My Google Map Blog

The imagery from Google’s November 8th update is now available in historical imagery. A significant proportion of the imagery was not put into the default imagery, so was not accessible until now.

The location we will look at today is Pāhoa, Hawaii. The default imagery contains a mixture of images, with the most recent addition at first appearing to be cut out in rather odd shapes. But now we have the full original photo in historical imagery we can see that the reason for this is the large amount of cloud cover in the photo.

The reason the image was added at all is because of an ongoing lava flow from the nearby volcano Kilauea and Google have tried to strike a balance between the importance of up to date imagery with cloud cover, and older imagery of better quality. For more on the story, including pictures and video, see here. For more ground level pictures see here. To fly to the location in Google Earth, use this KML file.

Lava flow approaching Pāhoa, Hawaii.

If you look closer you can see wisps of smoke rising from the edges of the flow where it is burning the surrounding vegetation.

The post Hawaii’s Kilauea lava flows appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

The imagery from Google’s November 8th update is now available in historical imagery. A significant proportion of the imagery was not put into the default imagery, so was not accessible until now.

The location we will look at today is Pāhoa, Hawaii. The default imagery contains a mixture of images, with the most recent addition at first appearing to be cut out in rather odd shapes. But now we have the full original photo in historical imagery we can see that the reason for this is the large amount of cloud cover in the photo.

The reason the image was added at all is because of an ongoing lava flow from the nearby volcano Kilauea and Google have tried to strike a balance between the importance of up to date imagery with cloud cover, and older imagery of better quality. For more on the story, including pictures and video, see here. For more ground level pictures see here. To fly to the location in Google Earth, use this KML file.

Lava flow approaching Pāhoa, Hawaii.

If you look closer you can see wisps of smoke rising from the edges of the flow where it is burning the surrounding vegetation.

The post Hawaii’s Kilauea lava flows appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Yesterday we talked about large artwork using GPS tracks. Although the artists did travel to the locations involved in their artwork, the record they left, and thus the actual art, was digital rather than physical.

There are, however, some very big works of art that are visible in Google Earth. Here are a few of them.

Desert Breath by D.A.S.T Arteam.

This is the smallest and oldest, but has lasted well and can be seen in both current imagery as well as historical imagery. Read more about it in this post

Mundi Man or Eldee Man by Ando

Drawn in the Mundi Mundi Plains in Australia using a tractor, this can be seen in Google Earth historical imagery from 2002. Read more about it here.

Black Rock Desert by Jim Denevan

Drawn in the Black Rock Desert using trucks and GPS near the location of the Burning Man festival in Nevada. This is the largest of the three. It is visible in historical imagery from September 2010. Read more about it here.

To view them in Google Earth, download this KML file.

Do our readers know of any other artwork at this scale visible in Google Earth?

The post Large artwork in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.