Image of the week : San Francisco HR oblique view

from Mapbox
DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 satellite collected an astonishing view of San Francisco
We don’t often see pictures like this one.

The problem is haze: as a camera in space looks toward the horizon, it sees more water vapor, smog, and other stuff in the atmosphere that obscures the Earth.

But our friends at DigitalGlobe built WorldView-3 with a sensor suite called CAVIS, which lets it quantify and subtract haze – making atmospheric effects virtually invisible.

Only WorldView-3 can see so clearly at this angle.
The satellite is about 17° above the horizon from San Francisco, and it is looking about 60° away from the point directly under it.

At first I thought there was a typo, because 17° off horizontal should be 73° off vertical, not 61°.

But while sketching it out, I realized I was assuming the ground is flat.

WorldView-3 is way out over the Pacific – more than 1300 km or 800 miles to the west, and over that distance the Earth curves by about 12°!
Pan and zoom to see landmarks and details 

SF with the GeoGarage platform