My Google Map Blog

Tesla has recently agreed to merge with Solar City. To help publicise the merger, Solar City recently published this YouTube Video about a solar installation using Tesla’s ‘power pack’ batteries that now powers the island of Ta’u in American Samoa.

In Google Earth we can see the solar array under construction:

Ta’u is not the first island to be powered by solar. The nearby Island of Tokelau has been powered by solar since 2013. Sadly, the imagery is a bit old (a recurring theme in this post) and we cannot see the solar panels. The Danish island of Samso claims to be the first island in the world to go 100% renewable, but we could not find any imagery of their wind turbines.

A common complaint about renewables such as solar and wind, is what to do when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Tesla solves this problem with batteries. But another island, El Hierro, one of the Canary Islands, uses pumped water storage combined with wind turbines.

Moving away from islands, we had a look at this Wikipedia list of the largest photovoltaic power stations in the world (over 100 MW). Solar has really taken off around the world in the last few years, and Google Earth imagery can’t keep up. The second on the list, Kamuthi Solar Power Project, was built in just a few months between June and September 2016 and no sign of it can be seen in current Google Earth imagery. Top of the list is Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, China, which can be seen in Landsat imagery when zoomed out, but as you zoom in to higher resolution satellite imagery, it disappears, as the high resolution imagery was captured before it was built.

Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, China.

We have put together this KML file which includes the above mentioned islands as well as the list from Wikipedia where coordinates are given.

The post Tesla powers an island appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we are having a look at how to make your very own Thanksgiving card in Google Earth. This is based on a card Frank created back in 2006 and the instructions come from last year’s Thanksgiving post.

Firstly, you need an image with your Thanksgiving greeting. The easiest is to simply find a suitable image by doing a Google image search for ‘Thanksgiving’. Keep in mind that there may be copyright restrictions on such images, so they should really only be for personal use. Alternatively, you can get a bit more personal by creating your own image. That way you can write your own unique message. Ideally, you want to end up with an image that is roughly the correct proportions for the location you want to display it and also has a transparent background. Keep in mind that to use transparent backgrounds you need to save the image as a .png or .gif. We used Microsoft Word to create the image then took a screen shot and used Gimp to give it a transparent background. We used some clipart from OpenClipart.org.

Next, you simply create an image overlay in Google Earth (click this icon on the toolbar). Adjust its size and location to suit and select your image to be shown.

If you wish to send your greeting to someone else, be sure to save the image overlay as a KMZ file, so that it includes the image in the file. KML files do not include images.

If you want to go all out, you could also decorate the sky, as we did for Halloween. Just download this file and replace the image in the overlay with your own Thanksgiving themed image.

An updated version showing how easy it is to do. See it for yourself in Google Earth with this KMZ file

We also came across this interesting post, which features a KML file exploring the history of Thanksgiving.

The post Creating Thanksgiving cards with Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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Google has just updated the ‘Voyager’ layer to Edition 3. As soon as you open Google Earth on your desktop you will see a window featuring the story of Saroo Brierly. We have featured Saroo’s story a number of times in the past. In summary, he got on a train as a child in India and got lost. He was subsequently adopted by a Tasmanian couple. When he grew up, he managed to find his original home and family with the use of Google Earth. See the new Google Earth Tour for the full story. (NOTE: you can keep the window from appearing by turning off the “Voyager” layer before you exit Google Earth).

Saroo wrote the book ‘A Long Way Home’ about his experiences. It has since been made into the movie ‘Lion’ opening in cinemas from November 25th, 2016. The film stars Dev Patel (of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ fame), Rooney Mara, David Wenham and Nicole Kidman.

The updated Voyager layer also contains two sub layers: 3D cities and Satellite imagery updates. The 3D cities layer is not worth bothering with, as it only shows a subset of recent additions to the 3D imagery. If you want a comprehensive map then rather use our KML file.

The ‘Satellite imagery updates’ layer is certainly interesting, but again, is far from comprehensive, representing most likely only a single update, probably in late October or early November. The imagery featured is from a wide variety of dates, but mostly August to October, 2016, but it is not complete even for those months. Cape Town, for instance, has imagery from October that is not shown in the layer.

The voyager layers were first added to Google Earth in celebration of its 10th anniversary in June last year. Edition 2 was released in September of the same year and this is the first update since then. Sadly, Google has removed both previous editions.

The post The story of Saroo Brierley now featured in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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Thank you to GEB reader Paul Moskowitz for bringing to our attention the fact that opening the flight simulator in Google Earth Pro automatically turns off the 3D buildings layer. The reason for this is that back in 2008 Google was concerned that showing 3D buildings in Flight Simulator mode would be a performance problem for some computers, so, with the release of Google Earth 4.3 they set the 3D buildings layer to be automatically disabled. At some point they reversed that decision, probably due to user complaints or the fact that computer performance has significantly increased since then, and they removed the setting from the standard version of Google Earth. However, it would appear that they forgot to do the same in Google Earth Pro. At the time, Google Earth Pro was a paid for product and thus was used only by people wanting specific features found only in Google Earth Pro. However, in January 2015, Google decided to make Google Earth Pro free and since then more and more people are using Google Earth Pro and ditching the standard version altogether. You can, however, have them both installed at the same time if you wish.

The result is that more people will be trying out the Google Earth Flight Simulator in Google Earth Pro, so we thought it would be a good time to relook at a workaround that Frank posted in 2008 for getting the 3D buildings back in Flight Simulator mode. These steps must be repeated each time you enter Flight Simulator mode:

1. Enter Flight Simulator mode – Select Tools->Enter Flight Simulator (Windows/Linux) or Options->Enter Flight Simulator (Mac)
   or Ctrl + Alt + A(Windows/Linux) or + Option + A (Mac)
   Optional: fly to a city which has 3D buildings (grab our KML map to find out where).

2. Hit SPACE to pause the flight simulator.

3. Open the Sidebar – Sidebar shortcut – Press Ctrl + Alt + B (Windows/Linux)
   or + Option + B (Mac) to bring up the sidebar.

4. Turn on 3D Buildings – Turn these on in the Layers pane in the lower left after the sidebar opens.

5. Turn Off Sidebar – IMPORTANT – before resuming the flight simulator, turn off the sidebar by hitting the sidebar shortcut from step 2.

6. Resume flight – Now you can resume flying the flight simulator by hitting the SPACE key and the 3D buildings should stay on for your current flight.

NOTE: – See GEB’s Tips on Using Flight Simulator.

The post 3D Buildings in Flight Simulator in Google Earth Pro appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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On November 14, 2016, the South Island of New Zealand experienced a 7.8 magnitude earthquake named the Kaikoura Earthquake after the town of Kaikoura near the quake’s epicentre. The affected region is mountainous with steep slopes and the earthquake resulted in a large number of landslides, including creating some landslide dams (a topic we have covered in the past).

The Landslide Blog has done a number of posts on the Kaikoura landslides (1, 2, 3 and 4). It also mentions this article, which shows a map of the locations of the landslides so far identified using Sentinel 2 imagery.

We thought it would be interesting to examine the sentinel 2 Imagery in Google Earth. The image in question has quite a lot of cloud cover, but in the gaps between the clouds we can see the scars of a large number of landslides. It must be noted that landslides appear to be common in the region, with many landslide scars being visible in older imagery, too. Here are a couple of ‘before and afters’ showing just how many landslides there were in some places.

After image: Copernicus Sentinel data, 2016.

After image: Copernicus Sentinel data, 2016.

We processed the Sentinel 2 imagery using GeoSage’s Spectral Discovery.

To explore the Sentinel 2 imagery for yourself using Google Earth download this KML file

The post The Kaikoura Earthquake Landslides appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

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