Where to find Google Earth satellite image dates?

March 23, 2006 11:59 AM

How can we find the photograph DATES of the satellite images in Google Earth?

Specifically, I'd like to know when the Los Angeles and Bay Area sections were photographed. Exact dates would be best, but even a month and year would be helpful. Any resources to find this information? Thanks!

posted by stst399 to travel & transportation (5 answers total)

This may or may not help, but you could look at the Urban photos of those same spots on Terraserver. For some locations, I've found that Google (at least Google Maps) and Microsoft use the same source photos, and Terraserver pictures contain the exact photo dates.

You could probably try to match the location of cars or the state of certain construction projects to verify that the pictures are the same (come to think of it, if the pictures are different, construction progress may allow you to estimate the time difference between the two sets of photos).
posted by i love cheese at 4:11 PM on March 23, 2006

The Terraserver photo that includes my house is definitely not the same as Google Earth or Google Maps.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:07 PM on March 23, 2006

I dated the google photos in my area by noticing
the foliage of a local plant: purple for about two months a year
recent constructions
the length of the shadows and the direction in which they fell (more north-easterly than easterly = winter).
vehicles at my place of work

I'm pretty sure the photos were taken August/September 2004 before noon on a weekday.
posted by b33j at 5:12 PM on March 23, 2006

A small point: photographs can only come from film. Google uses satelite digital images. To find the date, you could try to match the image to a cloudless image available at one of the many data browsing websites. Example: glovis.usgs.gov.
posted by maxpower at 6:58 AM on March 27, 2006

Google uses satelite digital images.

Nitpick: They also use aerial photos from planes, especially for some of the higher-resolution stuff.
posted by smackfu at 8:34 AM on March 27, 2006