Google Earth images are compiled from different datasets of satellite imagery taken months, perhaps years apart. Sometimes the process of stiching the smaller images together includes anomalies such as differences in the appearance of the terrain during different seasons.
In his ‘Juxtapose‘ project, artist Daniel Schwartz compiles tasty examples of this split screen exotica.
Some of Digital Globe’s best satellite images of 2012. They’re still taking votes on their Facebook page.
(Above: the wreck of the Costa Concordia; Mount Fuji in Japan; the Burning Man Festival in Nevada; the Lady Of The North mine sculpture in Northern England, and the Space Shuttle Endeavour on top of a 747)
Jason Walsh writes:
The current satellite image of Ireland. What kind of cruel joke is this? Look at all that no cloud over the ocean that we’d be more then happy to have over Ireland. Instead we get darn near 100% cloud over the country.
NASA already has a long history of compositing images of the earth (front and back).
Now the Russians have gone one better with their geostationary Electro-L weather satellite: its 121 megapixel images (1 km per pixel) were used to create the above timelapse video of the phases of Gaia.
This requires nothing less than full screen and 1080p for the required effect.
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Bejing International Airport, China
Biosphere 2 (artificial, materially-
Burj Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
The work of David Thomas Smith who sez:
Composited from digital files drawn from aerial views taken from internet satellite images, this work reflects upon the complex structures that make up the centres of global capitalism, transforming the aerial landscapes of sites associated with industries such as oil, precious metals, consumer culture information and excess. Thousands of seemingly insignificant coded pieces of information are sown together like knots in a rug to reveal a grander spectacle.
Questions of photographic and economic realities are further complicated through the formal use of patterns that have their origins in the ancient civilizations of Persia. This work draws upon the patterns and motifs used by Persian rug makers, especially the way Afghani weavers use the rug to record their experiences more literally with vivid images of the war torn land that surrounds them.
We’d really like to see Dublin.
Actually, forget that.
This true-color image was taken by the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) aboard the Landsat 7 satellite on September 12, 2001, at roughly 11:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time.