Aerial views of the famous Palm and World islands, as well as the rest of Dubai, are now sharper than ever, thanks to the latest satellite imagery released recently by Google. 

Google has updated its Google Earth app with fresh cloud-free and seamless imagery from NASA's Landsat 8 satellite, allowing users to view the planet's landscape in "greater detail, truer colour". 

In the new view of the emirate, details like the fronds of The Palm Jumeirah or the shape of The World islands are much clearer. 

”With this new update to Google Earth, users around the world will now see an even more beautiful, seamless and sharper than ever version of Dubai,” a Google spokesperson told Gulf News. 

The fresh images can now be accessed through all of Google's mapping products. Users can simply open up Google Earth or turn on the satellite layer in Google Maps. 

The clearer images are also made possible through the use of new processing techniques. 

"Satellite images are often cloudy, but not always over the same place, so we looked at millions of images and took the clearest pixels to stitch together this cloud-free and seamless image,” Chris Herwig, program manager, Google Earth Engine, wrote in his blog. 

Landsat 8 was launched into orbit in 2013. It's considered more superior than its predecessors, capturing twice as many images as Landsat 7. "This new rendition of Earth uses the most recent data available -- mostly from Landsat 8 -- making it our freshest global mosaic to date," wrote Herwig. 

"Our previous mosaic used imagery from Landsat 7 only, which at the time was the best image of its kind. Unfortunately, Landsat 7 images captured after 2003 were affected by a hardware failure, resulting in large diagonal gaps of missing data." 

Source: AFP