Red dots on a comparative map means that light appeared in these geographic locations within 10 years.
Yellow- the night lights have become stronger.
Blue- the light in these places went out.

"Night Lights of the World" is one of the projects of the Earth Observation Group (EOG) at the US National Geophysical Data Center (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). EOG serves U.S. Air Force and Aerospace weather services by archiving and analyzing data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) of the U.S. Department of Defense. In addition to weather observations, 4 satellites working for the program since 1993 also record the intensity of light radiation on the Earth’s surface, not only in the visible spectrum, but also in the infrared range (including city lighting, forest fires, oil flares). towers, etc.).

Initially, night illumination was calculated in order to determine the location of clouds by the reflection of moonlight, but then they realized that where there are no clouds, night illumination reflects interesting socio-economic trends and allows one to assess the degree and nature of development of a particular region of the world. For example, it turned out that the intensity of night lighting is directly proportional Country's GDP.

Despite the fact that a complete “light” picture of the world is compiled twice a day, 365 days a year, a comparative map was made and made publicly available only for one pair of years - 1993 and 2003. First of all, because this is a very labor-intensive procedure: it is necessary to normalize the data and neutralize weather effects that greatly affect the illumination - such as, for example, snowfalls. However, the agency accepts orders for calculations from other years - $77 thousand per order.

RUSSIA

Blue dots in Russia

From 1991 to 2003, simultaneously with the reduction of the country's population by 9 million people, more than 290 cities and 11 thousand villages disappeared from the country's map. Another 13 thousand villages continued to appear on the maps, but in fact there were no longer any inhabitants left in them. A significant part of the settlements, according to the website www.dead-cities.ru, were abandoned after the cessation of deforestation and natural resource extraction due to supply difficulties and the high cost of infrastructure, as well as the disbandment of military garrisons. Smaller - was abolished due to disrepair housing stock and as a result of forced resettlement during the construction of oil terminals.

Red dots in Western Siberia

A large number of red dots on the territory of Western Siberia speaks not so much about the development of cities, but about the increase in oil production: all these are torches on oil rigs in which the so-called “associated gas”, a by-product of oil production, is burned. Every year, for economic, organizational and technical reasons, about 30% of APG is burned in Russia, which, according to the World Wildlife Fund, is 12% of total emissions harmful substances in the country.

EUROPE

Red dots in Romania

End of overnight power cuts in Romania. It is believed that communist dictator Ceausescu often cut off electricity and gas to the population, even when it was not economically justifiable, as a form of intimidation. In the 1980s, street lights were absent almost everywhere in the country. In 1989, Ceausescu was overthrown, but from deep economic crisis the country was able to withdraw only towards the end of the 1990s.

Blue dots in Moldova

The Republic of Moldova, recognized in 2005 by the World Bank as the poorest country in Europe, lost more in GDP during the 1990s than any other country in the world. The collapse of the economy and the closure of hundreds industrial enterprises on the territory of the country led to a colossal decrease in domestic demand for electricity, which, in turn, led to a catastrophic drop in electricity production at the Moldavian State District Power Plant. By 2005, it had decreased by 90% compared to 1990. As a result, the country has transformed from an exporter to a sustainable importer of electricity from Russia and Ukraine.

Blue dots in the North Sea

The blue dots in the North Sea, which is one of the world's most important oil and gas producing areas, are decommissioned oil rigs. Over the next 20 years, their numbers will continue to decline steadily. On the one hand, drilling new fields in the North Sea is an expensive and dangerous business, on the other hand, oil reserves in this region are already half exhausted.

Red dots in Ireland

The highest density of new lights in Europe is in Ireland, which is not surprising - in the early 1990s, the country began a rapid the economic growth, which reached 9.5% per year by the end of the century and most affected the construction sector. By 2003, the country, which for the past two centuries had been one of the poorest in Europe, came out on top in terms of growth rates among the most developed European countries.

Red dots in the former Yugoslavia

In 1993, in Bosnia and Croatia there was Civil War. A tenuous peace remained in Kosovo, but the economy was paralyzed by the Serbian-Albanian conflict and civil disobedience. By 2003, Milosevic was already in prison, and Croatian resorts were crowded with tourists.

NORTH AMERICA

Blue dots in the USA, on the west coast

The fading fires are visible across much of the western United States, but are most prevalent in rural areas of central Idaho, Wyoming and Nebraska. From the depression of the 1930s until 1996, most farmers worked for government contracts. Every year they planted the crops prescribed to them by the state, which then bought the crops at a favorable price. In 1996, President Bill Clinton introduced the Right to Farm program, which replaced government contracts with guaranteed but decreasing subsidies every year. 2003 was the first year that financial assistance from the program ceased completely.

Yellow dots in the USA, on the east coast

The terrorist attacks of September 2001 shook the American economy, but thanks to the general stability at that time financial system the market almost completely recovered from the shock within a few months. According to the latest data, the country lost no more than 1% of GDP as a result of the terrorist attacks. The metropolitan areas of the East Coast continued to grow steadily.

LATIN AMERICA

Red dots in the Amazon River region in Latin America

Red dots in the Amazon jungle area are not a sign of the emergence of life, but, on the contrary, of its destruction. From the early 1990s to 2004 in countries Latin America and the Caribbean, 46 million hectares of forest were destroyed.

AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST

Red dots in Nigeria

The red spots in the Niger Delta are primarily oil field flares. Nigeria is producing more and more oil, but collecting almost none of the gas it produces. According to the World Wildlife Fund, burning of natural gas produces about 1% of all global greenhouse carbon dioxide emissions. Only Russia, Iran, Iraq and Angola burn more NPG than Nigeria. In the USA, 97% of associated petroleum gas is used, in Norway - completely.

Yellow dots in Israel

The aggravation of the Arab-Israeli conflict did not prevent the rapid development of Israel. Since the start of the “second intifada” on September 28, 2000, when Ariel Sharon, a supporter of military action against Palestinian separatists, paid an official visit to a sacred place for both conflicting parties - the Temple Mount, the number of Israelis living in settlements in Palestinian territories has increased by one and a half times.

ASIA

Red dots in India

Almost 70% of Indians still live in rural areas, but population migration to big cities has led to dramatic urban growth between 1991 and 2009. India's urban population grew from 217.2 million to 339.3 million.

Blue dots in India

The state of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh of India is the most densely populated part of the globe and at the same time the poorest part of the country. Every year, the region suffers from floods from the Koshi River, which enters the state from the Nepalese mountains. The blue dots on the map are obviously the consequences of the severe floods of 2000-2002, which destroyed almost a million residential buildings.

Red dots in Burma

The government of Burma, which has been led by the military for 45 years following a coup, claims that the country's GDP grew by 8.3% between 1993 and 2003. But the illumination data says that real numbers three times less than the official ones.

Red dots off the coast of Vietnam

One of the features of the illumination detection method is that it is more sensitive to small luminous objects. This phenomenon only causes trouble for meteorologists, economists and sociologists; it benefits them. A large number of red dots off the coast of Vietnam are fishing vessels, the number of which, according to the Associated Press, reaches at least 40 thousand (with 200 thousand people on board). The reason for such activity is the growth of the Vietnamese economy, which is associated not only with the transition from communism to market economy, but also because since 2000, Vietnamese goods were finally allowed to enter the American market.

The Yandex satellite “map” has a rather intricate internal structure. It consists of several coverings of the Earth's surface, which correspond to different scale intervals. The roughest “map” is used for scales of 1:5,000,000 (1 cm is 50 kilometers) and smaller. At this scale, you can place on the tablet screen the entire Moscow region or the entire White Sea, part of which is chosen as the background for this question. This map is compiled from a large number of individual images taken by the OLI camera installed on the Landsat 8 satellite. All images taken by this camera are published in the public domain by the US Geological Survey, which operates Landsat 8. The images were taken at different times of the year. It seems that on this “map” it is spring at the same time in both the southern and northern hemispheres. One of the features of the OLI camera is that in the frames taken by this camera, you can automatically highlight areas covered with clouds. On the Yandex small-scale “map”, for each point on the Earth’s surface, a picture is selected in which this particular point is not covered. The “map” is assembled in such a way that there are no sharp boundaries between fragments of different frames. This type of map is called “seamless coverage”.

If you zoom in further - go to a scale of 1:1,000,000 and larger, then the picture is divided into rectangular stripes. The fact is that the OLI camera resolution is about 30 m per pixel, so details visible on a large scale cannot be seen in OLI frames. For more detailed coverage, Yandex purchases data from several satellite operators equipped with high-resolution cameras - DigitalGlobe and the Indian Space Agency. The Roscosmos Corporation also has such satellites - Resurs-P No. 1 and the recently launched Resurs-P No. 2. Perhaps the data from these satellites is also already being used by Yandex. In order to photograph the entire surface of the Earth with high resolution, it takes much more time, so Yandex still does not have enough data for seamless coverage and we can see the boundaries of individual frames. Satellite operators try to photograph the land surface first, so the greatest shortage of footage is for the waters of the seas and oceans. In addition, not all high-resolution satellites allow you to reliably and automatically recognize clouds, so sometimes cloud fragments end up on the map. This is precisely what is visible in the image of the White Sea northeast of Dvina Bay, which was chosen as the background for this question.

You can read more about the data used by Yandex Maps on a special page on the Company’s website (yandex.ru).

Mikhail Anatolyevich, apparently you mean images similar to the “street grid” located near the Canary Islands (see on Google Maps https://goo.gl/maps/cLYApjFSgBS2).

Two things should be noted. Firstly, this is not a satellite image, but a visualization of a map of the bottom relief - bathymetry. Secondly, this is not an ancient city, but the result of combining maps of different scales.
Constructing bottom relief maps is much more difficult than constructing topographic maps for the land surface. The fact is that the main methods of relief mapping used on land: radio echolocation, optical stereo photography and laser sounding are not applicable to the surface of the ocean floor, since radio waves and light do not penetrate the water column. Two methods remain: satellite gravimetry and acoustic echolocation. Satellite gravimetry records distortions in the shape of the water surface over underwater mountain ranges. This method made it possible for the first time to construct bathymetric maps of the entire surface of the world ocean floor, but the accuracy of this method is still significantly inferior to acoustic echolocation. Therefore, scientists use various mathematical methods for combining global gravimetric maps and sailing directions laid along the main routes of the merchant fleet. As a result, “grooves” appear on the flat surface of the bottom, reconstructed from gravimetry data, corresponding to more detailed acoustic echolocation data. This is exactly what we see in the picture.

If you look closely at Google maps, you will notice several hidden places, they are prohibited from being shown.

Let's find out about them in more detail.

1. Baker Lake, Inuit territory in northern Canada

A man who calls himself "Dr. Boylan" believes that the darkened area in this photo and in some other locations hides extraterrestrial alien beacons.

2. Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany

This NATO air base is Starting point for the forces of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and for this reason, can certainly be a target for terrorist attacks. This may explain why this item is partially removed from Google Maps.

3. Pacific Northwest, USA

What exactly do we not see in this photo? This place is located near the border of Washington and Oregon states. Enthusiasts personally examined the place and found nothing remarkable except an ominous-looking fence and an unmarked entrance.

4. Szazalombatta Oil Refinery, Hungary

This is one of the strangest examples of censorship in Google Maps - this place is simply shaded green. The factory area has been removed, the buildings have been erased, and all you can see is ordinary grass.

5. Huis Ten Palace, Holland

It's hard to imagine that the Dutch royal family would be a prime target for a crazed terrorist, but the royal palace of Huis Ten is heavily blurred on Google Maps when viewed from any angle. (However, the surrounding area and trees are visible with crystal clarity at close magnification).

6. Unknown zone, Russia

Nobody knows what is hiding in this region. One of the opinions is that there is “ radar station or a missile interception system,” and some claim that the image of the surrounding area was inserted from another region of Russia.

7. Mobil Oil Corporation, Buffalo, New York, USA

Some have criticized Buffalo-based Mobil for blurring images of its facilities, saying oil corporations are not of much interest to terrorists. On the other hand, we do not know what the terrorists themselves think.

8. North Korea

Everyone has heard about this country, part of the supposed “Axis of Evil,” but very few have ever visited it. You won't see it on Google Maps either, since the entire country exists in pictures, but without road markers, street names or any other identifying details.

9. Reims Air Base, France

The reasons why this air base is blocked in Google Maps are unknown.

10. Indian Point Power Plant, New York, USA

Many members of the United States government called for the shutdown of the Indian Point Power Plant. Environmental concerns aside, energy experts say the power plant is not strong enough to withstand an earthquake like the one that recently devastated Japan.

11. Volkel Air Base, Holland

It's quite funny to see how this air base is crudely blurred in satellite images, but WikiLeaks has published diplomatic correspondence that confirms the presence of nuclear warheads on the territory of this base.

12. HAARP, Gakona, Alaska, USA

HAARP (High Frequency Northern Lights Research Program) is one of the most controversial operations currently underway in the United States. Gakona, the research site, and the experiments with the ionosphere carried out there, are revered by some conspiracy theorists as the cause of everything from floods to earthquakes, but there is very little evidence of this.

13. Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway, Salinas, California, USA

This is one of the strangest examples of censorship in Google Maps: the Laguna Seca race track in Salinas, California. The strangest thing about it is precisely the fact that it is an apparently harmless race track.

14. Babylon, Iraq

While the surrounding area is clearly visible, the city of Babylon itself is blurry in the images. You can bet that this has something to do with the rebels there...

15. Tantauco National Park, Chile

Why is this endangered species sanctuary completely removed from Google Maps? Nobody knows this.

16. “The Hill”, Elmira Correctional Facility, USA

This is the highest security prison in New York State. Perhaps, after the Attica prison riots and several incidents of uprisings and mass escapes around the world, authorities may indeed be concerned about the possibility of escapes using helicopters.

17. House of Alexey Miller, Russia

According to Wikipedia, this place is home to the “private palace of the executive director of OJSC Gazprom Alexey Miller.” But why is he given preference over all other people? Maybe we're just not powerful enough to convince Google to cut out our houses from satellite imagery.

18. Colonel Sanders

This is the strangest fact from Google: Colonel Sanders, the face of the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain, does not appear in any Google Street View images. That's because Sanders was a real person, Google said, and images of real people should be blurred in any photos.

19. Faro Islands, Denmark

It is believed that there are some unadvertised military installations in this zone.

20. NATO Headquarters, Portugal

This photo would be the funniest if it didn't have such a sinister context. Whoever edited the image of the Portuguese NATO headquarters simply copied another piece of land on top of the image of the building. Very strange.

21. Seabrook Nuclear Station, New Hampshire

This northeastern part of the United States is believed to be home to the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant.

22. Missile silo, Spain

According to one researcher, “At this site there is a small structure with what appears to be a missile silo in the middle. What's strange is that this zone is not blocked in Yahoo! Maps, but there is no image of it on Google Maps.”

23. Atomic zone, France

We're not entirely sure what "The Marcoule site of the Commissariat l'Energie Atomique" means, but we think "atomique" is the key word here.

Search for a map of a city, village, region or country

Red Lighthouses. Yandex map.

Allows you to: change the scale; measure distances; switch display modes - diagram, satellite view, hybrid. The Yandex maps mechanism is used, it contains: districts, street names, house numbers and other objects of cities and large villages, allows you to perform search by address(square, avenue, street + house number, etc.), for example: “Lenin street 3”, “Krasnye Mayaki hotels”, etc.

If you don't find something, try the section Google satellite map: Red Lighthouses or a vector map from OpenStreetMap: Red Lighthouses.

Link to the object you selected on the map can be sent by e-mail, icq, sms or posted on the website. For example, to show a meeting place, delivery address, location of a store, cinema, train station, etc.: combine the object with the marker in the center of the map, copy the link on the left above the map and send it to the recipient - according to the marker in the center, he will determine the location you specified .

Red Lighthouses - online map with satellite view: streets, houses, districts and other objects.

To change the scale, use the mouse scroll wheel, the “+ -” slider on the left, or the “Zoom in” button in the upper left corner of the map; to view a satellite view or a people's map, select the appropriate menu item in the upper right corner; to measure the distance, click the ruler at the bottom right and plot the points on the map.

Krasnoyarsk Territory - Red Lighthouses: interactive map from Yandex. Vector diagram and satellite photo - with streets and houses, roads, address search and routing, measuring distances, the ability to get a link to a selected object on the map - to send to the recipient or post on the website.