According to the stories of astronauts, there is no more beautiful and bewitching picture than the view of the Earth from space. When you look at a small ball consisting of white clouds, brown earth and blue water, it is impossible to take your eyes off...

Today we will look at several cool online 3D Earth globes, which you can use directly from this page. They are all interactive and you can interact with them. No need to download and install additional programs like Google Earth etc. – just open this page in your browser and enjoy.

Photorealistic 3D Earth globe

This is a three-dimensional model of the world, on which photo textures obtained by NASSA satellites are stretched.

You can spin the ball in different directions by holding down the left mouse button. Rotating the mouse wheel up increases the viewing scale, downwards - on the contrary, decreases it.

At maximum zoom, the textures become blurry, so I recommend that you do not get too carried away with scaling.

Blurring is due to the fact that the model uses low-resolution photographs. Otherwise, loading them in the browser would take too long.

This 3D globe allows you to see our planet almost the way astronauts see it. Well, or close to it :)

Virtual globe of the Earth

This 3D model of the world does not have raster textures, like the previous one, but vector ones, so here scaling can be done down to individual buildings. At maximum magnification there are even house numbers and street names.

Historical globe

It demonstrates how our ancestors saw our Earth at the end of the 18th century. Its authorship belongs to the famous geographer and cartographer Giovanni Maria Cassini, and it was published in Rome in 1790.

It is also fully interactive, you can twist, rotate, zoom in or out of the map. Looking at it, you understand how much the world has changed in just 200 years, and how many events were behind it all...

And here is the actual globe itself (1790), from which this online 3d model was made:

Finally, a stunningly beautiful video about what the Earth really looks like from space:

Friends, share your impressions, opinions and ask questions in the comments!

All my life these two objects go side by side, and they always surprise me with their dissimilarity. On the one hand, both are just a reduced version, and on the other hand, they represent a whole layer in the history of development.

True, you also need to be careful here. After all, standard globes are thirty or even eighty million times smaller than a real planet, so the area covered by a finger can include several islands or even countries.

So if you seriously decide to find out where it’s best to go, then you should use a globe made for the Paris Exhibition of 1889. It is only slightly smaller than the globe. Like a million times. You can't go wrong here.

Of course, it appeared much later than cards, but managed to gain its share of popularity. Being first made in 1492, it managed to be useful both for navigation and for school teaching aid, although in Lately it is used much more often as a benefit.

It should be noted that the name Globe did not appear by chance, although whoever came up with it was not distinguished by wild imagination. Globe is translated from Latin as ball. Yes, just a ball - succinct and understandable.

Only one question remains unresolved. If you take a globe and a map with the same thing and stick the map on the globe, will the mountains and rivers match? Curious? Well then you can try it. Although it is better to ask the teacher first.

To observe the Earth's surface for free and view satellite images online, you can use several applications. In Russia, two of them are most popular: Google Maps and Yandex Maps. Both services boast good quality high-resolution satellite images from most countries.

Yandex maps is an online application from Russian developers, so Russian cities are more accurately detailed in it. It has built-in functionality for viewing traffic load data (large settlements), demographic and geodata. Google maps contain no less high-quality satellite images of the territory of the Russian Federation, but data on land plots and traffic are available only for the USA.

View a map of Planet Earth from satellite online

Below you can see the Google map built into the site. For more stable operation of the plugin, we recommend using a browser Google Chrome. If you see an error message, please update the specified plugin and then reload the page.

Watch Google Earth from satellite, in real time online:

Another advantage of Google Maps is the presence of a client application for working with satellite images. This means that the service can be accessed not only through a browser, but also through a pre-downloaded program. It has many more opportunities for viewing and studying satellite images and working with a three-dimensional virtual globe.

A 3D satellite map from Google (a downloadable application, not an online version) allows you to:

• use a quick search for the desired objects by name or coordinates;
• take screenshots and record high quality videos;
• work offline (preliminary synchronization via the Internet is required);
• use a flight simulator for more convenient movement between objects;
• save “favorite places” to quickly move between them;
• view not only the Earth's surface, but also images of other celestial bodies (Mars, Moon, etc.).

You can work with Google satellite maps through a client application or browser. A plugin is available on the official page of the program that allows you to use an interactive map on any web resource. It is enough to embed its address in the site’s program code. For display, you can select either the entire surface or a specific area (you will have to enter the coordinates). Control - using a computer mouse and keyboard (ctrl+mouse wheel for zooming, cursor for moving) or using the icons indicated on the map (“plus” - zoom in, “minus” - zoom out, move with the cursor).

The Google Earth service in real time allows you to work with several types of maps, each of which reflects certain data on satellite images. It’s convenient to switch between them “without losing progress” (the program remembers where you “were”). Available viewing modes:

• landscape map from satellite (geographical objects, features of the Earth's surface);
• physical map (detailed satellite images of the surface, cities, streets, their names);
• schematic geographic map for a more accurate study of surface images.

The satellite image is automatically loaded at the point of approach, so a stable Internet connection is required for operation. To use Google Earth offline, you need to download an application for Windows or another operating system. Its operation also requires the Internet, but only for the first launch, after which the program synchronizes all the necessary data (satellite images of the surface, 3D models of buildings, names of geographical and other objects) after which it will be possible to work with the received data without direct access to the Internet.

According to many astronauts, there is nothing more beautiful than the view of our planet from the outside. When the Earth looks big balloon, on which there are snow-white clouds, gray rocks and the blue surface of endless ocean waters. This article will provide various online maps and 3D globes of the Earth. To use them, there is no need to download additional software, as is the case with Google Earth. The maps are interactive, so you can view them online right from these pages.

Realistic 3D world globe

This is a three-dimensional sample of a globe, consisting of fairly detailed raster photo textures that were created using NASA satellites. To rotate the globe, hold down the left mouse button. To change the map scale, scroll the mouse wheel - up the scale will increase, down - decrease it.

If you zoom very close to an area on the globe, you will not get a very high-quality image. This is due to the low resolution of most of the pictures taken. This approach to creating a globe ensures that the browser loads textures quickly. If images were used good quality, your browser would take a long time to load them due to their large size.

Virtual sample of a 3D Earth globe online

You can find many services on the Internet that offer to view and study a 3D Earth globe map in an online browser. This model is a three-dimensional globe on which we can find areas of cities and states, settlements and even streets and buildings. This interactive globe is great for scaling. It's all about the vector textures that are used for this model, so you can scale the globe without losing quality and see different objects on it. Some areas even allow you to see street names and house numbers.

Globe of Giovanni Maria Cassini displays historical map of the world

A very interesting specimen is a historical globe. It shows us the view of planet Earth as seen by people living in the late 18th century. The author of this globe is considered to be Giovanni Maria Cassini, who created it back in 1790. The globe is interactive, like the previous ones. With it you can also rotate the globe, zoom in and out. Here you can even find the routes of James Cook's expeditions. They are indicated on the globe in different colors.

Google Maps is a mapping service that provides satellite interactive maps of the Earth online

For today Google Maps are some of the most detailed digital maps in the world. Wherever you are, if you have a smartphone, tablet or laptop with you, you can find the route to any object on the map, find the nearest cafe, library, bank branch, etc. The map is very similar to any online 3D earth globe.

To create a route anywhere on the map, open Google Maps :

To find any place, country, city, village, open Google Maps again. Enter the desired object in the search bar and press “Enter” or the magnifying glass icon.

The map will immediately display the location you entered. On the left side of the block you can see basic information about the location found on the map. Here you can find the current temperature, local time and other interesting facts.

Yandex Maps - satellite maps of the Earth in 3D online

The most famous search engine in Russia, Yandex, has its own service. interactive maps- Yandex maps. They allow you to find the right place, build routes with any points on the map, print any section, view a street panorama, provide a map API and much more. There is an interesting section - people's maps, where you can independently edit any objects, houses, gardens, streets, wells, etc., after passing moderation they will appear on the Yandex Maps service.

To find any point on the planet:

Using Yandex Maps, you can, like a 3D model of a globe online, find any point on our planet Earth. To do this, you need to enter the name of the locality in the search bar or point with the mouse directly on the map.