2009 Inauguration from Space

Barak Obama's Inauguration from Space

On Jan. 20, 2009, at 11:19 a.m. (EST), GeoEye-1, the world’s highest resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite, took a color image over Washington D.C. The image shows the monuments along the National Mall and masses of people gathered between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.

GeoEye-1 took the image while traveling at 17,000 mph or about four miles per second from 423 miles in space as it moved from north to south along the eastern seaboard of the United States. The satellite is able to discern objects on the ground as small as 0.41-meter or about 16 inches in size, which represents an object about the size of home plate on a baseball diamond. However, due to current U.S. licensing restrictions the imagery is re-sampled to half-meter ground resolution. The satellite is currently in its final stages of check-out and calibration. The 4,300-pound satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. on Sept. 6, 2008.

You can see a better version of the image here.  At the bottom right of that page is a link to download the full 8218 x 2700 pixels high resolution image as well as the KML file needed to view it in Google Earth.

The shot below is a crop of a very small part of the high resolution photo cropped to see the people gathered at the Washington Monument (way down from the action) to watch the big screens.  Even this small cropped area is reduced in size to fit my blog’s format.

The satellite imaging company has made the high resolution photo available as a poster.

Crowds at the Washington Monument