Google Earth

 

On my website you find many little Google Earth logo's looking like: . These are buttons with hyperlinks to Google Earth. Google Earth is a world map consisting of satellite images. In order to use them you have install the Google Earth program which you can download here. Once the program is installed, hitting one of my Google Earth buttons will start up the program and flies you to the respective locality. Depending on your software it might be once neccessary to point to Google Earth as program to open .kmz files.

Making these placemarks are time consuming, but great fun. Technically it's easy, just save your placemark as kmz file and link our button to that file. But where to put the placemark involves some puzzling. I tried to be as accurate as possible, but I can be off by a few (or more...) kilometers in some instances. Not all objects can be seen on the Google Earth images.

The simplest localities are big quarries and open pits, which can be clearly seen such as for instance Satka in the Urals:
Small quarries can be more of a problem, but often they can be found at the end of roads and railroads, such as Malobystrinskoye:
Shafts are too small to see, but sometimes the buildings of a mine are clearly visible, such as with the Karnasurt mine:
Mines are often located in industrial areas, making the mine hard to find, but dumps and tailing ponds can give the mine away such as can be seen by the white dumps of the Solikamsk saltmines: . At Solikamsk you can notice that there are more mines in the vicinity. If I do not know the individual sublocalities, I do not provide links to all of them, so it pays to have a virtual look nearby. This happens for instance in Nizhne Tagil, Pervouralsk and Sludyanka.

In some cases the locality is invisible from space, but by studying Russian topographical and geological maps as well as reading descriptions I have a pretty good idea where the locality is. In such cases you will find my placemark in the 'middle of nowhere', such as Sarylakh: Needles to say is that in such cases the precision is a little less.
In some cases localities are named after rivers. I can find the river but I have no precise description of where the locality is along the river. In such cases, when I do not expect to find more precise data I will state a remark next to the button. For example at the Orpiment locality Menkyule:

 In all cases the placemarks are not meant as tourguide. If you plan to visit a site, please inform with the local authorities if the site is accessable, both legally and physically. Although I do my best to provide correct data I'm not accountable for any errors and neither for you getting lost in the Taiga.

Below just a fun comparisation between Google Earth and the real world. Karymsky volcano on Kamchatka, Google earth and my own picture. Note Akademia Nauk volcano as a circle in the water of the lake in the GE image and how it was not visible the foggy weather when I was there!