Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
...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
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.
Could be any number of things. My farm in rural Iowa is at such a low resolution that it's difficult to make out large buildings. (And it's obviously reconstructed form false color images. Probably less than 30m resolution.
However a mile to the west there's a huge strip of very high resolution images. ~0.5m resolution. Why? It just so happens that there is a large wind farm going up in that strip of land. It seems that the wind farm company paid for a high resolution survey of the area and that just got added to the data pile. Until someone wants to see what yet another soybean farm looks like, I'm SOL. (Which is too bad because I'd really like to see how the crops are doing from a few thousand miles away.)
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
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."
Since there's nothing interesting in TFA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoEye_1#GeoEye-1
*end oblig wikipedia karma-whoring*
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.
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.
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.