Yep, it’s time for another Monday Megapost and this week we’re focusing on those gentle giants of the sea: Oil Platforms.

The problem with finding oil platforms on Google Maps is that most of the open sea isn’t available on the higher zoom levels. Probably because there isn’t really much out there to see, and it saves Google storing multiple images of lots of boring water. Thankfully near the coast or in the smaller in-land seas and channels some oil platforms have been captured.

Our first platform is in the Gulf Of Mexico about a hundred klicks east of New Orleans. A bit closer to the coast is another and just north is what looks to be a tug pushing a line of barges.

Another one in the Gulf of Mexico, but this one is off the coast of Texas and has a very obvious helipad.

Around the other side of the US off the west coast, south of Santa Barbara is another oil field full of activity. There are two platforms that look to be in the process of being supplied by ships. There are actually four platforms all in a line here, you can see the other two off to the east.

South down the coast and out to sea from Los Angeles harbour are these two big beasties with a walkway linking them.

Way over in the Gulf of Suez which divides Africa and Asia is the Gemsa oil field which is absolutely chock full of platforms. These ones seem to be a lot bigger than the ones in the US, this one is made up of multiple platforms and landing pads, all linked together by walkways. If you zoom out a few clicks there are about five other platforms just as big.

In a bay on the west coast of South Africa is a particularly chunky looking platform that just sneaks into the high resolution coverage.

In our ongoing quest for the largest, tallest, biggest stuff in the world I couldn’t have mentioned oil platforms without including the mighty 43,000 ton Petronis Platform, the tallest free-standing structure in the world (when including underwater structures). Unfortunately I couldn’t find it on Google Maps and I suspect it falls outside the high resolution coverages areas. If anyone can track it down though, leave a comment.

Google have quietly launched Google Mars, a Google Maps-like tool to view Elevation, Visible and Infrared images of the Red Planet.

There’s an FAQ explaining the different image modes and Google are apparently working on getting the Mars images into the Google Earth interface.

Just off the the coast of Newfoundland, Canada (not far from St. John’s, the location of the oldest street in North America), there’s a patch of high-res sea which has captured some truly incredible images of icebergs.

Zooming in further it seems that the ‘icebergs’ are made of hundreds of thousands of smaller chunks of ice, clinging together like massive swathes of frozen dust.

In fact, are these really icebergs at all? Perhaps they were, but have since disintegrated into billions of smaller pieces of ice. Are these darker shapes rivers of ice particles flowing under the surface of the ocean?

Thanks to Marc Armstrong and Peter.

Today sees the start of the very fashionable South by SouthWest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately none of us at GGSS Towers are going along to give a talk or see a band or anything. But we can of course post photos of the Austin Conference Center where some of the events happen. There are other nice sites in Austin, the capitol building is pretty impressive and was puposely built to be 14 feet taller than the Nation’s Capital in DC. The Congress Avenue Bridge is apparently home to the world’s largest urban bat population. You can’t see any bats of course in the daytime photo so you’ll just imagine them all, lurking under there…

We hope everyone who is attending the conference has a great time.

Thanks: Cos, notmrjohn & Bryan Grudowski

It doesn’t get much nerdier than this: a Giant Pac-Man, complete with dots for him to eat, makes the ultimate crop circle.

We’re actually quite familiar with Pac-Man here at GGSS towers having seen him before in field irrigation and last year we took time off our busy schedules to create a Snow Pac-Man Level.

Even if you’re also familiar with Pac, I’d suggest a quick read of “Ghosts Vs. Monsters” on the Wikipedia page, hilarious!

Thanks: Justin Flavin