A recently unveiled project between NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, TIME, Internet search giant Google and the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University offers a rare glimpse of human life on Earth.
Over the last few decades, NASA and the USGS have been compiling satellite images of every part of our planet as part of the Landsat program, the world's longest running enterprise for gathering satellite imagery.
The result is nothing less than spectacular. Any part of the globe can be seen and enlarged through Google's newly released and navigable animation.
Here in South Florida, the results of the recent housing boom are on display. The moving images capture our landscape (and all other parts of the planet, for that matter) between 1984 and 2012.
Google recently wrote on its blog that they believe it to be the "most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public."
For example, take a look at the timeline of the city of Weston in western Broward County and the growing developments in Southwest Miami-Dade.
You can browse your own neighborhood or other parts of the world below.
Note: Dubai, Las Vegas, and Brazilian Amazon deforestation all make for compelling images of the Earth's changing surface.
