Most meteors that arrive at Earth burn up in the atmosphere, and others are washed away by our moving surface and erosion. Regardless, if you know where to look, you might be surprised how many impact craters you can find. As with part one of this series. we’re going to look at some of the most visible:

Clearwater Lakes, Canada – These two lakes were formed simultaneously from a meteor that broke apart in our atmosphere and crashed into the surface over 290 million years ago. The largest of the lakes is over 20 miles (32 km) across! As you can guess by their name, both are known for their remarkably clear water.

Bosumtwi, Ghana – This nearly perfect circular crater is Ghana’s only natural lake. Carved out of crystalline bedrock found in the West African Shield, Lake Bosumtwi was formed over 1.3 million years ago. The crater is an impressive 6 miles (10.5 km) across.

Deep Bay, Canada – Another striking circular crater, this lake in Saskatchewan, Canada was formed around 100 million years ago by a very large meteorite. The impact left a hole 8 miles (13 km) wide that over time filled with water from nearby Reindeer Lake.

Wolfe Creek, Australia – This relatively young and small crater has been preserved in the arid desert of northern Australia. It’s partially buried under the continuous streams of sand that blows through the region. Estimated to be a mere 300,000 years old, this crater is less than a kilometer wide and was only discovered by scientists in 1947.

Aorounga Crater, Chad – Yet another crater somewhat preserved by a desert landscape, the Aorounga Crater in Africa is almost 8 miles (12.9 km) wide. But when the area was scanned by Space Shuttle SIR-C radar, images revealed two more rings of similar size (possibly 2 more craters) to the east of the visible crater. If all of these craters were formed at once, scientists believe the meteor could have been anywhere from a half-mile to full mile across!

Southwest Egypt – This crater is one of the most recent discoveries by scientists using new tools like Google Earth. Found using satellite images in 2008, this small crater in the deserts of southwestern Egypt is only 45 meters wide and perhaps a few thousand years old. It makes you wonder if the Egyptians knew anything about it!

Be sure to check out Part 1 in this series touring Earth’s impact craters.

Locations: Australia, Chad, Egypt, Ghana, Quebec, Saskatchewan / Categories: Deserts, Natural Landmarks

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Let’s start with the basics: many of the animals we can see in Africa are of course working animals, like this large flock of sheep, these forlorn looking donkeys, and an absolute plethora of cows, goats, camels, and people filling up at a well.

We can do much better than this though – out in the wild, things start to get a lot more exciting.

Firstly we can see a small group of Gazelles caught mid-leap in the desert of Chad, and there’s obviously been a few passing this way – look how many hoof-prints they’ve left in the sand! Also caught leaping (but through a river), are a large group of Red Lechewe in Zambia.

Again in Chad, but out on the savannah this time, we find this wonderful image of a small family of Elephants huddling together to protect their young. Presumably from the terrifying machine flying overhead…

Out on the plain in Mozambique we can see a portion of what must have been a fairly enormous herd of Buffalo, again presumably fleeing from the plane above them.

Thanks to the exceptional resolution of these images, the animals don’t have to be as big as the 1.7 metre high African Buffalo to be spotted. In a swamp in Mali, there’s a great image of a Giant Stork flapping lazily around. Just to the south there’s actually one perched in a mangrove, and lots of other birds have been caught on the wing elsewhere in Mali.

Not all the birds found are own their own though – on the coast of Mozambique there’s a stunning image of a huge flock of Pink Flamingos taking off (perhaps they were startled by this small boat to the north?).

To Zambia now, where we can see some lovely chubby little baby hippos and even better, in Tanzania we can see a pod of hundreds of hippos wallowing in the mud, which is a truly incredible sight.

Here’s another shot of the same hippos in the mud¹, but this time we can more clearly see that’s there’s actually a dead hippo lying on the bank, being feasted on by vultures.

Hippos tend to share their pools and rivers with other creatures – particularly crocodiles, and nearby to yet another pod of hippos we can see the unmistakable silhouette of a crocodile just under the water. Next to the first hippos we found, there’s another crocodile, just chilling out on the bank.

Finally, although not being the kind of animals you’d traditionally expect to see while on safari, these images of seals on the coast of Namibia are too good not to include!

And here ends the great Google Sightseeing Safari. Of course this is only the beginning as there are more than 500 Megaflyover images to explore in Google Earth! Reggie98 at the Keyhole foums has been categorizing all of the animals to be found in them.

To see all the Megaflyover images, open “Gallery” in the Layers sub-panel (bottom-left) and enable the National Geographic Layer. You’ll see little red aircraft symbols appearing all over Africa, and each of these will take you to a hi-res shot of the area. Also, here’s a link to download a kml file which details many of the hundreds of undocumented images that form part of this enormous and stunning collection.

Thanks to all of the people at the Keyhole forums who helped me find these fascinating images! For more background on the project, visit the official Megaflyover and National Geographic pages.

Locations: Africa, Chad, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia / Categories: Animals, Deserts

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Unfortunately for all the people who’ve wasted hours scanning the earth, this is really nothing new. There are no methods for seeing higher resolution images of your favourite area than you can see today in Google Maps and Google Earth.

The confusion has developed from the recent Australia flyover and the far-from recent Africa flyover project. The result of both projects was images of a much higher resolution than elsewhere in the world – meaning there’s an extra zoom level or two in these areas and these areas only¹.

A lot of folk have been suggesting that we feature these “new” sights, and even though we’ve highlighted a few before I thought I’d have another look…

The 500 different Megaflyover photographs included in Google Maps and Earth were selected by Mike Fay from his library of almost 92,000 images, taken from a small plane flying at low altitude.

A couple of my favourite images are these guys in a small village, looking up at the aircraft as it passes over…

I also liked this pack of camels, roaming the desert.

But there’s hundreds more. So please, take my advice: Stop trying to hack URLs, load up Google Earth and switch on the “National Geographic Magazine Layer” under Featured Content. You’ll find it much more rewarding.

Previous Megaflyover shots on Google Sightseeing: Victoria Falls, The Longest Conveyor Belt in the World and N’dama Skull and Australia Day shots: Australia Day (check the comments too), NRMA Motorfest ‘07 & Nessie.

Wikipedia Links: Mike Fay and his MegaFlyover

Locations: Chad / Categories: Animals, Crowds, Deserts

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