ZeroTrace OSINT
Aerial / Satellite Comparator
Side-by-side OpenStreetMap, Esri World Imagery, Bing, Sentinel-2, and Apple Maps for any coordinate.
The aerial comparator opens any coordinate (or address) across multiple satellite-imagery providers in one view. Investigators with a candidate location can verify against the freshest available imagery without bouncing through six browser tabs.
What you get
For any coordinate (or any address that the geocoder can resolve):
| Provider | What it shows |
|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap | Vector basemap — best for street layout, building outlines, name labels |
| Esri World Imagery | High-resolution satellite imagery (commercial-grade, free for non-commercial via Esri) |
| Bing Maps Aerial | Microsoft's satellite imagery — sometimes more recent than Esri |
| Apple Maps Web | Apple's satellite imagery — sometimes uniquely fresh in dense urban areas |
| Sentinel-2 EO Browser | European Space Agency's free Sentinel-2 imagery — multi-spectral, time-series capable |
Each provider opens in its own panel. You can pan and zoom each independently or sync them.
Why multiple providers
No single provider has the freshest imagery for every part of the world. A typical pattern:
- High-density Western cities — all five providers are reasonably fresh; pick whichever has the angle / quality you prefer.
- Smaller European cities — Apple and Bing sometimes more recent than Esri.
- Rural Asia / Africa / South America — Sentinel-2 may be the only recent option.
- Disaster / news-event imagery — Sentinel-2 is publicly available within days; commercial providers may take weeks to update.
Comparing the same coordinate across providers also lets you spot what changed between imagery dates — a building demolished, a road built, a parking lot repurposed.
Forward geocoding
If you do not have a coordinate, paste an address. The tool forward-geocodes via OpenStreetMap's Nominatim and centres every panel on the resulting coordinate.
Reference-image matching
If you supply a reference photo (e.g., a candidate location from geo clues), the tool computes a perceptual hash of each loaded satellite tile and reports the closest hash distance. This is a heuristic — satellite tiles look very different from ground-level photos — but is occasionally useful for matching distinctive shapes (a swimming pool, a stadium, a parking-lot pattern).
Imagery-date hint
For providers that publish imagery dates in their tile metadata, the tool surfaces "imagery acquired around YYYY-MM" alongside each panel. Helpful when comparing a "fresh" view against an older one.
For verifying news photographs, the imagery-date hint is the central feature. A claimed "photo taken yesterday" against satellite imagery from "acquired around 2018" can hide changes; comparing against Sentinel-2 (often only weeks old) is the cross-check.
Sentinel-2 deep link
The Sentinel-2 panel is a deep link into the Sentinel Hub EO Browser. Click the panel and your browser opens to the EO Browser at the centred coordinate, with full multi-spectral controls available. Useful for:
- Vegetation indices (NDVI) — agricultural and environmental investigations.
- Cloud-free historical imagery (the EO Browser lets you scrub through time).
- True-colour vs. false-colour comparison.
The Sentinel-2 imagery itself is hosted by ESA / Copernicus; the deep link puts you in their tooling.
Pivots
| Click on... | Pivot to |
|---|---|
| The coordinate | Sun & shadow solver, image metadata (if you have a reference photo with EXIF) |
| Address | (no pivot — informational) |
| Provider panel | Opens the respective provider in your browser |
Sources
- OpenStreetMap tile server.
- Esri World Imagery (free public WMTS endpoint).
- Bing Maps deep link.
- Apple Maps web deep link.
- Sentinel Hub EO Browser deep link.
- Nominatim (OSM forward-geocoder) for address resolution.
Every provider is named on the result.