Sunday, November 15, 2009

Satellite Tracking in Street View

ToriSat
ToriSat is an amazing satellite tracking website that allows anyone to track satellites on Google Maps, in the Google Earth Browser plug-in and even in Google Street View. The Google Map view shows the path of the satellite around the Earth and the Google Earth option allows you to view the path of the satellite as if you were looking down from space.

What really impresses me, however, is the Street View option that allows the user to view the satellite superimposed on top of Google's Street View imagery. This is really useful as it shows the elevation of the satellite as it passes overhead. Oh, and you can see all three views at the same time.

You can see the tracking in action in the video below,



The default satellite is the International Space Station but you can select other satellites to track, including the Hubble telescope. You can also change the location of the observation point by clicking the cross at the top of the Street View and dragging the map marker to your location.

ToriSat also comes with a Twitter feed that will Tweet you when the ISS is approaching your location (the site will suggest the Twitter feed to follow from your saved location). There is even an option to save the ISS approaching schedules to your Google Calender.

I'm simply in awe of the developers of ToriSat. Check out some of the other amazing stuff they are involved in (including the Street View SpaceBike) here.

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