A satellite's eye view: Stunning images from space of the world's most famous locations



Capturing the natural and man made beauty of our planet, these remarkable images are photographed from 425 miles above the Earth's surface.

Showing the world's tallest mountain Everest in its entirety and the glory of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, they make up part of commercial satellite firm GeoEye's 2011 calendar.

They show spectacular landmarks such as the iconic Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia and the shifting sands of a desert in Namibia.



Towering: The Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure ever built, at 2,717 captured by the GeoEye 1 satellite on 9th February 2010

Because it's there: Mount Everest towers 29,035 feet above sea level captured on 21st November 2009

Operating three satellites out of their Dulles, Virginia headquarters, GeoEye provide exclusive imagery to the Google Earth and Google Maps applications.

As of last year, GeoEye had gathered together 340 million square kilometres of photographs and their newest satellite GeoEye 1 is capable of capturing something the size of a beer barrel from 684 kilometres up.

'Our biggest customer is the military and primarily the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, whom we provide photos to within 50 cm clarity on the ground,' said Elizabeth 'Eli' Doerr, GeoEye's Corporate Imagery Services Representative.

'We operate three continually orbiting vehicles, IKONOS, Orbview 2 and our latest, GeoEye 1.



'GeoEye orbits at almost 17,000 mph and makes 15 orbits a day.

The red bricked roofs of houses in the Italian city of Siena. In the centre of the image stands the famous Piazza del Campo

The Takla Makan Desert is China's largest desert, situated in the middle of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang Province. It is one of the largest 'shifting-sand' deserts in the world

She said: 'It has a sun-synchronous orbit, which means that it can pass over the same location every day at approximately 10.30am.

'It is capable of collecting up to 700,000 square kilometres of material every day and that is basically data equivalent to the size of Texas.'



Launched in a Delta 2 Rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in 2008, GeoEye 1 was the latest addition to their ever-growing dominance of the commercial satellite sector.

'The whole project in total cost £314 million to put the 4,300 pound satellite into orbit in conjunction with Boeing who built the Delta rocket and General Dynamics who built GeoEye1,' she said.

'We are looking to expand our clients and in addition to Google, we also have dealt with Yahoo and Microsoft too.

'It is a pleasure to bring people images such as Everest from angles that they might never have seen before or experienced.

'From the deserts of Namibia to the canals of St Petersburg, they really are beautiful images.'

Some of the most unusual wildlife and nature reserves in the world can be found in the heart of the 'dune sea' of the Namib Desert in Namibia, southwest of Angola. Here, the worldís tallest sand dunes rise over 984 ft high. The interaction between wind and sand over 55 million years formed this amazing and vast desert into complex patterns

First hole at Augusta Golf Club, US. Each hole on the course is named after a tree or shrub. The club hosted the first Masters Tournament, one of the four major championships in professional golf, on March 22, 1934