Accuracy in Google Earth
Google’s Google earth is a kind of Google eye in the sky; no incident is hidden from the Google earth’s eye. Whatever happens on the land is captures by Google earth. The Google earth technology has benefited many around the world. Google earth images have been instrumental in decisions from governments to NGOs. The images that Google earth delivers are high-resolution images that makes it more accurate. The use of Google earth images made by the tribes in the Amazon forest for conserving their rain forest from illegal mining or by the Indian farmers for saving their fertile land from government acquisition has made Google earth more popular. All this was made possible because of the pinpoint accuracy of Google earth’s images. The super mapping capacity that is there in Google earth has benefits. Though the images are not taken in real time still the level of accuracy is beyond any dispute. The regular mapping update in Google earth has kept the virtual globe the most revered and also used.
In Google earth most land areas are mapped by satellite imagery with a resolution of 15m per pixel. The populated areas are covered through orthophotography that is the images are from aircraft. And these images are taken with many pixels per meter. As for the images of the oceans on the earth they are taken at quite lower resolution the same is done with the images of most of the islands. The islands like Torshvan the isle of Scilly Are covered with a resolution of 500m. In matters of names of places and roads there is going to be some discrepancy but in Google earth this doesn’t happen because the mapping updates has greatly improved the coverage of areas. But the names of places and roads in the USA and Europe are accurate. Although the variation in such matters may hamper the accuracy. In Google earth’s vector mapping software there were some inaccuracies but this has been rectified this resulted in the fact that the programme doesn’t need to be updated. The example of this is the Nunavut territory of Canada, which wasn’t covered in Google earth when it was in fact declared in 1999. Google earth then accounted for this inaccuracy by a data update in 2006. The updates that have been added now have helped to increase the details of satellite photography. The accuracy in the images of Google earth is also hampered by the cloud layer and the big shadow side of the mountains. The length of the equator in Google earth is shown 40,030.236.42 meters.
Many of the users of Google earth have found that the Prime Meridian does not line up with Greenwich. If the user goes to Greenwich in Google earth and turn on latitude-longitude lines by going to the menu View->Lat/Lon Grid, you will see the Meridian line is about 100 meters east of the Greenwich observatory but this inaccuracy is not on the part of Google earth it is because the original developer Keyhole used the same coordinate system as that used by GPS technology known as WGS84 World Geodetic System.[tag] Google earth, Google, images, resolution [tag]
Tags: Google Earth
