Live · Geostationary

Go back in time

Pick a day and time (your local time). Every detail level jumps to it.

Live how far back

About 90 days for the Americas and Asia-Pacific, since Sep 2024 for Europe & Africa, since 2020 for the Indian Ocean.

Daily since Feb 2000

Falls back to older satellites (NOAA-20, Suomi NPP, Terra MODIS) for earlier dates.

Sharp since 2013

Landsat from 2013, Sentinel-2 from late 2015; the cloud-free mosaic from 2017.

Sharpest since Feb 2014

Esri’s mosaic as it looked at the time (Esri Wayback).

Lightning how far back

Europe & Africa since May 2025; the Americas only for the last ~4 hours.

About the imagery

There's always a trade-off: the freshest imagery is coarse, and the sharpest is old. Slide between them.

Live 1–2 km · every 10 min

Geostationary weather satellites that stare at one hemisphere: GOES-West and GOES-East (NOAA via NASA GIBS), Meteosat MTG and Meteosat IODC (EUMETSAT) and Himawari (JMA via NASA GIBS). Images land roughly 20–60 minutes after capture. Himawari and Meteosat IODC have no night blend, so by default they switch to greyscale infrared after dark (change this, and the brightness, from the layers button).

Daily ~375 m · once a day

NOAA-21 VIIRS true colour, stitched from one early-afternoon pass per day. Today's image fills in as the satellite moves west; until it reaches a place, the day before is shown there, slightly dimmed.

Sharp 10–30 m · every few days

NASA Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (30 m). The newest week of scenes, newest on top, so clouds from one day can hide another. Between them, EOX's cloud-free Sentinel-2 mosaic of the last year shows at 10 m. Visible when you zoom in.

Sharpest 0.3–1 m · months to years old

Esri World Imagery, a curated mosaic of aerial and commercial satellite photos. Zoom in and the panel shows when the area in view was captured.

The line under the controls gives the exact time the imagery in the middle of the screen was captured, in your time zone and UTC, from each satellite's own records.

Elevation

Height of the land and depth of the sea floor, coloured and shaded, from Mapzen's terrain tiles (SRTM and GMTED on land, ETOPO1 at sea). Turn on Wind as well to see mountain ranges steer it. Point at the map, or tap it, for the height or depth at that spot.

Temperature

Air temperature 2 m above the ground for the current hour, from Environment Canada's global forecast model (15 km). Point at the map, or tap it, for the value at that spot.

Rain radar

The latest ground radar mosaic from RainViewer, updated every 10 minutes. Only covers places with weather radar.

Wind

Wind 10 m above the ground for the current hour from the same model, animated. Point or tap for speed and direction.

Lightning

Where lightning has been detected around the moment you're viewing (yellow through red as it gets more intense), and it plays along with Live. Europe, Africa and the Atlantic come from Meteosat MTG's Lightning Imager (5-minute steps, archived since May 2025). The Americas, Pacific and northern Australia come from the Vaisala GLD360/NLDN ground networks via NOAA nowCOAST (15-minute strike density, last ~4 hours only). There's no free feed for South and East Asia.

Going back in time clock button

Pick any day and time back to 2000. Live plays the 3 hours up to that moment; Daily, Sharp and Sharpest show the imagery from then, and shared links open on the same moment. How far back each goes is listed in the time picker.

On high-res screens, imagery is loaded one zoom level deeper so it's as crisp as the source allows (switch off "High-res tiles" to save data).

Search: Photon by komoot. 3D terrain: Mapterhorn (Copernicus GLO-30 and national lidar). Elevation overlay: Mapzen Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data.

Place names and borders: OpenFreeMap, OpenMapTiles, © OpenStreetMap contributors. Weather: Environment and Climate Change Canada, RainViewer. Lightning: EUMETSAT, NOAA nowCOAST, Vaisala.

Imagery: NASA EOSDIS GIBS, EUMETSAT, NOAA, JMA, ESA Copernicus, USGS, Esri, Vantor, Earthstar Geographics. Map engine: MapLibre GL JS.