View The Planet - Google Earth

Several years ago I looked at an application called Google Earth

, a program which allows you to view literally any corner of this Earth from satellite imagery without even leaving your desktop. This is genuinely one of the most interesting applications that you will ever use and bizarrely, it is completely free of charge.

I was prompted to revisit this piece of software for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the map data has been completely updated and so whereas before the level of detail for Torbay and the surrounding areas was a little poor, you can now get right down to street level - I was even able to pick up the pot plants on the roof of Refresh. Additionally the Herald Express have kindly agreed to let me use pictures in future articles and because a picture is apparently worth a thousand words, I thought more would be encouraged to download it by seeing the application in action.

Google Earth can be found for free and downloaded directly from http://earth.google.com and as all of the images from the satellites are streamed straight from the Internet the programme itself is only 13mb in size. When you first start up you will be given a picture of Earth, as it is seen from space. From then on you rotate the whole planet to the specific part you wish to view by dragging it to a specific continent or zooming in.

The most impressive thing in my eyes is that it is all completely seamless; if you want to zoom in on Paignton for example you just spin the globe to England and then start zooming and then as you get closer adjust your trajectory so that you are looking at the South West, then Torbay before finally getting to street level. It would have been a lot easier for Google to control your view in set stages, from 20,000km altitude right down to the closest zoom level of 8m but instead they allow you to zoom metre by metre.

Literally every area of the world has been charted, and as such even if you look out in to the middle of the Sahara desert or Antarctica they are all meticulously photographed. Of course these areas all look the same to the human eye from above, but it is still impressive that satellites have photographed every square inch of the globe.

There are search facilities built in to the application so you can quickly and easily locate a certain area, postcode or landmark and rather just giving you the imagery, Google Earth also highlights areas of interest. These can either consist of photographs, Wikipedia articles, information gathered from the Internet such as local business information or even representations of the buildings that you're seeing in 3D.

Rather remarkably you can flip the view around so that you're viewing the sky from your current position on the Google Earth map and explore the universe using exactly the same interface and it's at this point where the power of this application really does start to sink in. You are sat on your computer, using a free 12mb application and suddenly you can view any place on this Earth or if you'd prefer, take your pick of millions of stars and galaxies.... remarkable.

by: Chris Holgate

POST COMMENT

Ultimate Guidelines Dealing With Reduction Combined With Scrumptious Meals While Booking Airlines Fo Modest Yet Exceptional R & R Around The Bay Area Courtesy Of Discount Airfare Don't Reserve Bangalore Airline Tickets Without Taking Time To Find Out About These Tips On Ways To Hints For Buying Birmingahm, England Competitive Plane Tickets For A Most Amazing Breakout How to avail good deals on international flight booking? There's Always Time To Golf: Golf Courses Near Los Angeles Airport Getting England Bargain Plane Tickets And Enjoy A Sensational Breakout Planning A Conference In La? Options For Conference Venues Near Los Angeles Airport Park And Fly At The Los Angeles Airport Don't Book Bangalore Airline Tickets Before Learning How To Find Out About These Clues On How To Get Experiencing Direct flight Journey with Air Zimbabwe! An Beyond Compare Even Though Cut Rate City Of Counts Flight Bargain Plus Parcels Top Reasons To Birmingahm, England Competitive Airflights In Order To Have One Most Amazing Expediti