TerraServer is a commercial website specializing in aerial and satellite imagery

Satellite imagery

Satellite imagery consists of photographs of Earth or other planets made by means of artificial satellites.- History :The first images from space were taken on sub-orbital flights. The U.S-launched V-2 flight on October 24, 1946 took one image every 1.5 seconds...

 which was originally launched in 1997. It is owned and operated by TerraServer.com, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina

Raleigh, North Carolina

Raleigh is the capital and the second largest city in the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city's 2010 population was 403,892, over an area of , making Raleigh...

. The company was previously named Aerial Images until May 2002 when the assets of Aerial Images were sold and the company renamed itself TerraServer.com, Inc.

History

Aerial Images was a part of the original project that involved Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 and Compaq

Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....

 as a demonstration of the real-world scalability of SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...

 and Microsoft's Windows NT

Windows NT

Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

 Server. Aerial Images brought in satellite imagery from Sovinformsputnik (the Russian Federal Space Agency) and GeoEye

GeoEye

GeoEye Inc. is a commercial satellite imagery company based in Herndon, Virginia that is the world's largest space imaging corporation....

. TerraServer has now expanded its partnerships and has become an image provider for LandVoyage and the DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe, of Longmont, Colorado, USA, is a commercial vendor of space imagery and geospatial content, and operator of civilian remote sensing spacecraft...

 family of companies: GlobeXplorer

GlobeXplorer

GlobeXplorer was an online spatial data company that compiled and distributed aerial photos, satellite imagery, and map data from their online spatial archives...

 and AirPhotoUSA, as well as imagery from the USGS and USDA.

After the agreement ended in January 2000, the operations split into two pieces. Aerial Images kept the TerraServer.com domain name to create a commercial site selling custom selected imagery. Microsoft went forward with their own imagery project, that provides access to United States Geological Survey

United States Geological Survey

The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology,...

 imagery. The Microsoft project has used the TerraServer brand name in a variety of ways including terraserver.homeadvisor.com, terraserver.microsoft.com, and terraserver.msn.com. In 2003, Microsoft rebranded itss research service as TerraServer-USA

TerraServer-USA

Microsoft Research Maps or MSR Maps is a free online repository of public domain aerial imagery and topographic maps provided by the U.S. Geological Survey . The site is a collaboration between Microsoft Research , Bing Maps, and the USGS. It has been under continuous operation since June 1998. It...

, and then Microsoft Research Maps. There may exist confusion between the two sites, because of the name similarity. However, TerraServer.com, Inc. is the sole owner of the registered trademark TerraServer. The "TerraServer" name is a reference to 'Terra', which is Latin for 'earth' or 'land'. The name also references a unit of computer storage, the 'terabyte'.

Website

The TerraServer viewer allows for users to select imagery from different dates and of different resolutions. While most of the TerraServer imagery is focused on high resolution, color, satellite and aerial imagery, TerraServer.com also offers Color Infrared Imagery

Infrared photography

In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about...

, Panchromatic Imagery, Low Resolution Satellite Imagery, and Topographic Maps

Topographic map

A topographic map is a type of map characterized by large-scale detail and quantitative representation of relief, usually using contour lines in modern mapping, but historically using a variety of methods. Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and man-made features...

. Subscribers to TerraServer.com gain access to a drawing and measuring tool that can measure surface distance and area on the images. TerraServer also makes a number of image overlays available, including road names, FEMA flood data, earthquake data, landslide data, real estate parcels, parks, schools, hospitals, airports, and zip codes.

TerraServer.com offers other products in addition to a subscription to the website. All users are able to purchase digital downloads that include a geo-referenced world file

World file

A world file is a plain text computer data file used by geographic information systems to georeference raster map images. The file specification was introduced by ESRI....

, which allows the image to be imported into GIS and CAD software. Downloads are available in the following formats: JPEG

JPEG

In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

, TIF, GIF

GIF

The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....

, BMP

Bitmap

In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...

, PDF, PSD, and PNG. TerraServer also allows users to select digital images and have them printed through MyTopo, who has an exclusive print partnership with TerraServer.com. Prints are available in the following paper types and finishes through the TerraServer.com website: Glossy

Gloss

A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....

, Matte, Laminated

Laminate

A laminate is a material that can be constructed by uniting two or more layers of material together. The process of creating a laminate is lamination, which in common parlance refers to the placing of something between layers of plastic and gluing them with heat and/or pressure, usually with an...

, Waterproof, and Canvas

Canvas print

A canvas print, also known as a stretched canvas or canvas art, is the result of an image printed onto canvas which is stretched, or gallery-wrapped, onto a frame and displayed...

.

External links

• TerraServer - Visit the TerraServer Homepage
• TerraServer Samples - View Popular Search Locations and Landmarks