Americas
United States
Everything you need to know about United States for geography games and satellite imagery — capital, population, time zone, and how to recognise it from above.
Quick facts
How to spot United States from satellite imagery
If you have ever played a satellite-imagery guessing game, you already know the moment. The image loads, you scan the patterns for half a second, and a quiet voice in the back of your head says: this is the United States. Sometimes it is unmistakable — a perfectly square mile of corn next to a perfectly square mile of soybeans, a town arranged on a grid that ignores the local terrain entirely. Sometimes it is subtler — the colour of the soil, the spacing of the houses, the angle of the roads. But the USA almost always announces itself, if you know what to look for.
This guide breaks down the visual signatures that make the United States the easiest large country to identify from above. The patterns described here are the same ones top players use to lock in a guess within the first second of seeing a frame, and they translate directly into faster, more accurate rounds on EarthGuessr.
Read the full satellite guideCan you find United States from above?
Test your geography skills on a 3D globe and see how often you place this country correctly.