Filming Facts
Fact sheet from Earth From Space.
Published: 9 April 2019
- Earth from Space contains more than 300 satellite images.
- The images are so detailed that if you were to print them all out full size they would cover an area bigger than 10,000 square metres - the equivalent of about 40 tennis courts or nearly two football fields.
- The images were sourced from more than 20 different satellites operated by national space agencies and a growing number of private companies.
- The series includes images down to a 30cm resolution, the highest level of detail commercially available from satellite to date.
- As well as satellite images, the team filmed on the ground in 20 countries around the world, including Japan, Peru and Botswana, often needing to coordinate filming at the same time as satellites passing overhead.
- The biggest problem for the team was cloud cover. One crucial image of an oxbow lake in the Peruvian Amazon took more than a year to acquire, with multiple attempts thwarted by cloud.
- As well as human stories, the series contains sequences about more than 35 animal species from Emperor penguins to Amazonian manatees.
- The smallest living thing the team was able to show in satellite images were wandering albatross, nesting on Bird Island in the South Atlantic.
- Half of all Emperor penguin colonies in existence were discovered thanks to satellite imagery.
Pictured: Land is divided into strips for farmers in Bolivia. Image Credit: DigitalGlobe, A Maxar Company
