A Closer View of Google Maps.

• AlexH
  March 8th, 2007 at 9:25 pm

  That ’study’ on identifying faces at low resolution was completely misleading — as proven by your statement. It showed that people could distinguish faces from non-faces at low resolution, not say who a person is.

• Anita
  March 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

  A guy just asked me if you could zoom in that far on any French beaches. Sorry, it looks like the answer is no.

  However there is a beach in Sydney with similar dress requirements that is located in Google Maps: Beach Zoom-In.

  I’ll leave the zooming to you

• Anita
  March 8th, 2007 at 9:32 pm

  AlexH - you mean you don’t think Iran’s President is hiding out in Africa? Seemed plausible to me.

• Martijn
  March 8th, 2007 at 9:51 pm

  Alternatively you just download Google Earth, in which you can always zoom in this far.

• Alex
  March 8th, 2007 at 11:05 pm

  Is a goatse in the Sahara?

• pangolin
  March 9th, 2007 at 7:51 am

  It’s Indiana Jones, he’s found the Arc!

• Amanda
  March 9th, 2007 at 10:04 am

  I’m asking the dumb question: which value is the z parameter in the url?

• Anita
  March 9th, 2007 at 10:09 am

  Hi Amanda!

  Here’s the URL of the above map, with the z parameter highlighted:

  http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=15.298683
  +19.429651&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=23&ll=15.298601,19.42964
  &spn=0.002137,0.002849&t=k&om=1&iwloc=addr

  On most Google locations, the highest this goes is z=18 or so, but you can often change it manually.

• Amanda
  March 9th, 2007 at 10:37 am

  Thank you.

• christian gehrke
  March 9th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

  So how can we tell which locations have them and which don’t aside from the obvious and tedious way of search search search?

• ted
  March 9th, 2007 at 1:32 pm

  So why is the guy in the upper right looking up at the camera?

  Did he hear the click as the satellite took his picture?

• Anita
  March 9th, 2007 at 2:21 pm

  ted - it’s actually taken from a plane. Google just integrates it in such a way to make it look like it came from a Satellite.

  Even military grade satellites couldn’t provide an image nearly this crisp (this image has a resolution of ~1cm per pixel. The best military spy satellites are at best 5cm per pixel, but more likely 10-20cm).

  I initially thought it was a satellite too until I did the calculations. Even the Hubble Space Telescope could only produce a picture with a 5-8cm / pixel resolution. To get to 1cm, the government would have needed to build a telescope that was ~8 times wider than Hubble, which wouldn’t be feasible.

• artbot
  March 9th, 2007 at 7:19 pm

  Can anyone explain the “ghost cars” one sees in the fully-zoomed in satellite (or plane) images of L.A. freeways? After some investigation, I have no definitive answers. Anyone know about these?

• zorg
  March 10th, 2007 at 7:58 am

  Anita,
  I thought they could read the brand of a cigarette pack with them spy satellites… Ain’t you from the Government ?

• zorg
  March 10th, 2007 at 8:00 am

  I forgot : your explanation would justify the guy looking in the sky… to watch the plane.

• Jon
  March 12th, 2007 at 11:24 am

  artbot,

  I’m pretty sure I heard that most satelitte cams take two shots. One high-res b&w shot for the detail, and a lower quality color shot for the coloring. The slight delay between the pictures means high-speed targets get shot in two locations. The “ghost” occurs when the two images are merged.

  Sorry I don’t have a source, and don’t remember where I heard it, so I could be completely off.

• James
  March 19th, 2007 at 6:40 am

  Most extremely close up shots are actually taken from a flyover plane rather than satellite. It would be in cases where you see city buildings that this becomes evident… in order to preserve the scale and accuracy in the photographs, street wise, you get strange effects with buildings leaning at different angles, often towards each other.

• Ethan
  August 12th, 2007 at 7:08 am

  yes this was more than likly a plane, explaning why the man is looking up to see the plane not like it is one huge coineserdance( not sure about spelling ) that he just happens to look up as the satellite was taking the picture……….

  OR IS IT??

• matt
  March 2nd, 2008 at 2:30 am

  i tried it and i got the number in but it wont zoom in and then i tried it zooming out and it wouldn’t zoom out.. so i guess my question is once you change the number what are you suppose to do?

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