Google's GeoEye-1 Takes Its First Pictures

Kev92486 writes "I was scanning through my RSS feeds today and happened upon an article about Google's GeoEye-1 imaging satellite which launched on Sept 6. Intrigued as to what the quality of the image was like, I decided to check it out only to find that the first picture was actually of my college campus, Kutztown University (Pennsylvania).
I had to make sure I was reading the article correctly as Kutztown is not a very large or well known campus. I'm not sure as to why they chose Kutztown for their first pictures. I would be interested if anybody could provide some sort of insight as to what process was used to select the first test location. Was the satellite simply in a convenient orbit to snap pictures of Kutztown?" Update: 10/09 20:56 GMT by T : HotHardware has its own article up on GeoEye-1, if you'd like your words and pictures in the same place.

Re:What a letdown

[dfm3]

Yes, but the high resolution imagery currently on Google maps typically comes from areal photos, not from satellite imagery. The news here is that the images were taken from a satellite in orbit, not from a plane.

mirror

[Exstatica]

this is probably gonna hurt but here goes anyway http://mirrors.mednor.net/slashdot/10092008/geoeye-1-kutztown.jpg [mednor.net]

Re:What a letdown

[mcgrew]

Oops, mod that down. The picture in TFA isn't good, but one linked from TFS is big and sharp.

Re:What a letdown

[Anonymous Coward]

aerial

Re:I'll Tell You Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could explain this close up image [pcworld.com] of your campus? (It's from the lower right of the article's image)

For anybody interested in the close up image, wondering where it *actually* is (because it ain't in the article's image), take a gander here:

Google Maps (pops) [google.com]

The plane's actually sitting in a carpark in the western suburbs of Paris, France.

Re:Nice Football Field

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't tell you, season starts Saturday.

http://www.kutztown.edu/goldenbearnetwork/

not impressed with orbit

[FunkyELF]

Wikipedia says that the GeoEye-1 [wikipedia.org] was supposed to be in Sun-synchronus orbit [wikipedia.org]... but look at the shadow on the water tower

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Waiting for Green Bay

[Zadaz]

Could be any number of things. My farm in rural Iowa is at such a low resolution that it's difficult to make out large buildings. (And it's obviously reconstructed form false color images. Probably less than 30m resolution.

However a mile to the west there's a huge strip of very high resolution images. ~0.5m resolution. Why? It just so happens that there is a large wind farm going up in that strip of land. It seems that the wind farm company paid for a high resolution survey of the area and that just got added to the data pile. Until someone wants to see what yet another soybean farm looks like, I'm SOL. (Which is too bad because I'd really like to see how the crops are doing from a few thousand miles away.)

Re:What a letdown

[rockmuelle]

Well, it's not really news. If you understand the different data sources, it should come as no surprise that these images are not as good as the high-resolution aerial photos and as good as good satellite photos (think of the before/after tsunami photos)

Good aerial photos have a pixel resolution of 6 inches. Decent ones are 12 inches. GeoEye-1's resolution is 50 cm, or about 19 inches. 19 inches is good for working with large objects, but not useful for fine-grained measurements. (it will be fine for 99.9% of the apps Googlers develop)

For a good example of 6 and 12 inch data, look at the state of Indiana (in the US) in Google Earth. In 2005/6, Indiana re-imaged the entire state with aerial photos. The whole state is at least 12 inches and all metro areas are 6 inches.

I'll be really excited when we can get continually updated 6 inch data... My only concern is that with Google's dominance, we'll be stalled at 19 inches for a long time and people will start to think that's the best we can do.

-Chris

Re:not impressed with orbit

[NameIsDavid]

Is there something wrong with the angle? Sun-synchronous orbit means that each time the satellite appears over that same university campus, it will do so at the same time of day. So, unless you see multiple shadow angles implying that the image was taken over multiple passes and that the shadow angle changed with each pass, I don't see what's specifically unimpressive about the orbit. Can you explain your observation?

Re:Fairly Random

[Anonymous Coward]

The swath was chosen based on timing and that it would be fairly close to nadir.

I think you mean perigee [wikipedia.org] not nadir [wikipedia.org].

-jcr

Nope I meant nadir

The nadir angle is basically how far to the side the satellite is pointing from its ground track. The farther off nadir the more you're looking at the sides of buildings and trees vs. the top. You're generally off a bit, but anything above 30 starts to get useless for most things.

Re:What a letdown

[Nyeerrmm]

Why would Google's dominance have anything to do with the 50cm limit? That's a government restriction on what's available for civilian use. The wired article says that it actually is capable of ~40cm but NGA degrades the resolution before releasing it to Google or anyone else. I know of another spacecraft that had to be placed in a higher orbit in order to keep the resolution below the limits.

Since the US commercial space industry is effectively isolated by ITAR restrictions, but is still dominant overall for now, a US restriction basically leads to a world-wide restriction for everyone but other governments. A loosening of US regulation is the only real way to improve commercial space imagery in the short term, although if ITAR isn't loosened soon, the world's going to catch up and surpass the US anyway. But of course, saying you want to stop fighting international arms trade is about as easy as saying you want to make life easier for pedophiles or terrorists, and I can't see it passing anytime soon.

Re:Why are the parking lot lines visible?

[4D6963]

Basically a line in an image has frequency components perpendicular to the line that are evenly spread over the spectrum. If you line is 10 cm wide and that you have a resolution of 50 cm/pixel then the brightest parts of the line will be 5 times dimmer (with respect to the darker background) than the colour of the paint. So you'll still see the line, it'll just be greyer, blending in the surrounding greyness.

I thought that pic was one of the tanks!

[Gazzonyx]

You joke... if only you knew that at the top left, about another hundred yards further is a national guard post. They've got and old Abrams (at least I think it is) tank and a tracked anti-aircraft vehicle parked on the grass with signs that tell us students to keep of the tanks. No. Seriously. I'm currently a student at KU and I wish I were making up the part about 'keep off the tanks'... I've been meaning to steal that sign forever. It'd be wicked to put on the wall.

Re:Waiting for Green Bay

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that even if higher resolution pictures are taken, it's a single point in time, right? That's like monitoring your crops by looking up the word "Farm" in an encyclopedia.

Re:What a letdown

[Skapare]

For a good example of 6 and 12 inch data, look at the state of Indiana (in the US) in Google Earth. In 2005/6, Indiana re-imaged the entire state with aerial photos. The whole state is at least 12 inches and all metro areas are 6 inches.

Also see the entire country of Denmark. And it has better color correction than the state of Indiana. For example, Tivoli Gardens [google.com] and these strange neighborhoods [google.com].