Soon after the emergence of Google Maps, a short while after getting bored zooming in on their house in satellite view, some people began searching for satellite images of Earth forms and patterns which resembled letters of the alphabet - when viewed from above.
The first pareidolia sufferer that I can remember becoming hooked on discovering typefaces in nature is Rhett Dashwood. In 2009 Rhett published his Google Maps Typography, a collection of 'land formations or buildings resembling letter forms' all found on Google Maps from the satellite images of Victoria, Australia.
A couple of years later Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy, by now bored of looking for letters, began searching for numbers in satellite imagery. Having found the 10 decimal digits (0-9) they took the next logical step and created the Earth Clock. The Earth Clock (previously the Google Earth Clock) is an online digital clock which uses satellite imagery resembling numbers to display the current time where you live.
Now NASA, having become bored staring into the vast void of space, has also turned its attention towards searching for satellite views of Earth which resemble letters. Landsat satellites have been observing Earth from space for over 50 years. During that time NASA has found a number of locations around the world which, when viewed from space, resemble letters.
Using these locations NASA has created Your Name in Landsat. Type a name into Your Name in Landsat and you can observe your name spelled out in Earth features found in Landsat images. You can even download an image of your name spelled out in massive Earth letters by simply pressing the download button. Hover over the individual satellite images spelling your name and you can discover where in the world each giant letter can be found.
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