Google Maps Earth View Goes Cloud-Free

Do not get me wrong – the cloud is a wonderful place to have, especially when you want to access your data or work files from different parts of the country, or the world even, while enjoy the benefits of having the latest version at your fingertips all the time. As for clouds that cover the earth, that is a different story altogether. You can spend hours lying on your back in the vast expanse of a field, trying to make out the different animals and shapes that the clouds above form. When the view is turned the other way around, however, things get more interesting. Google’s effort to deliver a comprehensive Google Maps’ Earth view has taken a turn for the more impressive, where they have uploaded new imagery which offers a nearly cloud-free snapshot of our earth.

Yes sir, you will now be able to enjoy unobstructed views of the earth’s topography, in addition to getting closer looks at what where previously low-resolution areas of the map. Google had to obtain hundreds of terabytes (TBs) of data from the USGS’s and NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite, where at times, a single spot required dozens of photos alone, before these were analyzed to compute a clear view of every place. What a beautiful planet we live on!

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Google, google earth, Google Maps