really really weird?

[nightwalker56]

I found this and was wondering why this happens.
I also see this happen in the artic and antartica

[Tom Baldwin]

Welcome to GE, Nightwalker56!
If you turn on "Google Earth Community" in "Layers", you'll see 40+ explanations. ;)

[Ravenfeather]

True, there are 40+ explanations, but not the ones people are looking for.
They're all just talking about the north pole, and not about the strange effect GE is having...

[GEH4EVR]

This is a issue caused with the fact that google earth is a sphere, the top of the sphere sort of "pinches" the image.

[SSSALVI]

The point in the placemark is exact North Pole where all the Longitudes merge into a single point.

The terrain at north pole is sea.

For the sea area GE uses only numeric data indicating the depth of sea at a particular place ( bathymetric data, not imagery acquired by camera. ) . This data is coarse resolution data and therefore has very poor resolution and each pixel may span about a kilometer by kilometer at equator.

E.g. You can see this by zooming in the sea water ( till the scale legend at bottom left shows about 50 kms )near 13°32'42"S 15°21'29"W .... there are squares of varying intensities of blue and black. They are the actual pixels.

Now imagine what will happen if you try to bring closer the northern corners of a pixel .. it will become a triangle.

That is what happens at the poles.. the pixels become triangular ( spherical triangular actually ) and so each pixel at the pole is triangular and the vertex of each triangular pixel is at pole, giving rise to the flower like appearance for the area around pole and each 'triangle' represents the color corresponding to average color shade in that area

From your bookmark if you go up in altitude slowly then you start seeing next line of pixels surrounding the first set and then next ... and so on to ultimately the limit where the pixels become very small and you get a smooth picture of sea bottom.

Welcome aboard GEH nightwalker56!

Shashi

[BillyBob]

The terrain at north pole is sea.

No it's not, it's ice.

http://www.welt-atlas.de/datenbank/karten/karte-0-9020.gif


The lack of ice in GE may have something to do with the position of the imaging satellites.

[SSSALVI]

Hello Billy.

I could not access welt-atlas.

Enclosing screenshot from MS Encarta at maximum resolution.

As regards acquisition of imagery at poles I am enclosing a snapshot about the area that can be seen by a remote sensing satellite near pole.

Acquisition of pole data is not at all a problem.

The reason why Hi-Res data at poles is not acquired is that there is no reason ! ;)

[BillyBob]

Hello Billy.

I could not access welt-atlas.

Enclosing screenshot from MS Encarta at maximum resolution.

As regards acquisition of imagery at poles I am enclosing a snapshot about the area that can be seen by a remote sensing satellite near pole.

Acquisition of pole data is not at all a problem.

The reason why Hi-Res data at poles is not acquired is that there is no reason ! ;)

The North Pole is covered in ice, people have been there, there are flags there, nuclear powered subs have been under the ice.

Look here. (http://images.google.com.au/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLJ_enAU175AU175&q=north%20pole&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)

The reason they don't show it could be because it's an ice shelf, who knows, but it is definitely ice, not sea.

[SSSALVI]

No comments on that from me

Shashi

[Felippo]

The North Pole is covered in ice, people have been there, there are flags there, nuclear powered subs have been under the ice.


Yes, the magnetic north-pole is covered with ice. But in this thread we are talking about the geographical north-pole. SSSALVI's explanation is completely right.

Felippo :givebeer:

[BillyBob]

Yes, the magnetic north-pole is covered with ice. But in this thread we are talking about the geographical north-pole. SSSALVI's explanation is completely right.

Felippo :givebeer:

Both 'poles', magnetic and geographical, are covered in ice, it is said they lie in the Arctic Ocean because that's where the ice is.

[Felippo]

No comments on that from me

Felippo :givebeer:

[BillyBob]

Here's a pic for you, showing the ice, as you can see, it's omitted on GE for some reason, especially seeing as this is supposed to be photographs.

The pole you see marked is the geographic pole, right in the middle of the ice, the magnetic pole, which moves around 25 miles a day, is over to the left, somewhere off the coast of Queen Elizabeth Islands, but still under ice. The last position I can find is 82 - 114, which puts it inside the blue '80' circle, and just above the 120 line.

The magnetic pole is moving towards Siberia, and may well align with the geographic pole on it's way.

http://www.iceaxe.tv/KIDS/art/Arctic/ArcticMapLG.jpg

[Archimedes]

(...)showing the ice, as you can see, it's omitted on GE for some reason (...)

Probably because the ice doesn't have the same LIMITS year by year.
And the extension of it varies (summer or winter / 6 months + 6 months).

I'm thinking to create an overlay with the images linked before.

[Archimedes]

Probably because the ice doesn't have the same LIMITS year by year.
And the extension of it varies (summer or winter / 6 months + 6 months).

I'm thinking to create an overlay with the images linked before.

Ha.
You can't create an overlay at this latitudes... :mad:

[BillyBob]

Probably because the ice doesn't have the same LIMITS year by year.
And the extension of it varies (summer or winter / 6 months + 6 months).

Wherever it's limits are, it's still there, all that changes is the sea ice at the fringes, and my point is that it will always show up on photos, however much there is, but on GE it doesn't.

This means that the North Pole on GE is not actual photographs.

[Ravenfeather]

Ummm...BillyBob?
Try looking at the beginning of this thread.
They've already said that.
Something like:
"the water/ice isn't actually water/ice because they don't have images; the water/ice is only created by pixels formed when they inputed the depth of the pole"...or something like that...I'm too lazy to go back and look...

[nightwalker56]

Bump
Up
My
Post

[SSSALVI]

All the pictures are actually POSTER type material : Santa, People without really cold resisting clothes etc. :cool:

If Santa physically exists then of course Land also exists at North Pole because he can't drift on an iceberg.

An early MERRY CHRISTMAS to all. :giverose:

Shashi

[Jrod]

What about the ice and snow that is the mountains that can be seen. The snow on some mountains change from season to season and if certain area is updated you would be able to see the change. Plus, you can see icebergs in some areas around the north pole.

[BillyBob]

Ummm...BillyBob?
Try looking at the beginning of this thread.
They've already said that.
Something like:
"the water/ice isn't actually water/ice because they don't have images; the water/ice is only created by pixels formed when they inputed the depth of the pole"...or something like that...I'm too lazy to go back and look...

You must be looking somewhere else, it says nothing like that at the beginning of the thread.

:cool:

[Ravenfeather]

Like I said, I'm very lazy; so I'm going off of assumptions and quick glances...

[anmol.geh]

Is it technically possible to receive pictures of poles?

[BillyBob]

Is it technically possible to receive pictures of poles?

Of course, why not? Antarctica is photos. If a satellite were to cross the pole they could take photos. They'd have to do it during the six months of daylight though.

[Ravenfeather]

The land around the poles, yes, but the magnetic poles themselves, no.

[BillyBob]

The land around the poles, yes, but the magnetic poles themselves, no.

There's nothing to stop them photographing the position of the magnetic pole, they wouldn't know exactly where is was though, it moves 25 kms a day.

[SSSALVI]

Is it technically possible to receive pictures of poles?

Technically, Yes it can be done.

But practically no one would try it unless there are large benefits possible because I feel that standard software modules developed for processing imagery at normal latitudes may fail/may have to be adopted as there would be many special cases of data processing.

( recall in one of the threads it was pointed out that even at Greenland lattitudes the edges of scenes do not match )

Even though I am only a physics student ( of course an oldie ;) :whine: ) I can visualize some standard modules which may have to be modified :

- Scene spread over several longitudes ( In standard scene max 2 to 3 deg of long may be covered .. at poles it may spread over 10s of degrees even over a modest 12kmX12Km. )
- Local solar time may very by 8 to 12 hrs within a scene acquired in 2 or 3 seconds .
- you may be able to see the area with sufficient brightness for 3 to 4 months only in a year.
- You will always get long shadows

... and so on.

I invite persons acquainted with issues in various fields to enlist the possible problems in acquiring and processing data in polar regions. I am sure it will be a very useful input for software designers.

Shashi

[steffen_bn]

this is here most of the pics fall together?

[Slade8]

That isn't the north pole, there's no workshop!

[Massive]

US government made a denial plan about the geographical poles that
1.there arent any satellite photos of close up north/south poles that are allowed to be seen by the public eye.
2.the weather and polar satellite pictures are not let into the public because of the governments plan.
3.in a nutshell,since there are no pictures of the poles before this law was made,none are allowed to take anymore,so basically noone can take pictures of those areas,that also may be a reason why the images are messed up.

[SSSALVI]

Images for south pole are available because there is a LAND there. There is no LAND at North pole hence no images for it.

[sladys]

Not true, if you look at the Norh Pole region there is Nunavut (Canada) and Greenland (Denmark) close to it. So you should be able to see ice there.
Just look at the uploaded new images around Greenland. You see a lot of icebergs there. The North Pole area isn't with ice because it's not interesting just to look at ice with nothing there.
Only places with population or science stations (Antarctica) are mapped.

[SSSALVI]

Yes, Sladys

As I too had remarked earlier ( post No. #27 ) as there is no commercial benefit no one would try to image the area.

Some good material and breathtaking photographs are available for this region at following web pages.

http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm

http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/polar/arctic.htm

http://www.aari.nw.ru/main.htm?http://www.aari.nw.ru/info/gallery_02_4.html

http://www.aari.nw.ru/main.htm?http://www.aari.nw.ru/info/gallery_02.html

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S^3