Reuters September 27, 2001
Satellite sites offer different perspective of Earth
By Daniel Sorid,
Looking for a good view of the capital of Uzbekistan?
The Web has become a gateway to an immense collection of satellite images of Earth, a place where you can zoom into your favorite Central Asian city or your own backyard in a couple of clicks of the mouse.
Images of Antarctic icebergs, the desert in California's Death Valley and virtually anything else on Earth can be found at an array of Web sites, from government space agencies like NASA and private companies such as SPACE.com.
Easy access to images previously available only to the government is made possible, in part, by the Ikonos satellite, launched by a Colorado-based company two years ago.
From its perch in space, Ikonos can make out objects as small as cars and trees. And because Ikonos is owned by a private company, there are no restrictions on the kinds of photographs it can take.
The easiest way to see a sampling of Ikonos images is to go to the Web site of the satellite's owner, Space Imaging.
In the gallery section, you can browse through clear, color images of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon both before and after they were attacked.
There are also pictures of such eclectic images as the production camp for CBS's hit reality series Survivor, the Indy 500 race, and Nikumaroro Island, where Amelia Earhart's plane may have crashed on her attempt to fly around the world in the 1930s.
In another section of the Space Imaging Web site called QuickLooks, satellite photographs can be found of virtually any county in any U.S. state, as well as pictures of cities in any country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
The Ikonos satellite, named for the Greek word for "image," orbits the globe 14 times a day and can take a picture of the same spot on Earth once every three days. Ikonos can render objects as small as one square meter, a capability once had only by spy satellites.
Because there are no restrictions on which areas it can pass over, Ikonos can be hired to snap pictures of practically any place on Earth, including military sites and other sensitive areas.
One site, GlobalSecurity.org, displays pictures of military bases, rebel camps, and other secret areas captured by Ikonos.
It should be said, however, that U.S. government spy satellites are believed to have imaging capability much better than Ikonos.
TerraServer offers a combination of satellite images and aerial pictures of Earth. While the highest level of detail is only available to paid subscribers, interesting pictures can still be found, including a shot of Baghdad, Iraq and another of the Pentagon.
Mapquest, the popular driving directions and mapping site, lets users see aerial pictures of neighborhoods around the country. Once you map an address, click "aerial photo" to display the image.
More than photographs
Standard photographs of Earth, while very useful for mapmakers and military planners, are not the only types of images of the planet snapped by satellites.
Specially-equipped satellites can measure chlorophyll concentration in the ocean, detect air pollution, and, with varying success, predict the weather.
The U.S. space agency NASA offers a tutorial in the field of remote sensing, the process of using satellites to gain a new perspective over an area. The tutorial is comprehensive.
NASA's Web site is bursting with Earth images, and its photo gallery, is a good place to start to find a range of pictures, including declassified images taken by spy satellites.
At Visible Earth, one can explore icebergs in Antarctica, plumes of ash streaming from Mt. Etna in Sicily, and an infrared image of the Grand Canyon.
At SPACE.com, a news and information site about outer space, one can scan through a series of images about hurricanes, Earth's meteor craters, and the auroras that hang in the sky.
Copyright 2001 The Denver Post
