Fun with Google Earth
(I'm not reeling with anger anymore, but still feeling pretty upset. Nothing "real" to post beyond that, but I do have a fun little post I was working on before my last one. Enjoy; I'll be back to normal soon, promise.)
If you have not experienced this fun little gadget, run, do not walk, to http://earth.google.com to download it. I've had it for a few months now, but have only recently begun to really play with it.
Let me show you some fun places I've found. Once you've downloaded it, try entering these coordinates:
Lady with the lamp: 40 41'21" N, 72 02'41" W. Zoom in close for a better view and to see her shadow.
George's house: 38 53'51" N, 77 02'9" W. According to Sightseeing with Google Satellite Maps, this was once fuzzed out of the satellite picture. Not sure why they added it back in, except maybe that everyone knows where it is anyway?
Similarly, check out the Naval Conservatory a bit northwest of there, around 38 55'21" N, 77 04'3" W. It's a big fuzzed out circle. That's where the VP lives. Guess they figured he's more valuable?
Going global now: 48 51'28.8" N, 2 17'41" E. Make sure to zoom in to an altitude of around 2000 feet to get a better view.
Now to one of my favorite places in the world: China. The bird's eye view of Tiananmen Square is spectacular. To see it, go to 39 54'9"N, 116 23'33"E. You can actually see people milling around if you zoom in to about 1500 feet. (To those of you who think this is a morbid place, do know that to the Chinese, it's always been and still is a place to go when you are sightseeing in Beijing. They haven't forgotten. But for most it's primarily a patriotic spot, like the Statue of Liberty is for us. If you really want morbid, zoom in to the little square building in the southern half of the "square". That's where Mao is entombed, and you can actually still see his body encased in glass if you ever visit in real life. Ugh.)
Just north of Tiananmen Square is Tiananmen Gate, the long red wall that you see (the word "tiananmen" literally means Heaven's Peace Gate), and north yet of that, in the area surrounded by the dark rectangle (a moat) is The Forbidden City, home of many of China's last emporers.
For the grand finale, go to 27 59'6"N, 86 55'30"E. It shouldn't be hard to guess this one. It's the biggie. Have fun zooming in and out of this one, and also tilting down. Did you ever think you'd get to see this so up close? I almost can't believe we can't see the prayer flags whipping around up there.
BONUS: For my college friends who were in InterVarsity (or anyone who may have been part of an IV chapter in an east-of-the-Mississippi college), most of you should recognize this: 45 58'39" N, 84 13'30 W. Heaven on earth.
If you have not experienced this fun little gadget, run, do not walk, to http://earth.google.com to download it. I've had it for a few months now, but have only recently begun to really play with it.
Let me show you some fun places I've found. Once you've downloaded it, try entering these coordinates:
Lady with the lamp: 40 41'21" N, 72 02'41" W. Zoom in close for a better view and to see her shadow.
George's house: 38 53'51" N, 77 02'9" W. According to Sightseeing with Google Satellite Maps, this was once fuzzed out of the satellite picture. Not sure why they added it back in, except maybe that everyone knows where it is anyway?
Similarly, check out the Naval Conservatory a bit northwest of there, around 38 55'21" N, 77 04'3" W. It's a big fuzzed out circle. That's where the VP lives. Guess they figured he's more valuable?
Going global now: 48 51'28.8" N, 2 17'41" E. Make sure to zoom in to an altitude of around 2000 feet to get a better view.
Now to one of my favorite places in the world: China. The bird's eye view of Tiananmen Square is spectacular. To see it, go to 39 54'9"N, 116 23'33"E. You can actually see people milling around if you zoom in to about 1500 feet. (To those of you who think this is a morbid place, do know that to the Chinese, it's always been and still is a place to go when you are sightseeing in Beijing. They haven't forgotten. But for most it's primarily a patriotic spot, like the Statue of Liberty is for us. If you really want morbid, zoom in to the little square building in the southern half of the "square". That's where Mao is entombed, and you can actually still see his body encased in glass if you ever visit in real life. Ugh.)
Just north of Tiananmen Square is Tiananmen Gate, the long red wall that you see (the word "tiananmen" literally means Heaven's Peace Gate), and north yet of that, in the area surrounded by the dark rectangle (a moat) is The Forbidden City, home of many of China's last emporers.
For the grand finale, go to 27 59'6"N, 86 55'30"E. It shouldn't be hard to guess this one. It's the biggie. Have fun zooming in and out of this one, and also tilting down. Did you ever think you'd get to see this so up close? I almost can't believe we can't see the prayer flags whipping around up there.
BONUS: For my college friends who were in InterVarsity (or anyone who may have been part of an IV chapter in an east-of-the-Mississippi college), most of you should recognize this: 45 58'39" N, 84 13'30 W. Heaven on earth.
posted by Andrea | 2:04 PM
9 Comments:
Okay I am totally taking my kid on a trip to China later! Thanks for the tips, Andrea!
Oh. My. Lord. My dad worked for IV when I was a kid and we went there every summer. I LOVE that place! THANK YOU!!
I lived in Heilongjiang for two years and when I looked for my city on Google Earth it wasn't identified. I wondered if the gov. blocked it out because it is an oil field. Have you noticed anything like that? Do countries get to edit what shows up in the maps?
cloudscome, I think a lot of stuff in China (and countries other than the U.S. or Canada) are not identified, especially the smaller cities. What city in HLJ were you in? My husband and I honeymooned in Harbin (to see the ice lantern festival!). When were you there? I lived in China for three years, between '93 and '96, though much further south than you, mostly in Jiangsu Province.
So you are probably familiar with Narnia too, eh? :)
Yes Yes Yes we used to take our picnic lunches there. We loved that place. It was Narnia for real. We loved the cook outs at Sandy Cove too. I still get nostalgic over sand in my hotdogs. Sigh.
I lived in Daqing, teaching English at the Teacher's College. We went to Harbin a lot on the weekends to get coffee and chocolate and Russian bread. It was 1983 - 85. I traced the train lines from Harbin to Anda and there is a big city near Anda which should be Daqing but there is no label on it. Chichihar is there, farther west. Daqing is an oil field, so all I can think of is they don't want it identified. ?
Were you an English teacher? Or other foreign expert?
I was an English teacher, three cities in three years: Wuhan, Suzhou, and Zhangjiagang (the last a very small town near Suzhou).
I don't know if it's a matter of not wanting it identified, although I do know of an area in Russia that is actually blurred out in the satellite pic (I can only imagine that they send up some sort of signal that interferes with the satellite image). In this case, I'm guessing it's more a case of the people who put together Google Earth not knowing enough about the "smaller" cities in China to put them on the map. Not that there is such a thing as a small city in China. Zhangjiagang was the geographic size of the town I live in, which IS in Google Earth, but has a population of probably a quarter to half a million.
Picnics at sandy cove... I just had to roll around in nostalgia for a moment... SIIIIIIGH. And watching the boats and the water at Gnome Rock...
Don't get me started talking about all the memories rushing me from CC... someone is playing "It only takes a spark.." on a guitar and we are sitting in front of the fire after a pooh reading... We are running down the path from the Point, late for dinner, our sneakers wet from falling in the lake... it's my turn to ring the bell for lunch... we are fishing off the dock and catching snakes in the grass... Of course all my memories are from a 10 year old kid, so you may see it differently! :) But that place IS heaven.
Daqing is a pretty large city, bigger than Anda and Chichihar. When you search for it by name another city down south on Hainan Island comes up. So I am thinking the PRC is actively hiding it, or they have changed the name... I remember it being very well known all around China. When we talked with people on the trains they always knew about it because it was famous for oil and there was a slogan "Learn from Daqing" that was thrown around in the push for modernization, late 70s & early 80s. Andrea, you didn't happen to go over with ELIC, did you? That's how I got there.
I am totally jealous that you got to see Cedar Campus as a 10-year-old, cloudscome! I am still determined that when mine are a little bigger, we will start going to family camp, even if it means we have to camp for a few years just to get on the waiting list!
I didn't go with ELIC, though I did meet some teachers from that organization. I was with ESEC (aka ESI, now known as teachoverseas.org. Yes, .org. I guess so people will go find them online, that's why :) ). ESEC is a bit less known, but from what we were told in training, it was the first openly Christian organization to gain access to China. I loved it, and even went back with them for a short two-month stint with my oldest daughter when she was three a few years ago.
Google allows countries to "blur out" certain areas where sensitive information might be located. I have no idea how this works and I can't even verify if it's true, or just something someone said.
Some places may also not have satellite images yet. I went to the same school in Honolulu for thirteen years (K-12) and only recently did it show up on Google Maps. Prior to that, it was all fuzzed out. I'm pretty sure that Google has to schedule time on the satellites (which they did when the shit hit the fan in NOLA). So some of the lesser-known locations around the world may be really low-priority.
As for countries sending out satellite-blocking signals, it's not feasible for a number of reasons.
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