Chapter 8 — Discovering Overlays and Mash-ups 139
FIGURE8-8: Viewing multiple hurricanes.
Satellites
If you’ve ever looked up at the sky to view the stars and the constellations, you may be surprised
to know that one of those stars may have been the International Space Station (ISS). With a
large enough telescope — or even one of the hobby scopes — you can actually see the ISS from
the ground.
But how do you know where to look?
The Space Station Tracker (located at http://gmaps.tommangan.us/spacecraft_
tracking.html) shows the location in the sky of the International Space Station and the
Hubble Space Telescope as they pass over different part of the world (see Figure 8-9).
The site shows a very simple overlay of information on top of a Google Earth Map. If you
leave the site open, the application will actually create a trail of the path taken by the satellites,
as you might be able to see more clearly in Figure 8-10.
Blackbirds
Blackbird is the nickname given to the Lockheed SR-71, a spy plane that first took flight in
the 1960s. Thirty-two were built, and 12 of these were lost in flying accidents (remarkably, no
SR-71 has ever been shot down). Some of the remaining planes now reside in museums, and
others are technically still in service and can be found at airfields across the U.S.