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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.
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.
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?
Maybe you could explain this close up image of your campus? (It's from the lower right of the article's image)
Don't be coy, we all saw the lead up to this in the papers earlier this year. Kutztown's had this coming--it was one thing to invite Putin to talk but when he left those trailers, that was too far.
On a serious note, I'm certain they picked Kutztown based on the following:
Let P denote the number of lawyers a university has on reserve.
Let Q denote the number of lawyers Google has on reserve.
Let R denote said university's reserve resources for emergencies.
Let L be a function such that L(x) = the number of lawyers one can immediately hire with x dollars.
Is P + L(R) Q? Then I think we have a candidate! I found it on Google Scholar.
My work here is dung.
..
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
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.
Gesundheit!
this is probably gonna hurt but here goes anyway http://mirrors.mednor.net/slashdot/10092008/geoeye-1-kutztown.jpg
Oops, mod that down. The picture in TFA isn't good, but one linked from TFS is big and sharp.
Free Martian Whores!
aerial
Sooo, Kev92486, how are the *squints eyes and leans closer to his LCD screen* Golden Bears doin' this year?
My work here is dung.
It bothers me that the tennis courts are not equally spaced. Can they fix that and take another picture?
I think they were aiming for the First United Church of Kutztown, but the coordinates were off. Rumor has it the abbreviation is written on the roof.
Even more curious to me is why Google Earth still has such a low-res image of Green Bay, WI (Packers!!), but I can see Cochranton, PA (population: a few dozen or so) clear as crystal. Go figure.
http://micronetsoftware.com/uploads_tmp/mirror/geoeye-1-kutztown.jpg
go outside, write your question and your email address on a poster, and point it skyward
then go inside and wait for a reply in your inbox
if you don't like google's answer, go outside, and stick your middle finger up to the sky
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As someone with a wiener big enough to be seen from space I am concerned by this.
...because they can.
and now you have complained on a public website they will watch you good.. mwuahahahah.
Have you looked at the car parked across the street, watching?
Sleep tight.
Maybe you could explain this close up image of your campus? (It's from the lower right of the article's image)
That's just a Mirage.
Wikipedia says that the GeoEye-1 was supposed to be in Sun-synchronus orbit... but look at the shadow on the water tower
... on google maps and if so how long will it take?
The actual image collected was a 16 km wide swath cut through PA and part of New York. The swath was chosen based on timing and that it would be fairly close to nadir. As for why Kutztown in particular, I'll ask around, but I think it was basically just something interesting to look at(read:not trees). The calibration and focus were probably pretty good at that point in the image too. Keep in mind this is literally the very first image from the satellite, using preliminary calibration and focus, with the color bands aligned by hand. The imagery from this satellite is going to be exceptional once everything is said and done.
There are many parts of the world that don't have aerial photographs available (look at Google maps of GreenBay, WI; or Bowling Green, KY). This will improve Google Maps for people in those areas dramatically.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Looks like those two near the left side are trying to make 14.
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
Ok, I'll take a wild guess. The second picture is Kutztown University, little bit to the left of the first one.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
My father-in-law got his undergrad education at Friends University of Central Kansas. No joke. I'd even just settle for a sweatshirt with the big "F.U." in the middle.
(It's even funnier in some respects when you know that "Friends" here refers to the Quakers. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
True. A lot of people miss that - the really good resolution pictures on G are typically taken from aeroplanes or (more rarely) helicopters. Who knows what military/intel sats can do - for sure they'll never share. One thing they have in common with commercial sats tho' is problems with clouds and other stuff (moving fast high in sky, extreme angles of incidence, blah blah. The bs about being able to read your newpaper is just that...bs).
Still, pretty damn good picture.
As to why this place? Probably the first decent shot they could get (with no clouds etc) of someplace vaguely interesting - a lot of the earth is either sea, fields, woods...
Since there's nothing interesting in TFA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoEye_1#GeoEye-1
*end oblig wikipedia karma-whoring*
This was the one feature that maps.live.com had over google maps - they had this clarity before Google did, and they also offer the birds eye view which gives you an angled perspective rather than straight down.
I'm glad Google now offers something similar as I like their service much better. In all fairness however, it should be acknowledged that Google was beat to the punch by Microsoft on this.
Overclockers
Why would Google's dominance have anything to do with the 50cm limit? That's a government restriction on what's available for civilian use. The wired article says that it actually is capable of ~40cm but NGA degrades the resolution before releasing it to Google or anyone else. I know of another spacecraft that had to be placed in a higher orbit in order to keep the resolution below the limits.
Since the US commercial space industry is effectively isolated by ITAR restrictions, but is still dominant overall for now, a US restriction basically leads to a world-wide restriction for everyone but other governments. A loosening of US regulation is the only real way to improve commercial space imagery in the short term, although if ITAR isn't loosened soon, the world's going to catch up and surpass the US anyway. But of course, saying you want to stop fighting international arms trade is about as easy as saying you want to make life easier for pedophiles or terrorists, and I can't see it passing anytime soon.
Lot of Andre Reed fans out there at Google, I guess.
I metamoderate, therefore I am
Because you are actually the unwitting star of a reality TV show.
Smile!
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
*Waits for Google employees to T.P. his house and egg his car*
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Does anyone else notice that the colors (of say vegetation) bleed from one shape to the other? I might be deceiving myself, since I know the color and contrast images were taken at different resolutions.
It kinda reminds me of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky's pseudo-color photos of Imperial Russia.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
As I understand it, Google used what was available (and cheap) when they were starting up the service. If something had been of interest to someone ELSE there'd be higher resolution imagery available.
For quite a while my rural retirement house in Nevada had a very low resolution picture of the construction site from years before. Then Steve Fossett disappeared after taking off from a place a half-hour's drive away and google upgraded the imagery of the area to help with the search. The new pics are not as sharp as this latest imagery. But you can see the house, garage, and propane tank just fine.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Talk about a specific fetish.
My point has nothing to do with government limits or anything like that.
What I mean is that by Google using this as their primary data source and with 50 cm being "good-enough" for a lot of applications, there will be less incentive to invest the better aerial data. It's just the simple fact that once the market is flooded with 50 cm data, most people won't know that there are better resolutions available and most consumer applications will be built around 50 cm as the standard.
If Google used 40 cm or 6 inch data, the same would be true. I just worry that we'll be stuck with 50 cm data for the foreseeable future because of this. (and I'm greedy and want the world at 6 inches!)
-Chris
Good aerial photos have a pixel resolution of 6 inches.
Do you mean 6 inches per pixel? This might impress you. I think it's 4cm per pixel but only available over central London for the time being.
But what I was trying to ask is what is the point. What value does having pictures of everything in the world have? I think it detracts from the world rather than enhances anything.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Wikipedia says the satellite also produces 1.65 meter multispectral imagery. I wonder if that is available publicly (without space-high fees) and how to go about getting hold of it?
(Back in the late '60s and early '70s I was working on multispectral recognition and mapping programs to process aircraft, Skylab, and ERTS/Landsat data. Missed renewing my ham license due to a rush project hacking up a "clustering" algorithm to come up with a recognition map for a hunk of Italy for which we had data but no "ground truth" for calibrating the recognition algorithm. I always wanted to be able to play with that stuff personally, outside a sponsored research context. Now the computing power and storage is trivially cheap, so all that's needed is access to the data.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
just one word: wow
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Not so sure it is satellite. I would have thought that the perspective would be straight down. In the picture you can see the sides of buildings as if it ware taken with a wider angle lens such as used on aerial photography.
I think that with the extreme telelens required for satellites you would not see sides of buildings.
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)
I dunno, the average nipple is what? One inch across maybe? The Internet demands higher resolution.
Kutztown Kutztown Kutztown. Kutztown? Kutztown Kutztown Kutztown Kutztown, Kutztown Kutztown! Kutztown, Kutztown Kutztown: Kutztown.
Kutztown?
Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition.
Comment of the year
Owning a satellite to take images that are already available through other sources seems a tad wasteful.
What else are they going to do? Are they positioning themselves to sell the images to other people/governments?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Because when you take someone's photograph you steal their soul.
If the resolution is 50cm/px how can we see the lines on the parking lots which would have, at most, 15cm wide?
La vida no es una pastafrola.
I'll be really excited when we can get continually updated 6 inch data
I'm pretty sure there is a joke in there somewhere...
I'd say RTFA, except neither the submitter nor the editor bothered either. Google doesn't own GeoEye-1. It belongs to a company called (wait for it) GeoEye. Google only figures in the article because they're a big purveyor of sat photos.
Six inches...that means from space, you'll finally be able to see my...wait...I meant at twelve inches.
An important change for education.
TFA says that when the satellite shoots in black and white it gets 16 times more pixels than in colour mode. I don't get it, how can it be?
You just got troll'd!
You joke... if only you knew that at the top left, about another hundred yards further is a national guard post. They've got and old Abrams (at least I think it is) tank and a tracked anti-aircraft vehicle parked on the grass with signs that tell us students to keep of the tanks. No. Seriously. I'm currently a student at KU and I wish I were making up the part about 'keep off the tanks'... I've been meaning to steal that sign forever. It'd be wicked to put on the wall.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Is it me or does your campus look like a game of Tetris from space? Maybe I should lay off the booze some..
You just got troll'd!
Dude, if you're able to take high resolution areola photographs from an aeroplane you are doing very well.
That's pretty damned good. Unfortunately the London road crews can't paint parallel lines all to well.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
This is not a satellite photo -- it is an aerial photo. 1m resolution just wouldn't show the detail that we see here. The ballfield (100 m long) is about 135 pixels long, less than 1 m/pixel.
How can this be a satellite photo?
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
First images from a new imaging satellite are almost never great. Several things, most particularly focus, have to be guessed at on the ground before launch and then adjusted once the bird is on orbit. As others have indicated, the choice of a first target is sometimes pretty arbitrary. The calibration team wants contrast and edges, but otherwise the content for the very first images doesn't matter much -- the point is just to establish that the entire command/control/imaging/download chain is working correctly. Later images will be of specific locations that contain specific calibration targets -- and these are often courtesy of universities.
GeoEye pics that are on Google Maps/Earth right now come from their Ikonos satellite; it has noticeably lower resolution than QuickBird-2, WorldView-1 or GeoEye-1. There won't be any GeoEye-1 pics up GE yet.
Also, there are clouds and a quit a bit of haze in the image shown in your link -- this lowers the apparent image quality quite a bit.
Do you have any idea of how expensive it is to collect aerial photography over large areas? Sure, 6-inch imagery is great. Who's going to pay for it? --and how do you collect it over, say, China? The Earth has just under 150,000,000 sq. km. of land surface area -- do you realize how long it would take to collect the Earth even ONCE from an aerial platform?
Bottom line: there are good practical reasons why you won't see 6-inch imagery of the whole planet any time soon.
This is the first imagery collected from the bird; it's no surprise at all that there is a little bit of band-to-band misregistration at first. This will be corrected over the next several weeks as calibration activities progress.
If you've ever had the chance to spend time with early imagery from a bird, you'd know that this image looks fantastic for an early collection.
The fragrance for men from Calvin Klein.
"Since the US commercial space industry is effectively isolated by ITAR restrictions, but is still dominant overall for now, a US restriction basically leads to a world-wide restriction for everyone but other governments. A loosening of US regulation is the only real way to improve commercial space imagery in the short term, although if ITAR isn't loosened soon, the world's going to catch up and surpass the US anyway."
Well except for one thing. Other governments are likely to place restrictions on their satellite sources for similar reasons to the US. And they're also likely to insist that other governments do the same. Remember the French outcry several months back? Were secrets are concerned, most governments are pretty much alike.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I'm curious, how does USA stop Google from using Russia to launch it's satellites with higher resolution?
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.
Also see the entire country of Denmark. And it has better color correction than the state of Indiana. For example, Tivoli Gardens and these strange neighborhoods.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'll second that, I first encountered bird's eye view while in London last summer and it's an order of magnitude better than plain-old top-down view because when (for example) you exit a tube station and are trying to find the large Forbidden Planet shop you tracked down on the map can you see:
a) The roofs of all the buildings around you?
b) The sides of all the buildings around you?
The answer (unless you've gotten off at Lilliput and Castle) is b).
I think the next evolution of this tech would be a combination of MS's birds-eye for rough detail, Google street view for higher res storefront detail (and under bridges) and both MS's photosynths ability to remove people and potentially vehicles (not just for privacy, when you're there in real life your brain filters out that "noise" from what you're looking at) and stitching ability. So you'll be able to have a full 3d render from the exact POV of each spot on your route, or sync it to the GPS on your mobile combined with Walking Directions - the beginnings of augmented reality!
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
""" I decided to check it out only to find that the first picture was actually of my college campus, Kutztown University """
So, this is the new quantum-photographic tecnology in Google's Geo's Eye: They had a picture that was potentially from anywhere on Earth. In the moment the first observed downloaded it, it immediately collapsed to your location.
-><- no
We had some way of tracking where it's going to be, so we could go outside and do something ridiculous when it passes over ;D.
In my opinion, GoogleEarth/Google Maps is an excellent research tool. I use it for flight planning, vacation planning, navigating around unfamiliar cities, etc. This summer, I finally got my airplane flying and spent a while checking out areas I thought I might like to fly to. I've used it to research 4x4 trails to explore in my truck. I went to Tennessee for a conference this summer and used Google Maps to research hotels near the conference venue, and to find directions to and from places I needed to go while I was there. In short, Google Earth and Google Maps help me get *out* and explore more than I would before these tools became more available.
I'm not exactly sure how taking a picture of something detracts from the world. I can't rock climb a cliff on Google Earth, nor can I kayak a photo of an awesome whitewater river. Even the best, most detailed photographs fall far short of the experience of actually *being* somewhere, so it's not like people are going to opt for Google's imagery over actually going to scenic/interesting places.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
"Google's GeoEye-1" is misleading. I thought GeoEye was a division of Orbital Sciences, not Google.
It's the only place I've smoked opium, they're on to me!!!
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.