Satellite View of Where I Live

Satellite Images

When GlobeXplorer first went online, they generated interest in their services by providing free access to their web site. At that time you could view nearly any location in the continental United States. Obviously, I took advantage of the situation and downloading a sequence of satellite images that "zoom" into my apartment. Now, GlobeXplorer places small annoying watermarks on each image that makes it difficult to view the images properly.

I don't know when these images were taken. In the image above, the bushes by the entry way were removed during the Summer of 2000. I believe the first image shows the new south bound Lake Forest exit that was built after 1995. I am not sure of the year. The images were definitely taken during the day, with the sun almost overhead. From the shadows cast by the building and the trees, it seems the images were taken between Noon and 2 PM. What I should do is compare the tree shadows to various time of the year and day and figure out when the images were taken. Since I work at home, I bet I was "inside" when the satellite "passed" overhead.

Where I Live

The white rectangle is where I park my car, and the red outline is the floor plan of my apartment. if you look closely, notice the yellow dot? That is me sitting at my desk while I am working on the computer stuff.

Updated Image

The latest colored image at street level from GlobeXplorer. (They still use the older black and white images for views below street level, and use the newer colored images for views at street level and above.) Notice the small annoying watermarks. They place each watermark in the same position within the frame of the image. Therefore, you can generate a clean image by panning the image up, right, down, and left, and downloading each "panned" image. Erase all the watermarks, create a new image and insert the each image as a layer, adjust the position of each layer so houses, streets, and cars are stacked, and finally, merge the layers together to generate the final "cleaned" image. The "holes" left in each layer by erasing will be "filled" by the other layers. When you merge everything, you end up with a beautiful image without the annoying watermarks.

Like This

I have been using Paint Shop Pro for ten years, so it is fairly easy for me to generate images like this one. (It took me about thirty to forty-five minutes.)