New technology at UW-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center now allows Google Earth users to access the most recent high-quality satellite images about an hour after they are taken.
According to SSEC scientists, the technology is also unlike other Google Earth satellite images because the images show the natural colors of the Earth's surface.
Liam Gumley, a UW-Madison researcher, said the university has been working with Google Earth for about a year and does not choose which images to send to Google Earth from its two satellites.
According to SSEC's website, high-resolution satellite images of the United States come from an Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer and coarser resolution images of more of the globe are generated from a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, which are circling the earth.
Gumley said the satellites have imaging sensors that act similar to digital cameras. As the satellites circle the earth about once every 100 minutes, they are continuously acquiring images of whatever's below,"" he said.
At the same time, the satellites are continuously transmitting image data to any ground station that is listening.
""We happen to have several antenna here at Space Science that receive that data,"" Gumley said. ""We decode it, we process it and we turn it into the pictures you can see on [our] website.""
Typically, Gumley said, the Google Earth images are not natural colors.
""If you were in a space craft flying over the earth and you looked out the window, that image is pretty much what you'd see,"" he said. ""You'd see green landscapes look green, deserts look brown or orange and clouds look white.""
According to Amato Evan, a UW-Madison assistant researcher, UW-Madison is unique in supplying Google Earth with images so quickly.
""Google Earth is pretty new technology,"" Evan said, adding he thinks the possibilities for various applications of SSEC's technology is endless. ""The really great thing is it's very intuitive. Instead of looking at this one two dimensional image, Google Earth allows you to make these images more three dimensional.""
He added anyone could look at an image and immediately understand data that might have taken scientists months to figure out before the satellite data was readily available.
He said UW-Madison's scientists hope to share their research through free Google Earth access with smaller countries that do not have the same resources.
To access SSEC's data in Google Earth, follow the link at http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/media/spotlight/google-earth.htm.
