Spies in the Sky - Satellites of the Cold War

US Satellite image of Havana, Cuba 1966

Space From Space's Historic Declassified Satellite Image Gallery allows you to step into the vantage point of Cold War intelligence analysts, exploring the world as it was seen from orbit decades ago.

Since the 1960's U.S. spy satellites have quietly orbited hundreds of miles above the Earth, capturing images that would never be seen by the public - until their declassification. Operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in partnership with the CIA and U.S. Air Force, these missions were part of an unprecedented intelligence effort during the Cold War. The goal was simple but urgent: to monitor military installations, track missile development, and keep a close watch on global hotspots.

The Historic Declassified Satellite Images Gallery showcases more than 500 interactive satellite photographs captured between 1960 to 1984, giving modern audiences a rare glimpse at the geopolitical tensions of the era. The imagery comes from four major reconnaissance programs: CORONA, ARGON, GAMBIT, and HEXAGON (nicknamed “Big Bird”), each designed for specific intelligence-gathering tasks.

Click on any image in the gallery and you’ll open an interactive map viewer. Here you can zoom in, pan across, and explore the selected image in remarkable detail - just as intelligence analysts might have done during the Cold War. The gallery of declassified images can be filtered by Satellite Variant (the four reconnaissance programs), Date Range and Location. 

Space From Space’s gallery is a time machine in pixels and film grain. Whether you’re a historian, a student of geopolitics, or simply curious about the hidden chapters of the 20th century, these images offer an extraordinary window into a world once seen only from space, and only by a select few.

Average Earth 2018

Johannes Kroeger has created an interactive map which shows the average cloud cover across the world in 2018. The map shows the medium cloud cover experienced at every location on Earth based on information taken from daily satellite images.

To create the Average Earth from Space 2018 interactive map Johannes analyzed the per-pixel median color in the daily images of the satellite-based Soumi VIIRS sensor for the whole year of 2018. The result is a very beautiful map which provides a reasonable picture of where you can expect to experience cloudy days around the world on any average day. It is also a map which makes it very easy to find the locations of the world's major deserts.

You can read more about how the map was made and view many different projections of the Average Earth from Space 2018 map on Johannes' blog.

Viewing Real-Time Satellite Imagery

You can now view and download near real-time full-resolution satellite imagery from NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. At NOAA's Imagery & Data website you can view a number of interactive maps which provide you with access to satellite imagery of Earth taken in the last 24 hours.

The Western Hemisphere map allows you to view the latest 24 hour satellite imagery of the Western Hemisphere, while the Global Archive map allows you to view satellite imagery of the whole Earth. Both these maps include a timeline feature which allows you to see the latest satellite imagery animated on top of an interactive map.

As well as these two maps which allow you to view and download NOAA's latest satellite imagery, the Imagery & Data website includes NOAA's Image of the Day. This feature provides a close-up view of some of the latest significant weather and environmental events taking place around the world. The website also provides a link to NOAA's Historic Events, which looks at satellite imagery of historic storms, floods, fires, and other global events.

Real-Time Satellite Movies

The Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch has released a new mapping tool which allows you to create short animated movies of the Earth using the latest satellite imagery from GOES-16 and Himawari-8.

The RAMMB Slider uses the latest available imagery from both satellites to allow you to create small animated movies of the Earth. Slider includes the option to select archived imagery if you want to animate imagery from an earlier date. The application also includes options to select different types of imagery from the two satellites and a range of controls to adjust the speed and type of animated movie.

GOES-16 is in geostationary orbit over the Earth’s Western Hemisphere. It therefore provides great satellite imagery of the Americas. Himawari-8 is in geostationary orbit at 140.7 degrees East. It provides near real-time imagery of Australia, Japan and eastern China.

An Overview of Planet Earth

When astronauts first look down on Earth from outer space they often experience what is called the 'overview effect'. Seeing the whole of the Earth from above can inspire a deeper realization of both the beauty and fragility of this planet we call home. The Daily Overview hopes to inspire just a little of that effect by providing you with daily aerial images of Earth.


The Daily Overview includes some truly amazing aerial imagery of planet Earth. The collection includes recent satellite imagery, such as an astonishing shot of hundreds of abandoned cars which were damaged by Hurricane Harvey. This is the latest image to appear in the site's daily feed. Just scroll down the feed to view hundreds of other amazing views of planet Earth.

The Juxtapose section of the Daily Overview is also worth a visit. In this section two aerial views of the same location, which were taken at different times, are shown side-by-side. A slider control allows you to switch between each of the paired images. In this way you can compare images of the Fukushima nuclear power plant (before and after it was hit by a tidal wave), the location of Burning Man (during the festival and after the clean-up) and an overview of Dutch tulip fields (after planting and in full bloom).

NASA's Updated Worldview

NASA has updated the EOSDIS Worldview interactive map to make it easier to find satellite imagery for recent natural events around the world. It allows you to quickly find NASA satellite imagery for natural events which can be seen from space, such as hurricanes, wildfires, icebergs, algal blooms and volcanic eruptions.

Links to the imagery of recent natural events can be found under the 'Events' tab in the map sidebar. The map's URL updates when you move the map, which means it is easy to share links to the  imagery for specific recent events. For example here are links to imagery of Hurricane Maria, the Agung Volcano in Indonesia and the recent iceberg which broke from Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf.

The events listed in the sidebar are only the ones available in the current map view. If you can't see an event try zooming out so that more of the Earth is visible on the map. Sometimes cloud cover might result in no imagery being available for the most recent events. It can sometimes help to look under a different date.

Before & After Irma

The Washington Post has used satellite imagery from before & after Hurricane Irma to show the scale of the destruction caused by the tropical storm in the Carribean and in Florida. Before and After Hurricane Irma uses high resolution satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe to provide an aerial view of just a few of the areas devastated by the storm.

NOAA has also released an interactive map which includes aerial imagery of Florida taken since the storm. Hurricane IRMA Imagery uses aerial imagery captured on Monday and Tuesday. The map includes post-Irma aerial imagery for much of the Florida Keys. The map also has imagery along the west coast of Florida, from Naples up to Punta Gorda.

Live Satellite Images of the Earth

I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked whether I know any maps with real-time satellite imagery of the Earth. The short answer is that we aren't quite there yet. There is no map that can show you real-time satellite imagery of the whole Earth. However there are websites that can show you satellite imagery which was taken just a few hours ago.

NASA and USGS' Landsat 8 completes an entire picture of the world every 16 days. Mapbox's Landsat-live map actually uses the latest Landsat imagery to provide one of the most up-to-date satellite maps of the whole Earth.

Landsat-live uses the latest Landsat 8 satellite imagery to provide a near real-time satellite view of the Earth at 30 meter resolution. Because the map uses the most recent Landsat 8 satellite imagery many locations around the world will be affected by cloud cover. If you find your town is obscured by clouds you can always return to the map in 16 days time to see if the next pass of Landsat 8 has provided clearer imagery.


Japan's Himawari-8 satellite is in stationary orbit over New Guinea where it captures some truly amazing imagery of the Earth. Every day the satellite captures imagery of the western Pacific, Australia, and parts of Asia, Antarctica & Alaska.

There is no live feed from Himawari-8 but you can view time-lapse animations of the latest Himawari-8 satellite imagery on Himawari-8 Real-time Web. Himawari-8 Real-time Web includes views of Earth that were actually taken today. You can also use the calendar to view historical imagery from Himawari-8 for any other date.


You can also view some of today's imagery of Earth captured by Landsat 8. NASA's FarEarth Observer displays near-real time imagery from Landsat 7 and Landsat 8.

Using the menu to the right of the map you can select to view recordings of the Earth which were captured today. As the recordings play you can see the moving imagery of the Earth that was captured by Landsat 7 or 8. The small inset map shows you the moving position of the satellite at the time of the recording as the satellite orbits the Earth.

An Oblique View of Colorado

The Atlantic has created a marvelous oblique satellite view map of Denver and the Colorado Rockies. The map is only possible because of a rare satellite image captured by WorldView-3.

DigitalGlobe's WorldView-3 satellite is equipped with a high resolution sensor. The sensor is capable of capturing the usual straight down satellite images of the Earth but can also capture high resolution oblique views of Earth. The Atlantic has taken one such oblique satellite view of Colorado and used it to create a Leaflet map.

The map allows you to zoom-in on details in this beautiful view of Colorado. The Atlantic article accompanying the map points out where you can look in the image to find Denver, Crested Butte and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. It is a shame that the Atlantic didn't use the Leaflet Hash plug-in with the map. This would have allowed the map's users to link and share some of their favorite finds in this WorldView-3 oblique view of Colorado.

Watch Las Vegas Grow from Space

Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas (While Water Supplies Last) is a great visualization of the development of Sin City as seen from space. To create this animated map of Las Vegas' growth ProPublica processed 40 years of Landsat imagery.

The purpose of the map is to show how the city's water consumption has grown in conjunction with the city's expanding footprint. If you use the timeline beneath the map you can animate through the satellite images and see how the city has spread further and further out into the surrounding desert. Check-out how Lake Mead in particular seems to have visibly shrunk in size in just the last decade.

The map was created as part of ProPublica's superb Killing the Colorado interactive, which explores how man is engineering the death of this great American river.


You can also explore the rapid growth of Las Vegas over time on Time's Timelapse map. Timelapse allows you to create a timelapse sequence from satellite images (from 1984 to 2012) for anywhere on Earth.The application comes with a number of default views that allow you to view timelapse animations of satellite images showing the sprawling growth of Las Vegas, the building of Dubai, the shrinking of the Mendenhall Glacier and the drying-up of Lake Urmia.

Timelapse can be a little hard to navigate. You need to scroll down the page a little until the 'Explore the World' link appears in the header element at the top of the page. Click on the 'Explore the World' link and you can then choose from any of the default satellite animations or search for any location in the world.

Open Aerial Imagery

The OpenAerialMap has been reborn. Between November 2007 and December 2008 OpenAerialMap provided a collection of open-sourced aerial imagery. Unfortunately some problems with hosting and licensing caused the first iteration of OpenAerialMap to close in 2008.

Now however Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) has restarted the OpenAerialMap project. OpenAerialMap will provide a central repository for imagery from satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other aircraft. At the moment the map is a little sparse. There is quite a bit of aerial imagery in and around Kathmandu. If you search for Finland and zoom in on Helsinki you might be able to find a few more open aerial images.

Hopefully the huge growth in drone mapping in the last few years means that the time for a collection of open aerial imagery is here and HOT will be able to make a success of the new reborn OpenAerialMap.

The Landsat 8 Cloud Cover Map

In March  the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA began releasing Landsat 8 satellite imagery as a data-set on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Landsat on AWS provides free access to Landsat 8 satellite imagery. Landsat on AWS includes all Landsat 8 imagery from 2015 and a selection of cloud-free scenes from 2013 and 2014.

Every day new Landsat 8 scenes are made available, often within hours of production. The new 2015 scenes includes satellite imagery that contains cloud cover. Landsat Cloudcover is a CartoDB map showing cloud cover estimates for LandSat satellite photography sites globally.images across the world.

The choropleth layer shows the average percent of cloud cover that might obscure the image capture process.


Landsat is a partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA that creates moderate-resolution (30 meter) satellite imagery of the Earth's land surface every 16 days. The imagery has been free to use since 2008. Now, thanks to AWS, developers can also avoid the cost of hosting the data.

An informative CartoDB animated map provides a nice visualization of how Landsat 8 Completes an Entire Picture of the World Every 16 Days. The map uses the new AWS Landsat data-set to show how Landsat captures fresh satellite imagery of the Earth's entire land mass over the course of 16 days.


If you want to explore the latest Landsat imagery in more detail you can view the newest imagery on Mapbox's Landsat-live. Landsat-live uses the latest Landsat 8 satellite imagery to provide a near real-time satellite view of the Earth at 30 meter resolution.

Because the map uses the most recent Landsat 8 satellite imagery many locations around the world will be affected by cloud cover. If you find your town is obscured by clouds you can always return to the map in 16 days time to see if the next pass of Landsat 8 has provided clearer imagery.

Landsat Satellite Imagery on AWS

The big mapping news this week was the release of Landsat 8 satellite imagery as a data-set on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Landsat on AWS provides free access to Landsat 8 satellite imagery. This is great news for map developers who can now use Landsat 8 imagery without the cost of downloading and storing Landsat data.

Landsat is a partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA that creates moderate-resolution (30 meter) satellite imagery of the Earth's land surface every 16 days. The imagery has been free to use since 2008. Now, thanks to AWS, developers can also avoid the cost of hosting the data.

An informative CartoDB animated map provides a nice visualization of how Landsat 8 Completes an Entire Picture of the World Every 16 Days. The map uses the new AWS Landsat data-set to show how Landsat captures fresh satellite imagery of the Earth's entire land mass over the course of 16 days.


If you want to explore the latest Landsat imagery in more detail you can view the newest imagery on Mapbox's Landsat-live. Landsat-live uses the latest Landsat 8 satellite imagery to provide a near real-time satellite view of the Earth at 30 meter resolution.

Because the map uses the most recent Landsat 8 satellite imagery many locations around the world will be affected by cloud cover. If you find your town is obscured by clouds you can always return to the map in 16 days time to see if the next pass of Landsat 8 has provided clearer imagery.

The Landsat Download Map

Libra is a new map tool from Development Seed and Dauria Geo which allows you to browse, find and download satellite imagery. Using Libra you can search and sort open Landsat data by date, location and cloud cover. Find some satellite imagery that you like and you can download it and use it in your own maps.

Libra provides a really neat and easy to use interface for sorting and downloading from more than 275 Terabytes of open Landsat imagery. There are no restrictions on the use of Landsat open data and it can be used or redistributed as you require. Each circle on the Libra map represents the number of available images at that location. You can filter the available images by date, cloud cover percentage and by sun azimuth angle.

Satellite Tracking with Google Maps

Satellite Finder uses the Google Earth browser plug-in to help you quickly find the direction to an orbiting satellite from any location.

Using Satellite Finder you can search for an address or just click on the globe to show your current location. You can then select the satellite you wish to view by selecting its name from a list, sorted by continent. The line of sight to the satellite is then displayed on the map. 


ToriSat is an amazing satellite tracking website that allows anyone to track satellites on Google Maps, in the Google Earth Browser plug-in and even in Google Street View.

The Google Map view shows the path of the satellite around the Earth and the Google Earth option allows you to view the path of the satellite as if you were looking down from space. What really impresses me, however, is the Street View option that allows the user to view the satellite superimposed on top of Google's Street View imagery.

The Street View option is really useful as it shows the elevation of the satellite from your point of view and provides a great guide to where you should be looking in the night sky.


Real Time Satellite Tracking lets you track any satellite live on Google Maps.

The application allows you to select any orbiting satellite and view its current position on a Google Map. If you zoom in on the satellite you can actually watch its animated track as the satellite orbits the Earth.  

View NASA Satellite Images on Google Maps

Arctic.io has created a Google Map to portray the daily satellite images of the Arctic provided by NASA. Satellite images of the Earth are generated every day by NASA and you can view them on the Arctic.io Observations map.

Arctic.io Observations overlays each of the daily NASA Arctic mosaic images on top of a Google Map. The map includes a simple calendar navigation aide that allows the user to view past NASA mosaic satellite images. Just mouse-over the date button to select a different date's image.

The map also includes a number of other interesting overlays to view on the map as well as the option to view the daily NASA satellite images for the rest of the world.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

Create Your Own Aerial Imagery Map

MapKnitter is a free and open source tool for aligning and creating maps from overhead images.

The tool allows anyone to take a single aerial image or a series of aerial images and align them, with the help of Google Maps satellite view. Images maps created with MapKnitter can be exported in GeoTiff, TMS/OpenLayers, and JPG formats.

You can explore maps created with the tool by location and the most recent maps are also featured on the home page of MapKnitter.

The Big Blue Marble on Google Maps

Earth Snapshot

Earth Snapshot is a website dedicated to the observation of the Earth. The site posts daily satellite images and provides information on storms, hurricanes, fires and meteorological phenomena.

The website includes a map created with the Google Maps API and satellite images from the Envisat satellite. The map also includes map markers to show the location of the last 100 articles on Earth Snapshot.

The articles take a closer look at the most interesting of the latest satellite images. The map markers are categorised to indicate if the related article concerns the weather, environment or a fire etc.

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View GeoEye Images with Google Maps

Geofuse - GeoEye Map

The GeoFuse GeoEye Map allows you to explore GeoEye satellite imagery on Google Maps. You can search for any location in the world and view the available satellite imagery from GeoEye directly on the map.

The current satellite images for any map view are listed in the map sidebar, with information about when the image was taken. You can click on any selected satellite image to get further details, such as which satellite the image is from and what the conditions were like at the time of its capture.

It is also possible to download the foot print data resulting from a search and to get a unique URL for each search.

Via: Mapperz

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Real Time Satellite Tracking on Google Maps

Real Time Satellite Tracking
Wow! This website lets you load any satellite and track it live on Google Maps. Have a look at the screencast below to get an idea of what it looks like.


Real Time Satellite Tracking from Keir Clarke on Vimeo.

The site shows all satellites as seen in the sky above an elevation of 5°. Satellite debris is not displayed. The map also comes with a number of options, to see the route of the satellite as a line on the map, to view the satellite's footprint, or to view the satellite's name rather than an image.

Via: kindaspatial

Also See

When Satellites Collide - View a Google Earth plug-in simulation of a recent satellite crash.

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