Google Earth

In 2011, it was announced the Google Street View now takes you inside buildings. Starting with local businesses around 37 global cities--in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France and the U.K., had the interiors photographed for view in Google Maps or Google Earth. Since then, Museums around the world have been photographed and added to Google's Street view with virtual tours.

Related Links:

• Google Street View now takes you inside buildings -- The Atlantic (2011)
• https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/project/streetviews
  

In Layers panel of Google Earth under Ocean there is a Shipwrecks layer, which if checked will shows icons for shipwrecks around the world like the HMS Titanic with details about the ship, when/why it was sunk, and sometimes video clips, etc. This, however, will require you to know approximately where a particular ship was sunk to locate it.

Note most shipwrecks will only show an icon but a few like the Titanic have a 3-D model of the shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean.

There is also the "Shipwrecks Tour" and "Visible Shipwreck Collection" from Google Earth Community (GEC) that can be downloaded and viewed in Google Earth.

See related links below.

In the search/fly-to panel in addition to addresses you can enter latitude/longitude coordinates to fly-to that location but it must be one of the supported formats:

1. Latitude, Longitude in decimal format:

e.g., 37.7, -122.2

Note that such coodinates must appear in this order (latitude, longitude).

2. Latitude, Longitude in DMS format:

37 25'19.07"N, 122 05'06.24"W or

37 25 19.07 N, 122 05 06.24 W

Note that format 37d25'19.07"N, 122d05'06.24"W does NOT work with Google Earth

Sometimes the lookup gets confused so in that case try adding "loc:" as prefix before the coordinates such as:

loc: 43° 14′ 0″ N, 109° 39′ 41″ W

In most cases you can use the same query search in Google Earth as you use in Google Maps.

Here are seven things you can do with Google Earth:

1. View an image of your home, school or any place on Earth - Click Fly To and enter an address and/or city name. Hit Enter and Google Earth flies you to this location.
2. Tour the world - In the Places panel, open the 'Sightseeing Tour' or 'Learn and Explore' folder and double click 'Start tour here'.
3. Get driving directions from one place to another and fly (follow) the route. Select 'To Here' or 'From Here' links from any Placemark on the map.
4. View historical imagery for your favorite locations - Enable 'Historical Imagery' option in View menu. Then use the time slider to change the time to view the recent history of that location at that time period.
5. View 3D terrain - This is more fun with hilly or mountainous terrain, such as the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest. When the view shows the location, use the zoom slider to tilt the terrain. Simply use Up/down arrows while pressing shift-key to tilt.
6. Explore shipwrecks around the world. Enable the Ocean > Shipwrecks layer in layers Panels and ship icons appear in the ocean at site of many shipwrecks. Also suggest the '3D Buildings' layer is also checked since some shipwrecks have 3D models associated with them (e.g. HMS Titanic).
7. Explore Mars or the Moon. Click the "planet" button (looks like Saturn) on the toolbar and select Mars or Moon or you can select View / Explore from the main menu. Google Earth teleports you to your selection from which you can check out the NASA Mars or lunar landings.

If unable to perform any of these steps or some steps are unfamiliar then check out the Google Earth User Guide, which is packed full of short videos and tutorials to walk through the features of Google Earth from the basics to some advanced topics.

There are many other things you can do with Google Earth. See Google Showcase or Google Gallery to view samples of other things you can see and do in Google Earth...

Go to 41°43'42.27"N 49°56'53.65"W and zoom in until you see the 2 halves of the Titanic. Then drag the yellow man from the right hand side of the screen and drop him in between the two halves. Then you will be able to see the Titanic in 3D, in Ground-level View mode.

Note: Make sure you have the 3D Models layer checked in Layers panel and 'Water Surface' checked in View menu.

or

Under Oceans layer check the item Shipwrecks then navigate to the North Atlantic where you'll see a shipwreck icon where the Titanic sunk roughly 614 miles east of Nova Scotia. Click on the icon and it will fly you near to a 3D model of the wreckage.

While Google does not provide real-time imagery or street-view photographs, there are some near real-time layers such as weather and traffic.

However, there is also a "live" webcam layer for selected areas under the Gallery layer called Webcams.travel.

On Google Earth finding the latitude and longitude coordinates of a place is simple. Just enter the address or place name in search dialog then press Enter to fly there. Next make sure the 'Status Bar' is enabled - option found in View menu. The location under the mouse will be seen on bottom of map in the Status Bar.

You can change the format of the coordinates in Tools/Options menu to degrees-minutes-seconds (DMS), decimal degrees, or several others.

In case of Santa Cruz airport, the nearest airport is in San Jose. You can enter "airport near santa cruz, ca" into the search panel in Google Earth to show the list of airports on the map.

You can change the displayed coordinates in Google Earth in the menu under Tools > Options > Show Lat/Long and select Universal Transverse Mercator for UTM.

Next you want to check the Sidebar option under View menu to show the coordinates under the mouse, which will now appear in UTM with a grid zone, northing, and easting values.

For a quick guide to using UTM see related links.

If you enable the 'Status Bar' option under View menu then imagery dates (if available) will appear in status bar that shows at bottom of the map window in Google Earth.

Dates are approximate. Sometimes dates are when the imagery was processed as opposed to when it was captured so you could have an image with snow on the ground with a date in July.

For more details on dates in Google Earth imagery see related link below to article.