Satellite Exploration of Thailand > General

Introduction to Satellite Exploration

What I call here "satellite exploration" is acquiring, processing and interpreting of satellite images. So far, I have conceived four benefits of satellite exploration. Namely:
  1. Satellite images may reveal curious roads and destinations which other forms of images (eg. maps) often fail to convey.
  2. Satellite images may provide new perspectives and significance to otherwise already familiar roads and destinations.
  3. Satellite images may often be the only source of visual information where physical access is difficult or restricted.
  4. Satellite images from yesteryears, when compared with present-day images, may provide striking historical significance.

Non-military satellite images are basically distributed on a commercial basis. One data set of an area costs 1,000B - 300,000B, depending on the operator, distributor and the kind of satellite (Landsat, SPOT, IKONOS, Quickbird, etc).

These days, however, an increasing amount of free satellite images is available on the internet, if somewhat of limited coverage - both in time and space - and often inferior quality. This has paved the way for non-commercial, non-academic and non-governmental amateur explorers to benefit from this modern and costly technology.

The reading and interpreting of satellite images is a branch of science called Remote Sensing and, as such, the amount of knowledge and technology it involves is rather vast and ever expanding. For an amateur explorer, however, it is enough to understand only a few basic principles, and this can be learned when - and only when - he feels the necessity.

To start your own satellite exploration project, you need a computer, an internet connection to download satellite images, and a layer-enabled graphic editor to process these images. You also need some inspiration and a lot of patience.

Change picture or toggle layer on/off.

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Gimp freeware	Powerful graphic editor.
Kashmir 3D freeware	This software can load any scanned maps and, after calibration, overlay various geo-spatial data. It can load GPS data, SRTM data (elevation) and GIS data (e00 format) among other things. It can also load and process raw Landsat data (band 1 - band 8 with a metadata file).
SmartMap/Thailand 950B	Digital map of Thailand. Its map data is outdated in many areas, and its interface has a room for improvement. The map data seems to be based on satellite images, thus surprisingly accurate in unexpected situations. An alternative is the MapMagic/Thailand (750B), but I haven't tried it yet.

An Introductory Landsat Tutorial

The Worldwide Reference System (WRS)

Remote Sensing Tutorial    Overview and Use of this Tutorial    Overview and Use of this Tutorial (continued) ... (extensive contents continue) ...