Oregon State University

Real-time Satellite Images

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Ask a scientist ...

Is there a satellite website where you can choose your own location and zoom right down to a street and see it in real time?
No. There are commercial satellites that allow you to see street level, and I do believe that google has just recently launched one. These satellites are in an orbit that is called Polar Orbiting, so they circle the earth from the North pole to the South pole at an altitude of 430 to 500 miles above the earth. From that distance they can see the bases on a baseball field, but it takes them about 1 and 1/2 hours to complete an orbit, so they are not always over your house. The weather satellites that you see on TV are in what is called a geostationary orbit, they orbit the earth at the equator at an altitude of 22,000 miles above the earth, from that distance they can not see street level details, but they are always over your house. The satellite that we use does not take pictures. We calculate a picture from the data that is collected, and this calculation is rather complex so we can't do real time. We lag behind the orbit about 1 or 2 hours.

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All images on this website are freely available to the public for educational and scientific use.
Website curator:
Jasmine S. Nahorniak
Last update: December 15 2008