Ever heard of the “Overview Effect?” Essentially, it’s when astronauts, who are seeing Earth from a great distance, suddenly have a mental clarity — a new understanding on what it means to be alive, and how everything is connected. Benjamin Grant is no astronaut, but he experienced something akin to the Overview Effect when he was looking through satellite images of the world.
New York consultant Benjamin Grant was trying to find satellite imagery of Earth for work, but instead pulled up images of Earth, Texas. Thankfully the tiny town is surrounded by perfect circles created by pivot irrigation systems, which got Grant thinking about the Overview Effect. Grant works with satellite company Digital Globe. He selects an area, puts in an imagery request, and then obtains all images that have been captured over his selected space. We have selected 100 of his best images from his instagram account and shared them below.
76Angle shot of Chicago, Illinois
77The San Juan River is shown meandering through southeastern Utah
78Great drone capture above a Christmas tree farm in Whitehouse, Ohio
79Sarychev Peak is located on Matua Island in the Kuril Islands of Russia
80NASA launched the Apollo 8 spacecraft, which sent the first humans out of low Earth orbit and around the moon
81Nā Pali Coast State Park, located along the northwest side of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands
82Trees grow inside the hull of a sunken ship in the Angas Inlet, an arm of the Gulf St. Vincent in Adelaide, Southern Australia
83Agricultural fields line the shores of the Itaipu Reservoir- A body of water that forms the border between Brazil and Paraguay
84Southwestern corner of Mauritius
85A parasail is pulled behind a motorboat on Commencement Bay, just offshore Tacoma, Washington
86Dendritic drainage systems are seen around the Shadegan Lagoon by Musa Bay in Iran
87Griend is a small, uninhabited Dutch island located in the Wadden Sea
88Yellow canola fields are visible across the landscape north of Adelaide, Australia
89A sailboat cruises through a group of massive icebergs offshore Tiniteqilaaq, a small settlement in southeastern Greenland
90Rovinj, officially known as Rovinj-Rovigno, is a city in Croatia
91Third Avenue Bridge passes over Upper Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota
92Wadi Rum, Jordan
93The “Staten Island Boat Graveyard” is a marine scrapyard located in Arthur Kill on the northern shore of Staten Island, New York
94One of Broome, Australia
95Pembrokeshire is a county in the southwest of Wales
96Mossel Bay is located on the Cape St. Blaize Peninsula
97The camp fire which was burning in Northern California in November 2018
98Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France
99Chongqing is a major city in southwest China
100Amazing Overview of London at night
