This amazing image of a map refracted in a drop of water as it forms a globe, was captured by Markus Reugels, using a custom rig he built for photographing liquids. [via]
posted by quin on Jan 3, 2012 - 10 comments

If you live in New Jersey, you can see what your home and the surrounding area looked like from above in the year 1930.
posted by candasartan on Sep 19, 2011 - 25 comments

The official Google Earth plugin is one free download that makes all sorts of cool stuff possible in your browser. There's a full screen version of the program (complete with underwater views and 3D buildings) which can be searched by entering queries at the end of the URL. There's a framed version with support for layers, historical imagery, day/night cycles, and the Google Sky starmap. Less useful but more fun are Google's collection of "experiments" demonstrating the possibilities of the Earth API, including a "Geo Whiz" geography quiz, an antipode locater, a 3D first-person view of San Francisco, a virtual route-follower, and MONSTER MILKTRUCK!, a crazy fun driving simulator that lets you careen a virtual milk truck through the Googleplex campus, ricochet off the Himalayas, or explore any other place you care to name. Lots more can be found in the Google Earth Gallery -- highlights include a look at mountaintop removal mining, a real-time flight tracker, a guide to trails and outdoor recreation, a 360 panorama catalog, geotagged Panoramio photos, and the comprehensive crowdsourced Google Earth Community Layer. And while it's too large to view online, don't miss loading the Metafilter user location map into a desktop version of Google Earth! [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Jun 9, 2011 - 15 comments

The official "StreetView" map of China is eerily reminiscent of SimCity, rendered in perfect isometric perspective without a pixel out of place: Shanghai, the Forbidden City, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. That hasn't stopped companies from trying to create a more true-to-life photographic alternative: there is coverage of Hong Kong and Macau in Google Street View; sanction to cover the rest of China appears to have been given to City8, which covers 40 cities. (The latter site is in Chinese, but Chrome or language plugins do a decent job of translating the content). [more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Mar 17, 2011 - 34 comments

Cartography is the science of map-making. Seb Przd takes a photo and maps it out to build his own world of cartographical projections.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jan 20, 2011 - 18 comments

"Grassroots maps" made by people with digital cameras and helium balloons.
posted by Miko on Apr 21, 2010 - 16 comments

NASA's MESSENGER team (previously: 1, 2, 3), with help from the U.S. Geological Survey, released yesterday the first global map of the planet Mercury. [more inside]
posted by SpringAquifer on Dec 16, 2009 - 15 comments

Polyhedral Maps is a website that explores unconventional methods of mapping the surface of the earth. The most famous of these unusual maps was Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion map, which used the net of an icosahedron. Da Vinci had experimented with this technique in his “Octant” map of 1514, which used Reuleaux triangles as map elements. This process is now being used by photographers and artists in manipulating panoramic images. A good example is Tom Lechner’s The Wild Highways of the Elongated Pentagonal Orthobicupola.
posted by Tube on Jun 1, 2008 - 23 comments

Landsat Image Mosaic Of Antarctica UK and US researchers peice together the most detailed map of Antarctica yet, searching through years of data to find cloud free images.
posted by Artw on Nov 27, 2007 - 17 comments

These new satellite photos give yet another perspective to the damage done in Tuesday's attack.
posted by tdstone on Sep 17, 2001 - 1 comment