Terraserver
by Late Nite LeRoy
August 10, 2000
Ever have need of an aerial picture of your neighborhood? In High School, I remember renting a Piper Cub with pilot to get an aerial picture of the school building for the year book. But now with the Internet, it's a lot easier, and safer. All you need are the longitude and latitude of the location you need a picture of, and Microsoft's terraserver site will show you a satellite picture with resolution down to 3 feet.
The site URL is http://www.terraserver.com/ and can be navigated either with street addresses and zip codes or longitude and latitude readings for rural areas. Rand McNally highway maps all contain longitude and latitude as very small type up and down the outer sides of each map. This will give you a good approximation of where you want to look.
As I described in a prior column about GPS, the portable hand held units you can now get for under a hundred dollars in sports stores now deliver accuracy to 40 feet. I'm not sure if there might be some degree of unit calibration error or if the terraserver site is offset, but I found about a 700 foot discrepancy between the satellite picture and an actual GPS reading. Nevertheless, you'll get close on your first try and won't have to click more than frame or two N,S,E or West to find exactly what you're looking for.
Microsoft acquired satellite photos from both Russia and the US government. The date photos were take varies from the mid 1980's to late 90's. Southern California pictures show earthquake damage pinpointing the time to 1994. All I've looked at so far are in black and white, but I understand some are in color. The resolution is good, but does not live up to old urban legion of being able to read a license plate. All the highway shots show the tops of a lot of cars and trucks but the only license plates that would be facing up would have to be the Cadillac ranch west of Amarillo on Interstate 40. I haven't looked there yet.
Shots of Area 51 in Nevada recently triggered so many hits, it overloaded the servers for a while. I now need to find the GPS coordinates of Bohemian Grove in northern California. Maybe we can wee where the global elite make fools of themselves and worship stone owls.
Let me know if you find anything interesting. WE may post the URL here at 888WebToday for all to see.
--LateNiteLeroy
You may send LateNite email at: leroy@commutefaster.com
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