I Spy: Sites Let You Peer From Above

See The World As You've Never Seen It Before

Here's looking at you, kid.

Our world is quickly filling up with Web cams, allowing you to look at near real-time Web images from just about anywhere on the globe. But what about getting above the crowd?

A Web site operated by Colorado-based Space Imaging has brought spy satellite technology down to the civilian level, selling high-resolution photos of any place on earth.

In an amazing shot taken of the Great Pyramids of Egypt, you can even see the tourist buses and a car or two. I'm not sure, but I think a couple of those smaller spots in the picture are camels.

Space Imaging is for-profit, so you won't find a huge collection of free photos on their Web site. But you will find some frequently updated images that will amaze you with their detail and clarity.

Who Are These Guys?

Space Imaging went on the Web in 1995 to offer the world's first high-resolution commercial imaging satellite system.

They're actually not in the spy satellite business, the company is quick to point out. But sometimes the line blurs when there's an international story breaking, such as the Navy spy plane that made an emergency landing on a Chinese island.

No doubt you remember the image. It wasn't from a high-flying spy plane. The image was taken by a Space Imaging satellite and was carried by most major news organizations.

Space Imaging can see objects as small as one meter in diameter, taken from a new IKONOS satellite (IKONOS comes from the Greek word that means "image").

Space Imaging plans to orbit satellites capable of seeing as small as a half-meter diameter by 2004. With half-meter resolution, you would almost be able to pick out your seat at the local baseball stadium.

What You Really Want To Know

Can you spy on your neighbors by ordering a photo of the houses in your neighborhood?

"It would be much faster and less expensive to walk over and look over the fence -- and you would be able to see much more than in an image taken from 423 miles in space, " said Gary Napier, public relations manager for the company.

I wondered if they'd ever caught someone sunbathing in the nude with their high-resolution satellites.

"IKONOS can only 'see' something on the ground one-meter in size," Napier told me. "One meter diameter equals one pixel. People are not visible." (Which should give you some incentive not to gain weight. You wouldn't want to become the first human being ever visible from a satellite).

Just give them latitude and longitude of the area you want and you can order your own photo. Prices range from $40 to $325 for images.

Terraserver is my other favorite aerial photo provider. A free service of Microsoft, the easy-to-use interface lets you get to the geographic area you want to see quickly.

In the case of Terraserver, the photos aren't taken by satellite, but by high-flying planes.

From the White House in Washington, D.C., to my house in the Colorado Rockies, Terraserver allows you to find your target and zoom in. The photos aren't quite as good a quality as Space Imaging, but you can see a lot of detail. That's my house (white arrow) with my driveway leading to it from my street going down the right side of the image.

The big difference is that the Terraserver photos may be several years old. Still, they're very effective if you need to see what a particular area looks like (I use it a lot when I plan hikes through the national forest. It's great for finding old roads).

With Terraserver, you can search by city, or by latitude and longitude.

Another advantage is using Terraserver is that you are also given a choice between aerial photographs and topographic map. Even when you are looking at an aerial photo, there's a small topo map beside it to show you where you are.

From now own, I'm going to look up and smile whenever I'm outside. I never know who might be watching.

If you have a favorite Web site that you'd like to see reviewed, drop me a line. I'll read your e-mail just as soon as I finish my tour of San Francisco.

Sites Reviewed: http://www.spaceimaging.com/ and http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/

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