Frequently Asked and Answered Questions:
GPS and Google Earth FAQs
Q - I've noticed that when I zoom in closer the picture gets more fuzzy. If one would buy one of their Google Earths, do you think the picture would become more clear?
A- No, buying one of their Google.Earths would not give you a better picture. Google has a database of satellite images which covers the entire earth's surface. The pictures you see are not live. Some are recent, some are several years old. Some have good resolution and you can see objects the size of cars quite clearly. Others are low resolution images and you can not see much detail. When you zoom in for a closer look you exceed the limits of the picture’s resolution and the picture gets fuzzy. Buying “Google Earth Plus or “Google Earth Pro” adds features to the software that the free version does not have. All Google Earths see the same images.
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Q. How do I get place names on my Google views?
A. When Google Earth is running check the bottom left corner of your screen. There is a space called "Layers". If you click in the box in front of the word "Roads" so that there is a check mark in the box, you will get names of the roads, streets, avenues, highways, etc.
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Q. Why are some places shown with sharp, clear pictures, others are very fuzzy?
A1. Google puts up better resolution pictures for places where some company or government agency has a need. Consider the area near Tofield, Alberta, Canada. Recently a coal mining company has been telling everyone that in the next 50 years the whole area will be strip mined to get at the coal. Before they started talking about this, Google Earth had low-res pictures of the area. Now that there is a mining company that needs better pictures, and is willing to pay Google to get them, we have nice high-res pictures of that area.
A2. Places with more population are usually shown with higher resolution than those places with lots of “wide open spaces”.
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Q. I zoomed in on a cemetery and can just barely make out the gravestones. I would think that you should be able to get close enough to read the gravestones with some better software. Possible?????
A. No, I don't think we will ever be able to read gravestones, don't buy any software thinking that you can. One non-military site with really high resolution is Nanaimo, BC, Canada. (Goto 49.1658, -123.933). Here you can see people on the sidewalk and people in the parking lot to the south (note the shadows). You can see the windows and sunroofs on the cars. Check the Google Campus for another example of high res, a few people are visible on the streets, but the shadows are shorter than in Nanaimo, so the people are harder to find.
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Q. On Google Earth, what does the message "streaming IIIIIIIIII % sign” mean? This message appears on the bottom of the screen.
A. "Streaming" means that Google Earth is bringing in the picture. Our computers show as much of the picture as is here at-the-moment. The "%" sign, with a number, is telling how much of the picture is currently in the computer, and how much is still to come. You should note that it always stops at 100%, meaning that Google has delivered to your computer as much as it has in its database.
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Q. How does a hand-help GPS receiver know where it is?
A. There are at least 24 satellites in orbit. A GPS receiver is "tuned" to pick up signals from any of these. Since these satellites are in orbit around the earth they are not all visible on "my side" of the earth at any one time. A GPS unit picks up the signals from several of the satellites and then through some sort of high level math, or maybe trigonometry, the unit figures out where in the world it is and reports the location as "coordinates". A GPSr is a high-tech version of the sextant, astrolabe, mariner’s quadrant, or other early navigational instruments. But unlike these early low-tech measuring devices, the modern instruments are dependent on electric power and some sort of man-controlled devices, in this case orbiting satellites.
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Q. When I look at the world in Google Earth how can I tell how high I am - the altitude of my viewpoint?
A. Check the bottom right corner of the computer screen, where it says “Eye alt”. The number is your altitude. In “Preferences - 3D view - Show Elevation” you can choose to show the elevation in “Feet and Miles” or “Meters and Kilometers”.
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Q. Where can I find coordinates for a known address?
A. There is at least one website which helps a person find GPS coordinates. You enter an address, such as "219 Mill Road, Morgantown, PA." and the website produces the latitude and longitude coordinates. To check this out Goto:
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocoding.html
and enter an address in the "Geocode a single address" box. Any street and avenue type address seems to work.
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Q. Why are there different versions of coordinates?
A. In the good old days, before hi-tech, people figured out the latitude and longitude of a place and wrote the coordinates as Degrees Minutes Seconds. For example
Salem Mennonite Church Cemetery:
Degrees Minutes, Seconds -------------- 53° 14" 06' N, 112° 35" 20' W (with "N" and "W" to indicate hemisphere)
or:
Masthof Location:
Degrees Minutes, Seconds --------------40° 09" 03' N, 75° 52" 46' W
But, with the advent of the more hi-tech ways of doing things, a more streamlined notation was needed. So now we have four ways of designating the same location:
Degrees Minutes, Seconds -------------- 53° 14" 06' N, 112° 35" 20' W
Decimal Degrees ----------------------------- 53.2352, -112.5889 (minutes and seconds converted to a decimal fraction)
GPS Coordinates (decimal minutes) -- 53 14.105, -112 35.336 (seconds converted to a decimal fraction)
Decimal Seconds----------------------------- 53 14 6.36, -112 35 20.40 (accuracy of seconds extended with a fraction)
Similarly, the location of Masthof becomes:
Degrees Minutes, Seconds -------------- 40° 09" 03' N, 75° 52" 46' W
Decimal Degrees ----------------------------- 40.1509, -75.8795
GPS Coordinates ---------------------------- 40 09.054, -75 52.770
Note the use of the minus sign in the above examples. Also note the lack of the symbols "N" and "W".
By general agreement, the first number or set of numbers is "Latitude", the second is "Longitude". All of the mapping software programs follow this convention, so there is no need to use "N" or "W" in the mapping software.
However, it is not that simple. Latitude locations in the southern hemisphere MUST be preceded with a minus sign ( - ). If there is no minus sign it is assumed that the location is north of the equator.
Similarly, longitude locations in the western hemisphere MUST be preceded with a minus sign. If there is no minus sign it is assumed that the location is east of the Prime Meridian, in the eastern hemisphere.
If you enter any of these location designations into the "Fly to" box in Google Earth in any of the four formats, Google Earth will find the location. They made these mapping programs "smart".
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