Satellite imagery of urban Australia?

April 15, 2005 5:50 AM

Anyone know a good resource for free and/or paid access to satellite imagery of urban Australia?

I'd like to be able to look up where I live (Melbourne, Australia) with similar functionality to Google Maps and the newly introduced satellite imagery enhanced features of that site. I'd also be happy to pay if required.

The results of my searching revealed that TerraServer.com have something planned. Oh and Google's acquired product Keyhole doesn't do Australia yet either. Surely I'm missing something obvious here. Please enlighten me as I attempt to redeem myself in MeFi land.

posted by sjvilla79 to Technology (8 answers total)

Best answer: NASA has a really neat little program called World Wind that you can download for free. Here's what the website says:

World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara.

It's kind of cool.
posted by ebeeb at 6:23 AM on April 15, 2005

Best answer: City2See is okay; it currently does Melbourne and Canberra. I wouldn't go as far as paying for one of the images though - I did and was disappointed with the quality.
posted by Ritchie at 7:09 AM on April 15, 2005

If you can live with just bare maps try giving the city a call. Around here most municipalities have air photos taken on a regular basis to catch illegal development. You can usually buy either dead tree printouts (cheap) or digital files (more expensive but still usually not bad). As a bonus you'll get better resolution than most satallite stuff.
posted by Mitheral at 11:07 AM on April 15, 2005

I think you're looking for the wrong thing. Aerial survey photography is better for this kind of thing, and the last two cities I've lived in (in New Zealand and the USA) both had this stuff online, much like terranova, only they go to a far greater level of detailed (we could see our car in the drive with the boot open), and they usually have an option to overlay the streetmaps onto it at the click of a button. Sometimes access isn't free, sometimes it is. Depends on the local council/company doing it.
posted by -harlequin- at 7:33 PM on April 15, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers guys.
posted by sjvilla79 at 6:32 AM on April 16, 2005

World wind is cool. However, I was just reading their forums. apparently good high-res aerial and satellite imagery of AU is much harder to come by than similar data for the US. In the US, the government pretty much gives it away. In AU, the government tries to recover costs and so charges a fair amount for it.
posted by Good Brain at 9:57 AM on April 16, 2005

Response by poster: Yeah, we're a stingy bunch over here. I am yet to download World Wind, though.
posted by sjvilla79 at 8:56 PM on April 16, 2005

This company may be able to help. They have a reseller in Melbourne too. Looks like it might be pricey though.
posted by tellurian at 12:33 AM on April 18, 2005