(Clockwise, from upper left) Seven-square-mile views of Manhattan; Chaganbulage Administrative Village in Inner Mongolia; Venice, Italy; and farms in Plymouth, Washington # © Google

Every now and then, it is good to just let the mind wander. And some of those times, visual prompts are the fastest way to get from here to there.

A seven-square-mile snapshot of the 2,700,000-square-mile Amazon rainforest in Brazil #© Google

Thanks to the Atlantic’s Senior Editor of the photo section, Alan Taylor, for this:

 Seven Square Miles

Multiple channels of a braided river in southern Iceland. See it mapped. # © Google

Spending time looking at the varying and beautiful images of our planet from above in Google Earth, zooming in and out at dizzying rates, I thought it would be interesting to compare all of these vistas at a fixed scale—to see what New York City, Venice, or the Grand Canyon would look like from the same virtual height. So, the following images are snapshots from Google Earth, all rectangles of the same size and scale, approximately three and a half miles (5.6 kilometers) wide by two miles (3.2 kilometers) tall—showing seven square miles (18.1 square kilometers, or 4,480 acres) of the surface of our planet in each view.

A section of Upsala Glacier in Argentina. Explore more here, in Google Maps. # © Google

Sand dunes of the Tengger Desert encroach on Chaganbulage Administrative Village in China’s Inner Mongolia. See it on Google Maps. # © Google

Seven square miles encompassing parts of Shinjuku and Nakano in Tokyo, Japan # © Google

See all 39 photos here.