So I just got this Google earth thing on my computer. its so totally addictive!!! you can actually see sattelite pictures of Area 51(theres not much happening there but its just the fact that its Area 51)
Has any1 seen anything cool on it???(seriously i need something else to look at theres only so many times you can zoom in on ur own house without getting bord)
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
Look a little west of Area 51. There at the bottom of Walker Lake. That is the Hawthorne Army Depot. If you tell me when, I will go out and shake the tree in my front yard so you can tell which one it is. Although there isn't another tree for 72 miles.
Posted by BaoQingTian (Member # 8775) on :
Damien....after I found out about Google Earth about 6 months ago, one of the first places I looked was Area 51. I saw this special on the Discovery channel about it a couple weeks ago where they talked about it. It was sweet.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Yeah, I saw that, Bao. It really is fascinating how much private citizens have been able to deduce about that place, how much they can't figure out, and how many crazies there are.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
A friend of mine wrote a very entertaining song about Groom Lake. Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
I just had it do a route for me to a store. Then it let's you "drive" the route. Very cool!
Posted by enochville (Member # 8815) on :
I am not sure if Artemisia was joking or not, I think so, but you never know. Anyway, I thought it might be informative to make sure that everyone is aware that those are not live satellite photos. They were taken many months ago.
One interesting trivia, is that the world map is centered on Lawrence, KS, which is my town because one of the guys that worked on the project graduated from KU.
Posted by zitiiixi (Member # 9222) on :
Ketchupqueen...How do you know Ted?
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata: Look a little west of Area 51. There at the bottom of Walker Lake. That is the Hawthorne Army Depot. If you tell me when, I will go out and shake the tree in my front yard so you can tell which one it is. Although there isn't another tree for 72 miles.
I haven't actually used google earth before. Is it actually somewhat realtime? Pretty much all of Google's past satelite map services have been previously taken.
Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :
It sure didn't look realtime to me. At least my neightborhood is still showing a building that got razed a couple of weeks ago.
Posted by mtg101 (Member # 9224) on :
I've got Google earth on my phone! Actually it's kinda scary - if I can get satellite images this good on my phone... what can the government do?
Anyway... if you've got a phone that can do Java, browse over to google.com/glm on your phone to have a look.
Posted by MandyM (Member # 8375) on :
OK I was really curious so I downloaded it. These images you guys are looking at are more than 3 years old. I moved into my house 3 years ago and my street isn't even here yet. The school down the street that has been open now for a year and a half is still farmland. I am so disappointed!
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
You want to see something interesting? Check out the Pentagon. Clear as day. The White House. Picture perfect. Capitol Hill. You can reach out and touch it. 1 Observatory Circle (Dick Cheney's Vice Presidential Residence). Obscured. Talk about an "undisclosed location".
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
I've been gone all day. Yes, I was joking. In more ways than one. They are old photos. In many cases really old ones. And, they are often retouched. I was kind of making fun of the comment about there not being much happening at Groom Lake. If there were, you would never know. I was also joking about 72 miles to the next tree. It is only 60.
Most of the recent R&D activity is at the Tonopah AFB and you won't even see that on the photo. I remember when they were just about ready to announce the Stealth Fighter, they started testing over a broader streach of desert. They would fly over the Hawthorne Depot, usually in the early evening. If we were sitting in the back yard, we would just hear a Whoosh and see a shadow disapearing over the tree line. It was kind of spooky, until they made the announcement and we knew what we had been (not) seeing.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
I love Google Earth! We take trips with it sometimes. I visited Baghdad, Moscow (you can clearly see the Kremlin, St. Basils, etc.), and the capitals of Europe. The pyramids are also pretty cool. I like to look at the swath of land around the old Chernobyl nuclear reactor. It's very green. I looked up the houses of all my friends whose addresses I have, (including yours, D), but you have to know the neighborhood to find the exact right house. The address search only takes you within 75 feet or so. I found what I think may be my car in the parking lot of the building I used to work in. Grisha and I went one day to visit the Birmingham Zoo. You can clearly see three rhinos and a hippo in the picture. The elephants must all be inside.
My house is visible on the level of individual trees which I can identify. Some places, though, are just a green blur at the house level. I will be glad when they have higher resolution pictures everywhere you look. Most big cities have them fairly good down to about 1000 ft. eye level, but small towns are just a blur. My college town is impossible to see anything in, and the same is true for Gainesville, FL.
Most of the cool travel destinations of the world are shown in pretty good detail, though. Try going to the edge of the grand canyon, and using the tilt function. You get a giddy feeling of the great depth there.
I really wanted to find meteor crater in Arizona, but I never could locate it.
I wish they would make it where two or more people could be together online looking at the same spot on Google Earth, or at the least where we could easily send each other locations (without tedious typing in of coordinates). It would be cool to be able to go on virtual trips together more easily. Posted by Cashew (Member # 6023) on :
It looks amazing when you start off from a place with good detail, getting as close as you can to start with, and then hit the zoom out button all the way up. It must be as close as most of us will ever get to an astronaut's blast off view!
Posted by calaban (Member # 2516) on :
Check out Pearl Harbor. and the naval docks in Norfolk, Virginia.
Posted by Pelegius (Member # 7868) on :
I was annoyed that most of the places I visited last summer did not show except as blurred images. Rhodós, Ku?adas?, etc. Only Rome and Athens showed up.
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