Seven Square Miles

Spending time looking at the varying and beautiful images of our planet from above in Google Earth, zooming in and out at dizzying rates, I thought it would be interesting to compare all of these vistas at a fixed scale—to see what New York City, Venice, or the Grand Canyon would look like from the same virtual height. So, the following images are snapshots from Google Earth, all rectangles of the same size and scale, approximately three and a half miles (5.6 kilometers) wide by two miles (3.2 kilometers) tall—showing seven square miles (18.1 square kilometers, or 4,480 acres) of the surface of our planet in each view.

Read more
Hints: View this page full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ←/→.

Most Recent

  • © Karsten Mosebach / GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2025

    Winners of the GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2025

    A collection of winning and honored images from this year’s nature-photo competition

  • ESA / Hubble & NASA, K. Noll

    The 35th Anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope

    A collection of amazing recent images made with the Hubble Space Telescope

  • Andrew Harnik / Getty

    Photos of the Week: Pony Run, Corgi Race, Rocket War

    Mourners of Pope Francis gathered at the Vatican, scenes from the the second weekend of Coachella 2025, a humanoid-robot half-marathon in China, and much more

  • Olivier Morin / AFP / Getty

    Photographing the Beauty of the North

    Images of the people, animals, and landscapes of the Earth’s arctic and subarctic regions, photographed by Olivier Morin