Finding satellite imagery
A friend asked me to help find good imagery of the Oil Rocks near Baku in the Caspian Sea, which is not visible in Google Maps. In this 10 minute tutorial, I walk through the process of looking in Google Historical Imagery, then browsing and pricing out commercial satellite imagery from various vendors based on resolution, recency, and coverage.
The expense and difficulty of finding many sites in the world is exactly the inspiration for Grassroots Mapping, but in many cases this can be a useful (if somewhat esoteric) process to be familiar with. It’s also a great thing to check before attempting a balloon mapping flight — even if only to see what is available and how much cheaper producing your own imagery might be.
