Updated Google Maps satellite photos of Munich

I hadn't noticed this before, but it looks like Google maps has updated their satellite imagery of Munich with coverage taken just before springtime this year. For instance, the Allianz arena is completed, the trees are bare, and that giant football is behind the Marienplatz for the World Cup. The resolution is much better than previously; especially using Google Earth, the detail seems to be from 2,000 feet above ground.



Related topic: Google Maps now cover Germany

And whats going on in the corner of Marienplatz?

Guess its one of the mime performers, but I didnt see the water fountain one until after the WM.

Yeah, that's one of the people who pretend to be a statue. If you look closely at the photo, you can actually see her twitching and swaying slightly.

My mum in England can check out Google earth to see if I have cleaned my car and cut the lawn! Then I get a nagging email!

And my Mum was impressed when she saw her own house back in the UK and her old car on the driveway.

"Is that a live piture?" she asked.
"No, cos thats you old car which you sold two years ago, and anyway, its now 10.30 pm and its dark outside"

It's a color enhanced IR Thermal camera.. It even works in the dark

Be nice to know in advance when they are going to take new imagery. Could organise a flash mob to spell out rude words on Marienplatz. That'd be great. Well, OK, it would be childish and immature, but I'd giggle.

You mean you'd gather a gaggle so you could goggle at Google and giggle...?

Some friends of mine tracked down the exact date of the current images of Munich. They were taken on April 8 2006.

How did they manage to do that?

Well that soccer thing on Marienhof helped to narrow it down to about six weeks. Some road and tram works helped to narrow it down to about two weeks. It was soon pretty obvious that the images must have been taken on a saturday (flea market at Messestadt) and certain other things like empty parking lots at factories.
Some odd thing which I can't remember made it clear that April 8 is the correct date.

I notice that just in the last few days Google Maps have updated their satellite photo of central Munich.

Districts included are Altstadt, Lehel, Isarvorstadt, Maxvorstadt, Schwabing, Westend, and Olympiapark.

Outside of those areas are still showing the imagery from 2006.

Compare the photo of Marienplatz as posted above by Pootle in 2006 with the current photo as seen below:



We managed to determine the previous photo was from 8.Apr.2006. Anyone want to make a guess at the exact time and date that new photo was taken?

Given that the Oktoberfest tents are up, but the fairground rides are not, I'm guessing around August 2007.

The Tollwood site at Olympiapark looks semi-built. Perhaps it's being disassembled. Tollwood dates were June 14 to July 8, 2007.

The Olympiapark Sommerfest isn't up. That ran August 9 to 16, 2007.

The streets are pretty quiet, the shadows are long and are pointing west, so that suggests early morning.

You could probably use the obelisk at Karolinenplatz as a sundial to give a pretty good time estimate. I'm not good at the math for this, but the latitude is 48/08/41 (degrees/minutes/seconds) and longitude is 11:34:08 (hours:minutes:seconds). The obelisk is 29 meters high, and the time zone is +1. Assuming that Google orients their maps to true north, does anyone want to have a go at it?

I did find this somewhat helpful page on making horizontal sundials, but I've not had time to try this out at work.

September 2007

Month? We wanted date, time, hour, minute and, if possible, second.
Randy, you'd need to provide the map scale too.

it's not tollwood - the tent's aren't right
looks like the tents of one of the kinderfests that happen at the tollwood site
possibly from this link http://www.ganz-muenchen.de/freizeit/kinde...lympiapark.html

that would put it from 16.-26.07.2007 - the Wiesn tents are defo put up so early - still looks like alot of work to be done there, no fairgrounds rides there or outer biergarten parts added then

according to the direction of the shadow the sun is at 129° (if 0° is North, 180° is South)

the distance-measuring tool of google maps says the length of the shadow is around 32m so if the height of the obelisk is 29m the sun is at an height of atan(29/32) = 42°

with http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Sonnenst...chen_300dpi.png it's about about 9:50 in the morning = 8:50 am summertime and probably the 24 August

->

Um, summertime = +1 not -1 ? Full marks for the research though!

you're right, confuses me every time, so should be 10:50 24/08

Nice work, Gorgo. I'm not qualified to tell whether you're right or not, but it sounds pretty plausible to me.

Today Google will release Google Earth 4.3 that includes some new interesting features:

You can now find the exact date when a particular satellite image was captured - move the cursor over the image and the date (when that image was taken) will appear near the status bar of Google Earth.

So, we should be able to find out!

Agh, it'll spoil all our fun.

The fun we had. Now we can tune the thread title and bet about deviations

and you're telling me that now?

Marienplatz is much too quiet and the shadows much too long for it to be just an hour shy of midday. It can't be much later than 7am.

Google Earth says the imagery was taken on Saturday, the 25th of August, but no time was given. Very close, Gorgo! Nordbad is looking pretty busy, and it only opens at 07:30...

OK, but the shops on Kaufingerstrasse open at 9.30am yet the street is almost deserted, despite it being a Saturday. So maybe around 8 or 8.30am.

According to the wonderful "Rückblick" feature on wetter.com, the temperature at 8am on 25.08.07 was a sultry 17°C, warming up to 19°C by 9am, so it's perfectly feasible that people were sunbathing that early in the morning.

yay

I don't think the restaurants on Marienplatz open that early (maybe between 9 and 10 as well?!). Also the pictures weren't taken at the same time obviously, I don't know how long it takes for a (slow?) plane to fly over the whole area of Munich but there might be a difference of half an hour or even an hour between pictures.

I don't know for sure, but I think these are satellite photos, not aerial photos. And the amount of ground a satellite can cover in one photo is pretty large. It can easily do the whole of downtown Munich in one exposure. A bit of Googling would probably bring up the exact details.

Wouldn't aerial photos often leave a shadow of the plane on the ground? That'd be a bit rubbish.

Woerner's Cafe am Marienplatz opens at 8am on Saturdays, for example. I think that must be around the time the images were taken.

en.wikipedia.org / Google Maps and as we all know, wikipedia doesn't lie!

small town boy: donisl opens at 9

Drat! They changed it? I loved the fact I could see a tree I cut down for the city along the Isar. (Sawdust where the tree was cut up)

Came across GeoEye (Wikipedia), which states that Satts used for these type pix, are positioned and synchronized to the sun, which allows
them to visit any area of the planet at 1030am everyday in that areas local time..

This also applies to the new Geoeye-1 Satt. which Google has exclusive rights to.. As of this post its over Austria and moving north at 7km per second.. Track it - Here
While all the news is about GeoEye, the Germans have launched a constellation of 5 imaging satts. in the last 2 weeks. You can track RapidEye-A/E - Here

No, because the photos are taken almost directly down from the plane (you can see that even very
high buildings appear very small. My house has 13 floors and you see very little of the sides). At
the latitute of Munich (48deg), the sun can never be directly overhead, maximum should be about
70 degrees in mid-June. You sometimes see other planes' shadows, but never the shadow of
the plane taking the pictures.

Google's new GeoEye Satt. Sends back its first picture - Picture Link