Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.
Watch out below! It looks like Thing (you know, the severed hand from the Addams Family) has grown thousands of times in size and is attacking New York City! Run for the hills! Aiiieeeeee!
Hang on, turns out that the monstrous hand is just décor for New York’s Madame Tussauds. Panic over.
Thanks: Mike Fraser
This form will auto-link URLs or you can use simple HTML, <a href="http://googlesightseeing.com">Like this</a>.
Link to specific places either as a Google Maps page or a decimal latitude and longitude written like this: lat/lng:55.949400,-3.200000.
If you've found an unrelated sight that you think should be posted in its own entry then use the suggestion form!
The weirdest and best of Google Earth is now available in the…
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Hey, sweet! I went to New York recently, and that hand was right outside my room. I should have thought to submit it…
This also always freaks me out…
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Hey RJ,
how about there:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
or actually it seems to be worse in Chicago
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Gesh - They are definitely some strange angles in those links!!!
Yeah, eat your heart out Escher!
Maybe I’m just obtuse or failed geometry in high school, but can anyone explain to me why it is that the images of these buildings seem to be at such strange angles?
Here’s my guess: the plane or satellite that took the images used more than one pass for each target area. On each successive pass, the ground is at a slightly different angle relative to the camera. This difference usually isn’t enough to notice, but the height of the skyscrapers really emphasizes it.
The explanation for the angles seems sound - and the blending technology to make the images appear seamless in spite of them is quite remarkable. I would guess that that technology is also responsible for these two ’semi submersed’ ghosts not far from the THING (though I can’t quite explain them):
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
On the QM2 the bow seems to be under water AND stuck under a ramp. And along the port side you can see waves above the ship’s structures…