In March, we looked at Chateau Chenonceau in France. This month for the Pléiades 1 – Pléiades Neo Point of Interest, we head to Germany to check out Schwerin Castle.

These two satellite images show Scherwin Castle in all its glory perched on its own the island in the midst of Lake Scherwin. You can see the garden, the walking paths and how the lake flows through channels interwoven into the design of the garden. You also can spy the residential neighborhoods surrounding the castle, as well as a business district off to the side. Image one is a 50-cm photo captured by Pléiades 1B on October 1, 2020. The second is a 30-cm image captured by Pléiades Neo 4 on May 19, 2023. These images have custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. PLEIADES © CNES 2024, Distribution Airbus DS.

About the Point of Interest: Schwerin Castle sits on its own island in the city of Schwerin’s main lake, Lake Schwerin. For centuries, the castle was home to the dukes and grand dukes of Mecklenburg and later Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Today, parts of the castle serve as the residence of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state parliament while other parts are open for tourists to enjoy. The castle is considered to be one of the most important works of Romantic historicism in Europe and is designated to become a World Heritage Site. It is nicknamed the “Neuschwanstein of the North.” But it actually started as a fort then was converted into a castle.

Major components of the current castle were built between 1845 and 1857, as a team effort between architects Gottfried Semper, Friedrich August Stüler, Georg Adolf Demmler and Ernst Friedrich Zwirner. A fire destroyed about a third of the palace in December 1913. Only the exterior reconstruction had been completed when the Revolution of 1918 resulted in the abdication of the grand duke. Schwerin Castle later became a museum and, in 1948, the seat of the state parliament. The German Democratic Republic used the palace as a college for kindergarten teachers from 1952 to 1981. Then it was a museum again until 1993. From 1974 on, some renovated rooms were used as an art museum.

Fun Factoids:  (1) The ghost, Petermännchen, is said to roam the halls of the castle. The invisible little creature is no more than a few feet high and is often ‘seen’ in clothes from the 17th Century. (2) Some relics of the Slavic Middle Ages in the 10th Century still lie dormant in the ground on the castle island today. (3) Scherwin Castle is largely preserved in its original form with the exception of the interior rooms in the castle lake wing, which were destroyed in the 1913 fire. (4) The castle garden extends directly around the castle where tourists can find an orangery, a grotto and a colonnade courtyard on the grounds. The historic baroque garden parterre, whose strict structures can still be seen in the canals and paths, extends over a wide area on Lake Burgsee and ends in a lawn cascade on Ostdorfer Berg. (5) An octagonal pavilion, which dates back to the early 19th Century, now functions as a restaurant.

The 50-cm Pléiades 1 High-Resolution Satellite Constellation

The Pléiades 1 constellation (or at least part of it!) has been in orbit since December 2011 and if you have not had a chance to check out any sample imagery, take a few moments and have a look at the gallery on our website. If you work with high-resolution imagery, you should consider Pléiades 1 and Pléiades Neo for your next geospatial projects.

A variety of Pléiades 1 products are available from both a well-established archive and as a new collection, including 50-centimeter (cm) pansharpened imagery and 50-cm panchromatic – 2-meter (m) 4-band multispectral bundles. We are happy to discuss the technical specifications, pricing and tasking options available with both of these satellite constellations.

The 30-cm Pléiades Neo High-Resolution Satellite Constellation

Pléiades Neo is our newest high-resolution satellite constellation. The first Neo satellite went up in April 2021 and the second in August of the same year. This 30-centimeter resolution constellation will add two more satellites in the next few months and upgrade from daily to intraday revisits. Pléiades Neo has six multispectral bands with 1.2-meter resolution, including a deep blue and two infrared bands, along with a 30-centimeter resolution panchromatic band.

The archive is growing every day, and the satellites are available for new collections, making Pléiades Neo the perfect solution for site monitoring. Check out our beautiful sample images in the Pléiades Neo gallery.

More sample images and technical information about Pléiades 1 can be found on our website here; while the same can be found here for the Pléiades Neo constellation.

The Apollo Mapping sales team can answer any questions you might have about Pléiades 1 and/or Pléiades Neo. We can be reached at (303) 993-3863 or sales@apollomapping.com.