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Satellite Photography Site Offers A Daily View Of Life From Above

We spoke to the curator behind the most artful satellite photography you'll see all week.

Satellite imagery courtesy of Digital Globe, Overviews captured on Apple Maps

As the legend goes, while on spacewalk in 1969, astronaut Rusty Schweickart had a revelation: “When you go around the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. That makes a change… it comes through to you so powerfully that you’re the sensing element for Man.” The macroscopic image of the Earth as a single, pale blue dot, devoid of barriers or borders and alone in the vacuum of space, it seemed, had triggered in Schweickart a cognitive shift. "From where you see it, the thing is a whole, the earth is a whole, and it's so beautiful," claimed the astronaut. "You wish you could take a person in each hand, one from each side in the various conflicts, and say, ‘Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What's important?'"

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One satellite photography website is bringing Schweickart's revelation to the forefront of dashboards and RSS feeds the world over. It's called Daily Overview, and it's made it its mission to distribute one stunning "Overview"—satellite photographs of an area where "human activity (for better or worst) has shaped the landscape"—per day.

From Benjamin Grant, the founder of Daily Overview:

Our project was inspired, and derives its name, from an idea known as the Overview Effect. This term refers to the sensation astronauts have when given the opportunity to look down and view the Earth as a whole. They have the chance to appreciate our home in its entirety, to reflect on its beauty and its fragility all at once. That's the cognitive shift that we hope to inspire. 

From our line of sight on the earth's surface, it’s impossible to fully appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the things we’ve constructed, the sheer complexity of the systems we’ve developed, or the devastating impact that we’ve had on our planet. We believe that beholding these forces as they shape our Earth is necessary to make progress in understanding who we are as a species, and what is needed to sustain a safe and healthy planet.

As a result, the Overviews (what we call these images) focus on the the places and moments where human activity—for better or for worse—has shaped the landscape. Each Overview starts with a thought experiment. We consider the places where man has left his mark on the planet and then conduct the necessary research to identify locations (and the corresponding geo-coordinates) to convey that idea. 

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The mesmerizing flatness of this vantage point, the surprising comfort of systematic organization on a massive scale, or the vibrant colors that we capture will hopefully turn some heads. However, once we have that attention, we hope the viewer will go beyond the aesthetics, contemplate just exactly what it is that they're seeing, and consider what that means for our planet.

Below, some of our favorite "Look Down" moments from Daily Overview:

4/26/2014—Lebrija 1 Solar Power Plant. 

Lebrija, Sevilla, Spain. 37.0066, -6.0434

4/21/2014—Venture Out RV Resort. 

Mesa, Arizona, USA. 33.411791, -111.723591

4/23/2014—Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. 

Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 33°38′12″N 084°25′41″W

4/24/2014—Grande Dixence Dam 

Hérémence, Switzerland. 46°04′50″N 07°24′14″E

4/22/2014—Lop Nur Potash Solar Ponds. 

Taklimakan Desert, China. 40.445902, 90.833588

4/28/2014—Port of Los Angeles. 

Los Angeles, California, USA. 33°43′45″N 118°15′43″W

4/17/2014 — Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal. 

Newark, New Jersey, USA 40°40′54″N 74°09′02″W

4/15/2014—Durrat Al Bahrain, 

Bahrain. 25°50′17″N 50°36′18″E

4/14/2014—Fishing Nets. 

Quanzhou, China. 24.61815, 118.504629

Humbling, ain't it? Check out Daily Overview for more quotidian doses of satellite amazingness.

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