Quote:
Originally Posted by rstevens62
Im curious why there are so many pictures of the supposed north and south poles online, like the ones you have posted, but on Google maps, there are huge swaths of the regions totally blacked out, and photography of the regions is illegal?
Whats the point of blacking an area out if there is nothing of interest there?
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Unfun rational answer:
- The satellites used to generate the Google Earth imagery are sun synchronous satellites. They never pass over the poles. Spot is in a 98.7 degree orbit, Landsat, 98.2. Any imagery of the poles from those satellites is going to be of low resolution and distorted. You can see this loss of resolution start to kick in at around 80 degrees north and south.
- The algorithm Google uses has some obvious problems at the poles, the south pole in particular. I suspect a mathematical singularity in their internal representation schemes at the poles.
- Google tries to mask out clouds by stitching together multiple images. Clouds are white. So is ice. Google has a hard time with ice sheets because its cloud filtering algorithms masks out the data.
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Fun tinfoil hat answer:
The penguins don't want us to find out what they're up to. #penguinarmy #ourbirdyoverlords #illuminati