Can overhead tranmission lines be located via sattelite imagery?

[Starwatcher16]

Not really sure if this is the place for this, but can overhead tranmission lines be located via sattelite imagery?

 

[mgb_phys]

Depending on the satellite - yes

You aren't going to see the actual wires unless there is a fault and you have military grade IR.
But the pylons and especially the path of the lines does show up very well - especially cross country. In most places the power company will also cut back trees for a certain distance around the lines and a 10m wide perfectly straight cutback path across a forest shows up very well even on extremely low res imaging.

 

[flatmaster]

Look for yourself on google earth.

 

[gmax137]

Look for yourself on google earth.

Where does google Earth get the images? Are they all really satellite photos?

 

[xxChrisxx]

Google Earth arent all satellite images, they phase into aerial photo shots. No idea at what altitude though.

 

[mheslep]

Not really sure if this is the place for this, but can overhead tranmission lines be located via sattelite imagery?

Where google support's their higher resolutions ( 2 ft/pixel) yes, certainly. I had occasion to track a power line in my area for miles. The line itself is not necessarily visible, though it's shadow often is, and the towers of course always are at 2ft/pixel and less.

 

[mgb_phys]

Even on the much lower resolution satelite pictures you can 'see' long straight features that are much less than one pixel with some image processing.
A change in brightness of a few % in each pixel spread over 100s of pixels in a line is easily detectable - it's called super resolution.