Google has teamed up with the USGS and Carnegie Mellon University to make available timelapse videos of the Earth’s surface from the Landsat satellite program, in honor of the program’s 40th anniversary.
“Over the years, Landsat has collected petabytes of images offering an historic perspective on planetary change that can help scientists, independent researchers, and nations make informed economic and environmental policy decisions,” Google Earth Engine software engineer Eric Nguyen and Carnegie Mellon University Visiting Researcher Randy Sargent say in a joint blog post.
“We believe these may be the largest video frames ever created. If you could see the entire video at full resolution, a single frame would be 1.78 terapixels which is 18 football fields’ worth of computer screens laid side-by-side,” the two say.
You can find a featured gallery of videos here. Included are the growth of Las Vegas, the drying of the Aral Sea, and the Amazon’s deforestation, to name a few.