The U.S. military can be a sensitive lot when it comes to the location of their military facilities.

With military bases on every continent, in every corner of the world, for the kinds of tasks they perform, it's no wonder that many of the locations are blacked out and hidden from public view.

The Pentagon says there are around 5,000 bases in total with around 600 overseas.

Josh Begley, a data artist, decided to set himself the task of mapping all known U.S. military bases around the world, and collect satellite pictures of them using Google and Bing Maps.

The project was inspired by Trevor Paglen's book 'Blank Spots on the Map' which goes inside the world of secret military bases that are sometimes censored on maps.

Begley has found the coordinates for 650 bases, and published pictures for 644 of them. The pictures can be viewed at http://empire.is/