Google's GeoEye-1 Takes Its First Pictures

Kev92486 writes "I was scanning through my RSS feeds today and happened upon an article about Google's GeoEye-1 imaging satellite which launched on Sept 6. Intrigued as to what the quality of the image was like, I decided to check it out only to find that the first picture was actually of my college campus, Kutztown University (Pennsylvania).
I had to make sure I was reading the article correctly as Kutztown is not a very large or well known campus. I'm not sure as to why they chose Kutztown for their first pictures. I would be interested if anybody could provide some sort of insight as to what process was used to select the first test location. Was the satellite simply in a convenient orbit to snap pictures of Kutztown?" Update: 10/09 20:56 GMT by T : HotHardware has its own article up on GeoEye-1, if you'd like your words and pictures in the same place.

Comments

Re:What a letdown

[dfm3]

Yes, but the high resolution imagery currently on Google maps typically comes from areal photos, not from satellite imagery. The news here is that the images were taken from a satellite in orbit, not from a plane.

Re:I'll Tell You Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could explain this close up image of your campus? (It's from the lower right of the article's image)

For anybody interested in the close up image, wondering where it *actually* is (because it ain't in the article's image), take a gander here:

Google Maps (pops)

The plane's actually sitting in a carpark in the western suburbs of Paris, France.

Re:What a letdown

[rockmuelle]

Well, it's not really news. If you understand the different data sources, it should come as no surprise that these images are not as good as the high-resolution aerial photos and as good as good satellite photos (think of the before/after tsunami photos)

Good aerial photos have a pixel resolution of 6 inches. Decent ones are 12 inches. GeoEye-1's resolution is 50 cm, or about 19 inches. 19 inches is good for working with large objects, but not useful for fine-grained measurements. (it will be fine for 99.9% of the apps Googlers develop)

For a good example of 6 and 12 inch data, look at the state of Indiana (in the US) in Google Earth. In 2005/6, Indiana re-imaged the entire state with aerial photos. The whole state is at least 12 inches and all metro areas are 6 inches.

I'll be really excited when we can get continually updated 6 inch data... My only concern is that with Google's dominance, we'll be stalled at 19 inches for a long time and people will start to think that's the best we can do.

-Chris

Re:not impressed with orbit

[NameIsDavid]

Is there something wrong with the angle? Sun-synchronous orbit means that each time the satellite appears over that same university campus, it will do so at the same time of day. So, unless you see multiple shadow angles implying that the image was taken over multiple passes and that the shadow angle changed with each pass, I don't see what's specifically unimpressive about the orbit. Can you explain your observation?

Re:Fairly Random

[Anonymous Coward]

The swath was chosen based on timing and that it would be fairly close to nadir.

I think you mean perigee not nadir.

-jcr

Nope I meant nadir

The nadir angle is basically how far to the side the satellite is pointing from its ground track. The farther off nadir the more you're looking at the sides of buildings and trees vs. the top. You're generally off a bit, but anything above 30 starts to get useless for most things.