Thumbs down.
Picture for where I live (Warsaw, Poland) seems from more than a year ago.
Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#22I thought it was super cool. Love the other suggestions on other comments too. We should encourage such posts if not for anything but for allowing a tiny space for such discussions. Really hoping hackernews doesn't change its rules and member enforced etiquettes.
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the only way to get “live” imagery at any level of perceptible detail is to be a three letter agency. Even the highest levels of private sector aren’t tasking satellites with that level of latency.
Sure, that's fair. But what / who then are they trying to sell the idea of with the phrase "live"? Is any average person really interested in a "live" view of the whole Earth, such that it would be meaningfully different or changed compared to the static blue marble photo we're all familiar with? I think we all know what we're interested in when we think of "live"... things at the <<1km level.
I'm super happy to see this website personally, seeing the weather patterns and being able to timestep through them historically is really awesome. I'm a sailor, so that's my angle.
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#24Some details: It combines near real-time images from multiple geostationary satellites, updated every 10 minutes (with a delay of ~30 minutes). NASA GOES satellite for the Americas, Japan's Himawari-8 for Asia and Meteosat in Europe/Africa. Zoomable up to 500m per pixel. Beyond that it uses historical imagery from Microsoft and Esri. It also tracks the latest storms and hurricanes https://zoom.earth/storms/
Can you use ESA Sentinel satellite imagery as an intermediate step? It's 10m ish resolution updated on a roughly weekly cadence.
I use it frequently (via https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/) to help plan backcountry trips around here, as it's great for seeing the local snow conditions.
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#25This is awesome! If only it could show the world as a globe to add even more realism.
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#26Some details: It combines near real-time images from multiple geostationary satellites, updated every 10 minutes (with a delay of ~30 minutes). NASA GOES satellite for the Americas, Japan's Himawari-8 for Asia and Meteosat in Europe/Africa. Zoomable up to 500m per pixel. Beyond that it uses historical imagery from Microsoft and Esri. It also tracks the latest storms and hurricanes https://zoom.earth/storms/
Can you use ESA Sentinel satellite imagery as an intermediate step? It's 10m ish resolution updated on a roughly weekly cadence. I use it frequently (via https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ ) to help plan backcountry trips around here, as it's great for seeing the local snow conditions.
I’d love to, but their API is currently cost prohibitive for a free-to-use website.
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#27Thumbs down. Picture for where I live (Warsaw, Poland) seems from more than a year ago.
High resolution will be older imagery. You won’t be able to see your house in near real time unless you pay to task a satellite from a commercial provider like Planet Labs.
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the only way to get “live” imagery at any level of perceptible detail is to be a three letter agency. Even the highest levels of private sector aren’t tasking satellites with that level of latency.
Is it theoretically, and practically possible for a private company to task a satellite with this level of latency/detail? Are there laws/regulations in this regard? Or is it more a technical/financial barrier?
Planet Labs do this (planet.com) but $$$
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you use ESA Sentinel satellite imagery as an intermediate step? It's 10m ish resolution updated on a roughly weekly cadence. I use it frequently (via https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/ ) to help plan backcountry trips around here, as it's great for seeing the local snow conditions.
I’d love to, but their API is currently cost prohibitive for a free-to-use website.
Oh, that's interesting. ESA says they distribute the Sentinel data free of charge as far as I can tell. So I guess the issue is that you'd need to download and host the data yourself, rather than just do an API call to someone else's archive?
Anyway, it's a cool website, nice work!
Re: Zoom Earth: Website lets you look at live satellite photos of earths surface
#30Just checked my neighbourhood. The latest image seems very old, as a house that was constructed last year only shows up as a plot of land.
Sure enough, in the top-left it says the latest image is from November 2018.