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Fun with Satellite Photos

By bioephemera on January 21, 2009.
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Satellite Image by GeoEye: [1] detail showing the Capitol; [2] detail of area around the Washington Monument

I'm compensating for the shock of having to return to actual work today by looking at the GeoEye satellite images of President Obama's Inauguration. This high-res image is just fascinating!

Note that most of the people (the brown dots) are clumped around the Jumbotrons (compare with the official Jumbotron map here), but there are some interesting anomalies. I'm looking at the giant mass of people near the National Indian Museum (SE quadrant) and wondering if that is some sort of horrific security bottleneck to get into the ticketed area. I'm so glad I wasn't in that mess!

They don't say exactly when this image was taken, unfortunately. But we estimate it was around 11am, because by 12 there was a large clump of people on the north side of the Lincoln reflecting pool - a group which is not visible here. Also, the area where we were was more crowded than this image would indicate.

50 points if you can spot me!

Tags
DC
Department of the Drama
Destinations
Photography

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Can't remember where I found it, but I do remember reading that it was taken at 11:19 AM

the time should be pretty easy to establish is you look at the washington monument... it is a rather large sundial after all...

Wow! That high rez photo is amazing! (Kinda scary too - Privacy, it's all an illusion in these modern times.) The crowd looks like someone poked a stick into an ant hill.

Oh, boy, I found you, I found you! See...

So peter - I tried to convince my staffer to use the coordinates of DC and the sunrise and sunset data for Jan 20 to create a custom sundial grid that we could overlay on the satellite photo to determine the exact time of day, but he wouldn't do it. Something about "no obvious reward." I was peeved, because I think it's really cool to reinvent things from first principles.