Satellite tiles

Satellite image tiles are a form of orthophotography. They're images captured by both satellite and airborne cameras, and they deliver top-down (nadir) imagery of the earth.

Getting satellite tiles

You can begin making satellite tile requests after you get a session token. Because the session token applies to the entire session, you don't have to specify the map options with your tile requests.

The following code sample demonstrates a typical session token request for satellite tiles.

curl -X POST -d '{
  "mapType": "satellite",
  "language": "en-US",
  "region": "US"
}' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
"https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/createSession?key=YOUR_API_KEY"

You get satellite tiles by making an HTTPS GET request, as shown in the following example.

curl "https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/2dtiles/z/x/y?session=YOUR_SESSION_TOKEN&key=YOUR_API_KEY&orientation=0_or_90_or_180_or_270"

Example tile request

Consider the following code example, that requests a single satellite tile at zoom level 15, with x and y coordinates of (6294, 13288).

curl "https://tile.googleapis.com/v1/2dtiles/15/6294/13288?session=YOUR_SESSION_TOKEN&key=YOUR_API_KEY" --output /tmp/example_tile.png

There is no response message from the server in this example. Instead, the tile just downloads to a local file.

For information about response message headers, see Pre-Fetching, Caching, or Storage of Content.