I was amazed out how close you can zoom in on some houses in some urban areas with satellite mapping and I wondered, has anything interesting been caught and noticed through satellite mapping? Like a large outdoor wedding or pot farming or a bunch of police cars surrounding a crime scene or a massive car accident or I don’t know…whatever odd event you could deduce from an odd satellite picture? Surely somebody has happened accross something freakish or newsworthy or even private this way. No?
I remember listening to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell me on NPR and they described how nude sun bathers have been caught on such sites. I’m at work, so I can’t/won’t google it.
I remember hearing this on the radio awhile back, during senior prank season. I’m not sure if it’s a hoax or not…
Probably not appropriate for work: Google Maps Catches Sophisticated High School Football Field Prank
Enjoy!
Now that I think about it, the one I thought I heard on the radio had do do with something on the roof of a school for a senior prank.
Well, there’s that part of Sydney, Australia, where you can zoom in so far that you can tell what tartan the picnickers’ blankets are… unfortunately (or possibly fortunately, depending), none of them are nude.
I seem to remember a thread of an airplane being photographed, with banter about weather it was a missile, a plane, or superman.
For those not wanting to click on the link, it’s a 50 meter by 10 meter cock, with 15 meter balls of dead grass on a football field.
Here’s one of a Lancaster bomber (of WW2 vintage) caught on Google Earth:
Some net sites are saying you can see a lake of sewage in Baghdad.
Just a nitpick, most, if not all, of the high res photos on Google are taken by aircraft, not satellites.
Well, not from a satellite, and probably not that interesting to anyone else, but I did manage to find myself on Google Maps Street View.
Yeah, it’s not all that clear, but based on that and a couple other views, there’s enough for me to be able to tell it’s me.
Dude, gotta tell ya - this is so cool!!
Turn around and smile, then! 
Actually, there’s some controversy about recognisable people in Google Street View. I believe that the Privacy Commissioner of Canada would not allow Street View of Canadian places until Google could guarantee that no-one visible would be recognisable.
Nice job, Troy!
I hadn’t thought about Iraq… did they disable satellite reconaissance sites for it during times of actual war?
If they disabled it, thet would be obvious: a blank in the map. Far more effective would be to simply leave pre-war images in place and not tell anyone.
The current Google photo of our house shows Fetchund’s pickup pulled up to the little garden we installed a few years ago. Given shadows and all, it’s a fair bet that the two of us are there shoveling compost out of the truck and into the garden. It’s not very clear, but I thought it was pretty cool.
You can see my car in the parking lot of our old apartment building in Hamilton, too. I think it’s neat!
Besides the two above-linked sites, there is also the google earth blog;
And of course the Google Earth Community forums;
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0
And Google Street View sightings:
There is SO MUCH to waste your time with, it’s incredible. I have literally spent hours at a time with the Community layers on in Google Earth, just seeing what people have linked to. I particularly like the visible shipwreck collection and the airplane collections.
HERE’s a big beached boat.
I asked about it here on the Dope awhile ago. The only thing cool about it is that I found it just by browsing - and I’m curious as to why it’s there.
It’s not available everywhere, but maps.live.com has 'Bird’s eye View" available. The picture is taken from an airplane or helicopter at pretty close range at about a 45 degree angle. You can turn the picture to be viewed from 4 different directions.
I could tell from the different items on my patio at what stage the renovation of my house was in (post-Katrina) and the time the photo was taken within a few weeks (January '07).
They caught my roommate walking to work on our block.