The Map Room

Earth Observatory’s Cities at Night features photography of the night side of the Earth taken by orbiting astronauts. “Astronauts circling the Earth have the wonderful vantage point of observing the nighttime Earth from 350-400 kilometers above the surface, taking in whole regions at once. Onboard cameras and a bit of experimentation allow astronauts to take highly detailed images of our cities at night and share them with the rest of us.” Above: Houston at night, taken on January 30, 2010.

Four more cities in Google Maps Street View: Houston, Orlando, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Cute: Google Maps Street View Circa 1907 — or, rather, a sample of Rand McNally’s photo auto-maps, which apparently predated road maps.

The Houston Traffic Map widget makes the information found on the Houston real-time traffic map available as a Dashboard widget (for Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”).

I’m late in relaying this, but B. Moore submitted a link to the Houston Real-Time Traffic Map, and described it thusly:

This is an amazing real time traffic map that is quite sophisticated and useful (at least if you live or drive in Houston). It provides real time traffic conditions, color coded by speed, on Houston’s main freeways and is a must when heading out for the daily commute or trip to the airport. Complete with multiple freeway cams, reports of traffic accidents, construction updates, and travel times. It uses the automatic tollway electronic devices installed in some cars (that let you whiz through toll booths and have the charge automatically billed to you), and sensors in the roadway to time how long it takes an individual car to travel a set distance along the different roadways. Then the system does the math and computes speed. It updates once a minute and is very accurate. You can even get it on some mobile PDAs and maybe cellphones.