Live Earth Map: GPS Camera — Support
Questions, bugs or ideas: write to anticorporation@whoifnot.us. Please include your iPhone model and iOS version. We usually reply within two working days.
Why is the satellite imagery dated and not live?
Satellites photograph each part of the Earth once or twice a day, and NASA processes and publishes the images a few hours later. The app shows the most recent full-colour image and labels it with its acquisition date (for example "NASA VIIRS · Oct 22"). You can step back through the last seven days. The truly real-time layers are the space station position (every 5 seconds), earthquakes (with the feed age shown) and the webcams.
A webcam does not play
Webcams are public YouTube live streams run by their owners. A stream can end or pause at any time; the list is checked regularly and streams that are no longer live are hidden. Tapping Watch live on YouTube opens the YouTube app or Safari.
The photo stamp shows no address
Address lookup needs location permission and a network connection. Check Settings › Privacy & Security › Location Services › Live Earth Map and choose "While Using the App". Without location, the stamp shows the time only.
A layer says it could not update
When a data source is unreachable, the app keeps showing the last data it received and tells you how old it is. It refreshes automatically when the connection returns.
Data sources and attributions
- Satellite imagery and fire detections: We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS). Imagery: VIIRS (NOAA-20) Corrected Reflectance; fires: VIIRS (NOAA-20) 375 m active fire detections, worldwide, one UTC day at a time. We acknowledge the use of data and imagery from LANCE FIRMS operated by NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) with funding provided by NASA Headquarters.
- Earthquakes: U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earthquake Hazards Program, GeoJSON feeds.
- Aurora forecast: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), OVATION aurora model.
- Space station and satellite positions: Orbital data (CelesTrak GP data, fetched by our server every 6 h and served from this site as
satellites.json; no request carries an identifier). - Volcanoes: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), Global Volcano Locations Database.
- Webcams: public live streams on YouTube, credited to their channel owners on YouTube.
- Windy webcams: webcam list for the visible map area from Windy.com, requested by the app with no identifier or location. Webcams provided by Windy.com · add a webcam.
- Map, globe and address lookup: Apple Maps (MapKit) and Apple CLGeocoder.
Use of these data does not imply endorsement by NASA, NOAA, USGS or any other source.
Privacy
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