(Image: Google)
Fans of Charles Darwin can already tour their hero鈥檚 former abode, 鈥� but pretty soon they鈥檒l be able to take a similar look around the cradle of his theory of natural selection, the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. A team from Google has just completed an imaging mission there in which they explored every nook and cranny of the rocky, tortoise-filled, equatorial Pacific outcrop 鈥� and they did so using a truly bizarre camera system.
Called the Street View Trekker, the system is an 18-kilogram backpack-mounted contraption comprising an outsize, articulated camera head, a system for levelling the tilt of said camera head, GPS antennas, a data storage system and a bunch of batteries. The spherical head incorporates 15 5-megapixel cameras 鈥� the same resolution as Street View cars use.
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The Trekker got its debut on in Arizona last October. But the firm says it鈥檚 now completed the panoramic survey of the Galapagos and that imagery will be live on Google Maps later this year.
The picture above shows expedition member Daniel Orellana of the 鈥� a partner in the Google venture 鈥� climbing out of a lava tube on the archipelago鈥檚 Isabela Island. The lava landscapes there 鈥渢ell the story of the formation of the Galapagos鈥�, says project leader Raleigh Seamster at Google鈥檚 maps division.
At 10 sites, she says, they imaged 鈥済iant tortoises and blue-footed boobies, navigated through steep trails and lava fields, and picked our way down the crater of an active volcano鈥�.
The venture extends beneath the waves, too: the Catlin Seaview Survey joined in to collect underwater panoramic imagery around the islands. Gorgeous as its images are, they鈥檙e not just pretty pictures: the scientific aim of another partner in the project, the , is to create a baseline against which changes to the submarine environment can be assessed over time as climate changes.
