The Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month – Burning Man - Apollo Mapping
Posted on September 4th, 2018

The Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month – Burning Man

Last month we checked out the site of a popular Colorado colleges football game and for this Pléiades 1 – SPOT 6/7 Stadium of the Month we pivot to a new type of venue, i.e. an outdoor music festival, with a look at the 2016 edition of Burning Man.


A 50-cm color image of Burning Man collected on August 28, 2016 by Pléiades 1A – please note that this is a very large file! And then a 1.5-m SPOT 6 image of the same area collected on June 24, 2016, months before the 2016 edition of Burning Man – you can see the scars left on the playa by the many tents, cars, bikes, people, etc. that roam the ‘streets’ of Black Rock City. These images have custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. PLEIADES © CNES 2018, Distribution Airbus DS. SPOT © Airbus DS 2018.

Life happens and well it happened to Brock (the author of this monthly piece) recently! Just three weeks out from a bike crash and broken wrist, one-hand typing is a slow process so this piece will be shortened for a month or two while I recover – my apologies folks.

About the Venue: We imagine that most Americans have heard of Burning Man – but perhaps not our international friends. This annual event is held on a remote playa in northwest Nevada about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Reno. Spanning about a week, Burning Man is a celebration of music, art, love and all-things human – and is perhaps best known for its culminating event, the burning of the Burning Man temple. Each year, some 75,000 burners stream into the playa, fighting traffic, heat and exhaustion only to set up a temporary circular city, called Black Rock City.

Fun Factoids: (1) If you are interested in the demographic characteristics of the 2016 Burning Man attendees, you can find a plethora of those details here. (2) As the playa is over 4,000 feet above sea level, nighttime temperatures can dip into the 30’s (i.e. degrees Fahrenheit). (3) Photographers who come to work at Burning Man sign a waiver that anything they publish from the week can be censored. (4) You can find more fun facts here!

The 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 for your next geospatial project.

A variety of Pléiades 1 products are available from both a growing 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 this satellite constellation.

The SPOT Medium-Resolution Satellite Constellation

The SPOT medium-resolution constellation consist of seven satellites launched from 1986 to 2014 with the most recent additions, SPOT 6 and SPOT 7, launching in 2012 and 2014 respectively. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 are twin satellites offering 1.5-m panchromatic and 6-m 4-band multispectral data with a massive footprint at 60-kilometers (km) wide. For projects requiring recent archive coverage or rapid new collections of medium-resolution data, SPOT 6/7 should be one of your top imagery sources!

More sample images and technical information about Pléiades 1A and 1B can be found on our website here; while the same can be found here for the SPOT constellation and specifically about SPOT 6/7.

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

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