What you are looking at
The whole Earth, the sea floor included, built from NOAA's ETOPO 2022 measurements of the height of the land and the depth of the sea. On the flat map heights are exaggerated 80 times and on the globe 20 times, because at true scale the Himalaya would be a wrinkle you could not see. Slide the control towards North to look up across the northern hemisphere; drag to move, scroll or pinch to zoom, and point at or tap a country for its name.
The layers
- Landmarks: the highest, deepest and strangest places, with their measured figures, from Everest to Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench and the deepest hole ever drilled.
- Ozone layer: all the ozone in the air overhead, as NASA's OMPS instrument measured it on the newest well-covered day. Each southern spring the ozone hole opens over Antarctica.
- Aurora now: NOAA's forecast of the chance of seeing an aurora overhead, refreshed every five minutes.
- Layers of the atmosphere and satellites: shown on the globe at true scale, mountains included. At full view the air we breathe is thinner than a pixel, which is the point; the ruler magnifies the bottom 120 km so the layers can be read. Satellites are placed from their published orbits, in your browser, twice a second.
A shareable link: the address in your browser keeps the view and the layers you choose.
Sources
Relief: NOAA ETOPO 2022 (public domain). Borders: Natural Earth (public domain), drawn from the UK's point of view. Ozone: NASA OMPS on Suomi NPP; 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). Aurora: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, OVATION model (public domain). Orbits: CelesTrak. Atmosphere heights are the usual round figures; the boundaries move with latitude, season and the Sun. Landmark figures are the published measurements, each named on its card. Not for navigation.