Satellite Search

Sentinel-2 and Landsat capture at 10m and 30m per pixel — each pixel covers a whole building lot or more. High-resolution imagery like Google Maps' comes from commercial satellites that charge real money per image. Sentinel-2 scenes do have true full-resolution tiles — open a scene, tap "View full scene on map," and zoom in to load them. NAIP aerial photos are already high-res (0.6m) but US-only and re-flown only every 2-3 years.

Sentinel-2 and Landsat are optical — like a camera from space, so clouds block the view. Sentinel-1 is radar: it sees through clouds and darkness, but looks different (grayscale/false-color), not a photo. NAIP is real aerial photography from airplanes, very high-res but limited to the US.

Sentinel-2 revisits about every 5 days, Landsat about every 16 — but cloud cover often means the most recent clear shot is older than that. NAIP is only re-flown every 2-3 years per state.

Satellites capture fixed square tiles. If your search area falls near the edge of what a pass actually covered — a coastline, a swath edge, a partial overlap — the rest of that tile has no data and renders black.

Yes. Every search hits live public catalogs — Earth Search and Microsoft Planetary Computer — nothing here is mocked or cached demo data.