World satellite map online. Google Maps (Google Maps)

Many users are interested in online satellite maps, which provide an opportunity to enjoy a bird's eye view of your favorite places on our planet. There are a sufficient number of such services on the network, while all their diversity should not be misleading - most of these sites use the classic API from Google Maps. However, there are also a number of resources that use their own tools to create high quality satellite maps. V this material I will talk about the best satellite maps high resolution available online in 2017-2018, as well as explain how to use them.

When creating satellite maps of the earth's surface, both images from space satellites and photos from special aircraft are usually used, which allow photographing at a bird's-eye height (250-500 meters).

The highest quality resolution satellite maps created in this way are regularly updated, and usually the images from them are no more than 2-3 years old.

Most network services do not have the ability to create their own satellite maps. Usually they use maps from other, more powerful services (usually Google Maps). At the same time, at the bottom (or top) of the screen, you can find a mention of the copyright of a company for the demonstration of these cards.

Viewing real-time satellite maps is currently not available to the average user, since such tools are used primarily for military purposes. Users have access to maps, photos for which were taken over the past months (or even years). It should be understood that any military facilities can be deliberately retouched in order to hide them from interested parties.

Let's move on to the description of services that allow us to enjoy the capabilities of satellite maps.

Google Maps - high resolution view from space

Bing Maps - online satellite map service

Among online cartographic services of decent quality, you cannot pass by the service " Bing Maps” (“Bing Maps”), which is the brainchild of Microsoft. Like other resources I have described, this site provides fairly high-quality photos of the surface, created using satellite and aerial photography.

The functionality of the service is similar to the analogues already described above:

At the same time, using the search button, you can determine the online location of a particular satellite, and by clicking on any satellite on the map you will get brief information about it (country, size, launch date, and so on).

Conclusion

To display high-resolution satellite maps online, you should use one of the ones I listed network solutions. The most popular on a global scale is the Google Maps service, so I recommend using this resource to work with satellite maps online. If you are interested in viewing geolocations on the territory of the Russian Federation, then it is better to use the Yandex.Maps toolkit. The frequency of their updates in the relations of our country exceeds the same frequency from Google Maps.

Google Maps is a leader among modern mapping services that provide satellite interactive maps online. At least the leader in the field of satellite imagery and in the number of various additional services and tools (Google Earth, Google Mars, various weather and transport services, one of the most powerful APIs).

In the field of schematic maps, at some point, this leadership was “lost” in favor of Open Street Maps, a unique Wikipedia-style mapping service where each volunteer can enter data on the site.

However, despite this, the popularity of Google Maps remains perhaps one of the highest of all other mapping services. Part of the reason is that it is in Google Maps that we can find the most detailed satellite photos for the most extensive regions of any country. Even in Russia, such a large and successful company as Yandex cannot surpass the quality and coverage of satellite photographs, at least in their own country.

With Google Maps, anyone can view satellite photos of the Earth for free from almost anywhere in the world.

Image quality

The highest resolution images are usually available for the largest cities in the world in America, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Asia, Oceania. Currently, high-quality imagery is available for cities with more than 1 million inhabitants. For less major cities and other settlements, satellite images are only available in limited resolution.

Opportunities

Google Maps or "Google Maps" was a real discovery for Internet users and indeed for all PC users, giving an unheard-of and previously unseen opportunity to look at their home, their village, cottage, lake or river where they rested in the summer - from a satellite. To see it from above, from such an angle, from which it would be impossible to see it under any other circumstances. The discovery, the very idea of ​​giving people easy access to satellite photographs, fits harmoniously into the overall Google concept of "easy access to all users to any information on the planet."

Google Maps allows you to see from the satellite at the same time those things and objects that cannot be observed at the same time when observed from the ground. Satellite maps are different from regular topics, What's on simple maps colors and natural shapes natural objects distorted by editorial processing for further publication. However, all the naturalness of nature and shooting objects, natural colors, shapes of lakes, rivers, fields and forests are preserved in satellite photographs.

Looking at the map, one can only guess what is there: a forest, a field or a swamp, while on a satellite photo it is immediately clear: objects are usually round or oval in shape of a unique marsh color and there are swamps. Light green patches or areas in the photo are fields, while dark green are forests. With sufficient experience of orientation in Google Maps, you can even distinguish between coniferous forest or mixed: coniferous has a more brown tint. Also on the map you can distinguish specific broken lines, piercing the forests and fields of the vast Russian expanses - this railways. Only by looking from a satellite can one understand that railways affect the natural landscape that surrounds them much more than roads. Also, in Google Maps, it is possible to overlay maps with the names of regions, roads, settlements on a national scale and the names of streets, house numbers, metro stations on a city scale on a satellite image of an area or city.

Map Mode and Satellite View Mode

In addition to satellite images, it is possible to switch to the "map" mode, in which it is possible to view any territory on the Earth's surface or to study in detail the layout and location of houses in any more or less large city. In the "map" mode, it is especially convenient to plan movements around the city if you have already seen enough satellite views of your city.

The house number search function will easily point you to right house giving the opportunity to "look around" the area around this house and how you can drive up / approach it. To search for the required object, it is enough to type in Russian in the search bar a query like: "City, street, house number" and the site will show you the location of the object you are looking for with a special marker.

How to use Google Maps

To get started, open a location.

To move around the map, left-click on the map and drag it in any order. To return to the original position, press the centering button located between the four direction buttons.

To enlarge the map - click on the button "+" or roll the mouse roller when the cursor is over the map. You can also enlarge the map double click mice in the place you are interested in.

To switch between satellite, mixed (hybrid) view and map, use the corresponding buttons in the upper right corner of the map: Map / Satellite / Hybrid.

Google Maps is one of the most popular services today. It provides users with the opportunity to observe our planet (and not only) from a satellite online at high quality and in real time (the sights of the planet in). At some point, after all, the championship of the schematic map view was intercepted by the Open Street Maps application. Where everyone in the know can edit a Wikipedia-style map, but this does not change anything, and today Google Maps is the most popular online map service. The popularity of the cards of this company has been in the first place for many years due to the good quality of satellite images in any corner of the planet, even Yandex could not provide such quality in its homeland.

Google Maps Online

Google continues to improve its brainchild in the form of visualization of our planet, improving the quality and detail of surfaces. More recently, the company has improved its services using new satellite Landsat 8, which can photograph the surface of the planet Earth with a resolution of 15/30/100 meters per elementary point. The real-time satellite imagery database was only updated in 2013 before. At that time, the application used images taken by the Landsat 7 satellite, which is also known for introducing some bugs and crashes into the maps. To compare the quality of images taken by different satellites, pay attention to the screen below.

Images taken by different satellites

In the examples on the screen, you can see that the image of the new satellite shows not only improved detail of terrestrial objects, but also more natural colors. Google representatives announced that about 700 trillion pixels of graphic data have been spent on collecting a new generation of mosaics of the earth's surface. Almost 43 thousand of the most powerful computers in the Google cloud worked for a week on gluing pictures.

How to use Google Maps online

Anywhere in the world you can use Google Maps online in high quality using a tablet, mobile phone or computer. Just follow the link https://google.com/maps/ or use the built-in map below and you can find the country, city and even the way to the museum by specifying the desired search parameters. And for mobile devices, you can download a special application that is more convenient to use.

To find your way to a laundromat or cafe that you often visit - just enter the addresses in the program bar and you will no longer need to enter this data every time. At the same time, you can not only view the paved road to the institution, but also get acquainted with the information that relates to this institution, for example, opening hours, contact details, etc.

Let's use an example to use a map from Google from satellite 2018.

1. Go to the website or open the app on your mobile device.
2. You just need to point with the cursor or touch on the touch screen, and you can view the details of this site.
3. In order to find out the distance between cities, right-click on one of them and select "Measure distance" from the drop-down menu. Now the second point can be specified with the left mouse button. If necessary, the point can be dragged with the mouse to another location, the distance information will be updated.
4. To select the mode "Relief", "Bike paths", "Traffic jams" - select the menu sign (three bars) and press the desired option. If you are using Apple devices, click on the diamond icon with the layer and also on the desired option.
5. To take advantage of high quality 3D images, click on the square in the lower left corner. It will say "Satellite", if you need to return to map mode, press it again.
6. To select the Street View mode, drag the yellow man to the desired area of ​​the map, or simply enter the exact location in the query bar, preferably with a home address.
7. High-resolution Google Maps allows you to view streets in historical mode, i.e. how they have changed over time. To do this, throw the little man on the right place on the map. Select the clock icon and move the time slider to select the desired date.

Surprising Facts About Google Maps

Features and benefits of online maps in real time

From the first days of Google Maps have become a discovery for all users. They made it possible to look at the cards in a new way, to pay attention to this instrument in a new way. Everyone who accessed the Internet back in 2005 sought to immediately use online cards and see your city or country from a satellite.

It seems unthinkable, but today there is an opportunity to view other planets solar system in the Google Maps app!

Planets in Google Maps

To do this, go to the web version of the program and move the image of the Earth to the maximum with the mouse wheel. Other planets will appear on the left in the block, which you can select to view. There are all the planets of the solar system and a few more of their satellites. For example, Callisto is a moon of Jupiter. True, the pictures do not allow us to view other planets as closely and in detail as it happens with the Earth.

Google maps from satellite in 2018 will allow you to view the surface of the earth and settlements in excellent quality, which cannot be done using a regular map. When compiling paper and other versions of maps, natural colors, clear contours of the banks of rivers, lakes, coloring of areas of the earth, etc. color schemes descend, which makes us poorly oriented. Looking at the desert area on a regular map, one can only guess what kind of vegetation or terrain is there. Turning to Google Maps in real time, you can even see the color and shape of the fence at any address on another continent.

In contact with

For free observation of the Earth's surface and viewing satellite images online, you can use several applications. In Russia, two of them are the most popular: Google Maps and Yandex Maps. Both services boast good quality high-resolution satellite images of most countries.

Yandex maps is an online application from Russian developers, so the cities of Russia are more accurately worked out in it. It has a built-in functionality for viewing traffic congestion data (large settlements), demographic and geodata. In maps from Google, no less high-quality satellite images of the territory of the Russian Federation, but data on land plots and traffic are only available for the USA.

Watch a map of Planet Earth from a satellite online

Below you can see the Google map embedded on the site. For more stable operation of the plugin, we recommend using the Google Chrome browser. If you see an error message, then update the specified plugin, then reload the page.

Watch Google Earth from satellite, in real time online:

Another advantage of Google Maps is the presence of a client application for working with satellite images. This means that access to the service can be obtained not only through a browser, but also through a previously downloaded program. It has a lot more possibilities for viewing and studying satellite images, working with a three-dimensional virtual globe.

Google 3D satellite map (downloadable app, not online version) allows you to:

• use a quick search for the desired objects by name or coordinates;
• take screenshots and record high quality videos;
• work offline (preliminary synchronization via the Internet is required);
• use a flight simulator for more convenient movement between objects;
• save "favorite places" for quick movement between them;
• view not only the Earth's surface, but also images of other celestial bodies(Mars, Moon, etc.).

You can work with Google satellite maps through a client application or a browser. On the official page of the program, a plugin is available that allows you to use interactive map on any web site. It is enough to embed its address in the program code of the site. For display, you can select both the entire surface and a specific area (you will have to enter the coordinates). Management - using a computer mouse and keyboard (ctrl + mouse wheel to zoom, cursor to move) or using the icons indicated on the map ("plus" - zoom in, "minus" - zoom out, move with the cursor).

The Google Earth real-time service allows you to work with several types of maps, each of which reflects certain data on satellite images. It is convenient to switch between them “without losing progress” (the program remembers where you “were”). Available view modes:

• satellite landscape map (geographical objects, features of the Earth's surface);
• physical map(detailed satellite images of the surface, cities, streets, their names);
• schematic geographic map for a more accurate study of surface images.

A satellite image is automatically uploaded at the point of approach, so a stable Internet connection is required to work. For Google Earth to work offline, you need to download an application for Windows or another operating system. Its operation also requires the Internet, but only for the first launch, after which the program synchronizes all the necessary data (satellite images of the surface, 3D models of buildings, names of geographical and other objects), after which it will be possible to work with the received data without direct access to the Internet.