The world, being mapped. Each spark is a changeset a volunteer just saved, drawn where they were working.
connecting…
One spark is one editing session, not one node — click it to open the changeset.
Somewhere on Earth, a volunteer just finished mapping something: a footpath, a new building, a bench outside a shop. Each spark on this globe is one such editing session on OpenStreetMap, the map the world writes itself. Click a spark to open the changeset and see what changed.
OpenStreetMap has no live event stream. What it has is better in one way and worse in another: once a minute it publishes a file containing every single change made in that minute, free for anyone to read. This page fetches each file as it appears, so an edit reaches the globe a minute or two after it was saved — not instantly, but complete.
One changeset — one person's batch of work — rather than one node. A recent minute carried about two thousand edited nodes gathered into roughly fifty changesets, because redrawing a single road moves a hundred nodes at once. Drawing each node would be a blizzard; drawing each session is a map being made. The spark sits at the middle of everything the changeset touched and is sized by how much that was.
Colour is the kind of work: creating something new, modifying what was there, or deleting it. Most sessions are a mix, so the colour reflects whichever action dominated.
Constantly, and by people rather than machines — around fifty changesets a minute, every hour of every day. The counter at the top of the page shows the current rate, read from the same files this globe draws.
Wikipedia's edits are drawn where their subject is — someone in Lisbon improving the article about a river in Laos lights up Laos. OpenStreetMap edits are drawn where the mapping happened, because that is what a map edit is: a change to a place, made about that place.
Part of The Planet Thinks — watch Wikipedia being edited or photos being uploaded on the same globe, compare the tools that show live edits, or put your own data on it. You can also leave this page running as a free screensaver for a TV or second monitor. Free, open source, no sign-up. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Globe imagery: NASA Blue Marble / Black Marble.