mosaic of LandSat images taken around the year 2000.

Some of it is more recent than 2000. There has been some water pipe repair in the parking lot where I work. That work was completed about a year ago, and the photo's of the lot show the completed repair work.

Pretty good shots too, I can see my own car outside my house in the photo's.

Google's interface is great, but the images are watermarked.

At least in Chicago, Google is displaying the same data as MS Terraserver. Here's the Museum of Science and Industry on Google and http://terraserver.^icrosoft.com/image.aspx?T=4&S=9&Z=16&X=4516&Y=46266&W=3 (change the "^" to "m" - see below). Note the U-505 submarine on the right wing of the building. It was moved indoors some time ago. This is the same as the Terraserver image which says it's from April 2002.

Another place to go for hi-res aerial photos is http://nationalmap.usgs.gov/index.html. The interface is complicated, but it also uses the same aerial data as Terraserver and you can download a hi-res TIFF of your selected area.

(Sorry about that Terraserver link. I kept on getting the error message "Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: micro$oft.com"!)

"You know, this would be a scary thing- Great intel data, possibly"

'great intel data' for what purpose? I can't think of a thing a Black Hat could use 15 meter satellite imagery for that couldn't be obtained from a map.

There are some misunderstandings in the above thread.

John: The high-res imagery (1 meter resolution) is supplied by Digital Globe's Quickbird satellite and was taken more recently than the 15 meter Landsat. That is why you can see the water pipe repair work done after the year 2000.

Dunbar: the Black Hats just purchased $1 million worth of the 15 meter product, branded 'EarthSat NaturalVue'. It has its uses - not so much for time-sensitive intel, but for GIS analysis.

"High-resolution satellite images of almost anywhere"

Duh huh...

Well, it does have pictures of Canada, so it's not totally a waste of time, but other than that, I suspect that it confirms what most Americans always suspected, that there isn't anywhere else other than the North American continent; and anybody who says otherwise is just part of a liberal media conspiracy. Iraq is really a place in America isn't it?

Ian: As far as road routing is concerned, beyond North America, GIS data is either too expensive or non-existant. That prevents developing a smart mapping service like that. It's a matter of data availability.

The one of my neighborhood is a few months out of date. It shows a retention pond in the shopping center near my house (where I walk every day because I work at one of the businesses there) which was filled in and made an underground cistern last year over the holidays.

Oh and by the way, Ian, you can come down off your high horse. Though I am an American I do realize that other countries exist despite the fact that this particular website doesn't have detailed satellite imagery of them. In fact, due to this antique dead-tree thing called an "atlas", and other things called "globes" I had already learned about the existence of other countries even before the internet existed!

You may now return to your regularly-scheduled program of feelings of inferiority disguised as moralistic snark.

Any one check out Groom lake/ Nellis yet?
LOL

Any one check out Groom lake/ Nellis yet?
LOL

Any one check out Groom lake/ Nellis yet?
LOL

crap sorry for the triple post.

That (crappy low-res pic!), the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan (all those broken '52s have to be one of the saddest sights I've seen), Edwards (GIANT compass rose stamped into the sands, very cool), Wright-Patterson (all those C-5s), the Navy yards at Norfolk and Philly, the Cape...