They are not all satellite photos - the ones at ultra high resolution are taken by airplanes.

ahhh

ok, I figured it was either that or our satelites were being swarmed by millions of space...bee things...

kind of like when you are in a car with the windows open and drive through a swarm, only in space and there are billions on billions of flesh eating space bees and they are tearing the raw flesh from our very bones as we scream and writhe in pain, and this deep, booming voice is explaining all the things we did wrong during our lives and the pain just keeps coming like our flesh was being eaten by billions of tinsy flesh-eating space bees.....


do you know what I mean?

Are you sure it's not a flesh eating zombie earwig?

No, they're a darker colour and leave a trail of pale grey squidgy bits that have fallen off.

What's cool is when you use the scrollwheel and zoom out and then back in.

"What's that?  Huh, let me see.  An airplane?  Nah.  A bit closer...hmm...No way...wtf?  AAAIIIEEEEE!!!"

So now we know how crop circles are made.

Don't insects stay fairly close to the ground, though?

Heh.  Scroll back on click at a time, and when the clouds appear, you know the picture wasn't taken by the airplane.  Interestingly, the insect is there the entire time, UNTIL you go to satellite imagery.  This implies (for me) that a single high-resolution picture was used for LOTS of zooming.

No, it's many pictures merged together. Given the aircraft's position is very accurately known, it's a matter of geometry and image matching/stretching.

Satellites generally do it differently, generally taking line scans perpendicular to the orbital path. Think of a scanner is the easiest way to describe it.

Actually, we've been having trouble with REALLY big fucking insects in Germany recently.