Dear Editor,
Excellent true colour satellite photographs of many parts of Guyana’s coastal and interior regions are available online at http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_guyana.htm. At the best resolution, even vehicles and graves can be readily distinguished. I was able to easily see my house and backyard and many familiar man-made structures and natural features. The images are far better than a topographic map. They seem to have been taken around 2003, as they still show buildings that have since been torn down but not structures and buildings that have since been put up.
Images for the interior regions are not as good as those for the coast, but they are still very informative. Using the latitude and longitude screen centre feature one can easily locate many places of interest.
Undoubtedly, real-time and up-to-date satellite photographs are also available, but so far Google has not posted them. Interesting images of features such as a big fire at night must be recorded somewhere by one of the many satellites that orbit the earth.
Recently, a photographer, using Kepler’s Laws of planetary motion, was able to document and publish the paths of 189 secret satellites as they traverse the sky. (‘Photogra-pher documents secret satellites – All 189 of them,’ http://www.wired. com/culture/art/news/2008/06/secret_satellites?npu=1&mbid=yhp). His photographs titled The Other
Night Sky are on display at the University of California at Berkeley Art Museum.
It is amazing and somewhat disquieting to realize that there is an eye in the sky watching where you lie.
Yours faithfully,
M Xiu Quan-Balgobind-
Hackett
