Image copyright Google / Landsat
The Google satellite map allows you to view the Earth from the sky as if it were a single continuous picture that envelops the entire planet.
However, the new map is available on the free tools Google Maps and Google Earth is really a mosaic made up about one petabyte satellite image .
are more than 700 billion individual pixels , taken mostly from images taken by NASA satellite Landsat 8, launched into space in 2013.
“to put it in perspective, 700 billion pixels is 7000 times more pixels than the estimated number of stars in the Milky Way or 70 times more pixels than the estimated number of galaxies in the universe” , reported on its official Google Maps to announce the renewal of their satellite map blog.
But that’s not all.
to create this new mosaic needed 6 million hours of computing , said Elizabeth Davidoff, head Google Maps communications, told the BBC.
Work was distributed to 43,000 computers , which took a week.
Having worked with a single computer, Google would have had to start working in the thirteenth century to arrive in time to launch this week, told Davidoff.
the result of these incredible numbers is an atlas consists of images of greater precision and sharpness, colors more real and, last but not least, without clouds.
secret is in the Satellite
The previous version of Google maps used images taken by the predecessor of the satellite Landsat 8 .
at the time, Landsat 7 had the best space images, said Google Maps on your blog.
However, a hardware failure caused the photos taken after 2003 have visual flaws as diagonal lines. And the technology giant could do nothing.
Now, every time the Landsat 8 completes a trip around the Earth every 16 days, captures the double images Landsat 7 and better.
the millions of photos that Google used for atlases are available to the public and with them have been created from a project monitoring deforestation in the Amazon to a tool to predict epidemics of malaria.
Latin America before and after
“The new mosaic includes images clearer and sharper around the world “Davidoff said.
In Latin America in particular, he added, you can see the Andes and its surroundings “with Extra detail in texture “, which is also seen in cities such as Caracas and Buenos Aires, he said.
below you can see some of the before and after satellite images of Latin America available in Google Maps and Google Earth.
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