Technomyths

Online digital aerial maps have become easily accessible in recent years. Today, you can go online and look up any city you want on Google Maps and get a close-up view. There are also a lot of other cool views to be found though, such as ones taken from passing map survey planes that give you a bird's-eye view of manmade landmarks and famous natural attractions. Here are a few of the things you can see with the power of aerial and satellite imaging.

Manmade Landmarks
You can literally spend hours on Google Earth zooming in an out of all the world's major manmade landmarks. It has become one of the most popular time-killers amongst computer users today. Seeing the Great Wall of China from the point of view of an orbiting satellite, for example, can give you a true sense of its size. Just the fact that's visible form space and covers a good portion of the Earth. One particularly interesting city that's full of interesting landmarks is the city of Ashgabat, in Turkmenistan. The aerial map of this city is filled with giant monuments built by the late dictator of the country, Saparmurat Niyazov. From an overhead POV, the place looks like a tapestry of huge, complex symmetrical designs.

Natural Landmarks
It's also a lot of fun to browse the web for aerial images of the world's natural marvels. There are plenty to see in the U.S. alone. The rainbow-colored hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, the huge gorge made by the Rio Grande, and the snow caps of California's Sierra Nevada are all incredible sights, especially when shot from low flying survey planes, which provide clearer images and angled views.

Google Street View
But perhaps the most popular feature of online digital mapping technology today is the ability to zoom in to get a street-side view of almost every major city in the world. I'm talking of Google Map's street view feature, of course, which allows you to go to almost any city in the map and get a virtual tour of it. The images used for street view mode are taken from thousands of van-mounted cameras throughout the world that work every day to keep street view mode as up to date as possible. If you spend enough time exploring, you can find some pretty interesting candid shots. Everything from a freeway car wreck to a guy who obviously drank a little too much the night before.