In September, we looked at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia, which features more than a dozen themed gardens, a conservatory, library and café. This month for the Pléiades 1 – Pléiades Neo Point of Interest, we stop by Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada, the oldest provincial park in Canada.

These two satellite images show Algonquin Park from above and all of its natural wonder. In the first image from September 29, 2022, a Pléiades 1A 50-cm color photo, we can see shades of orange, yellow and green trees permeate the park, like colorful confetti scattered all about. You can see the deep blue shading of the waterways and the solid green stretches of open fields in between. The second photo captured on September 30, 2023 by 30-cm Pléiades Neo 4 is similar but with so much brighter colors and even distinct outlines of the leaves on these trees. It demonstrates how thick and massive the forests are as they stretch across Ontario. These images have custom processing and color balancing applied by Apollo Mapping. PLEIADES © CNES 2024, Distribution Airbus DS. 

About the Point of Interest: Algonquin Park boasts maple hills, rocky ridges, thousands of lakes, thick forests and rivers. The only way to immerse oneself in this breathtaking park is by paddle boat or on foot. An off-shoot of Algonquin Park is also found along Highway 60 and offers eight campgrounds, 14 interpretive hiking trails and a visitor center, logging museum and art center.

Fun Factoids: (1) If you can’t visit the park anytime soon, you can watch Algonquin Park during any season. Choose from either live streaming video, panorama or archived images of the view from the Algonquin Park Visitor Center courtesy of The Friends of Algonquin Park in partnership with EarthCam. (2) Algonquin Park offers numerous bird watching opportunities. For those who can’t visit in person, The Friends of Algonquin Park offers live streaming views of the feeders at the Algonquin Park Visitor Center during the winter months. (3) The Canadian park is the same size as the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. (4) Algonquin Park is home to more than 1,000 species of plants, including 34 species of native trees, plus 53 species of fish, 31 species of reptiles and amphibians, 272 species of birds, 53 species of mammals and more than 7,000 species of insects. (5) The park is considered part of the “border” between Northern Ontario and Southern Ontario. (6) Algonquin Park was named a National Historic Site in 1992 in recognition of several heritage values, including: its role in the development of park management; pioneering visitor interpretation programs later adopted by national and provincial parks across the country; its role in inspiring artists, which in turn gave Canadians a greater sense of their country; and historic structures such as lodges, hotels, cottages, camps, entrance gates (the West Gate was designed by George H. Williams, chief architect and deputy minister of public works for the Province of Ontario), a railway station and administration and museum buildings.

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.