Auroville from orbit

This atlas draws live satellite tiles and needs JavaScript to run. With it enabled you get every image of Auroville from 10 November 1972 to 2026, at 60 m down to 31 cm, alongside a sourced chronology.

Imagery: USGS/NASA and ESA/Copernicus via Microsoft Planetary Computer · EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) · Esri World Imagery (Maxar, Esri and partners). Places: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.

Auroville from orbit

Every satellite image of the City of Dawn we can legally get hold of, from 10 Nov 1972 to 2026 — 60 m to 31 cm.

Imagery track

Compare two dates (swipe)

Blend with today 0%

Fades the current image against the sharpest modern image, so you can see what moved.

Overlays Crown Road (as built today) Community names (112) Mapped woodland Master Plan rings (schematic)

Click any entry to jump the map and the timeline to it.

Is it actually getting greener?

Mean NDVI over an 8 × 7 km box centred on the Matrimandir, dry-season images only (Jan–Apr) so the seasons don't do the talking. Computed live from the same scenes shown on the map.

Before Landsat: 1968–1972

Auroville's first four and a half years happened before any civil satellite could see it. The only overhead imagery that exists is declassified American reconnaissance film, and it is not available as map tiles — you have to download and georeference it yourself.

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