Long time Reader/First time poster - Coordinates at Google Earth reveal a UAV ?

reply to post by BoomBoomBoomBoom[/url]

Great idea, I haven't thought to do that.
I'll see what I can do with the image.

reply to post by HrdCorHillbilly


I'm anxiously awaiting your Photoshop "discovery".

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Here is another comment about the mystery craft
by a friend who is the technical/engineer type
and he ruminates as such:

"You can make a rough guess of the size by assumeing it is much closer to the earth then the satellite.

If you wish to assume otherwise of course there is nothing to prevent it but common sense as the satellite must be at least a couple of hundred miles high to maintain a stable orbit above atmospheric drag.
If it is a hobbyist RC plane it must be pretty damn close to the satellite to appear so large in the field of view.
Square wing planes do not reach orbital altitude.

If you went to the airport shot at the co-ordinates I posted you can see "similar" planes. These are small general aviation craft of nominal size. If this thing is at low altitude it is about the same size.
Even if it were at 10,000 feet the difference in perspective size between a craft at 200 miles vs 198 miles distence from the camera would not be noticible.
So it's size is comparable to those on the ground.
As is the overal appearence. Although the wingtips do standout as an intriguing detail. But there are thousands of general aviation craft of various types.

The camera in the satellite is digital. Shutter speed would not be an issue. It may not even have a shutter. The image aquisition time would be most likely in the millisecond range.
But the mechanical color filter rotation rate would be much slower. Leading to the delay between shots. This has much less effect on the image when objects are stationary because the camera is programmed to take that motion, which is caused by the satellites movement between frames into account. This will reduce the color fringeing error to about one pixel. Which is why it only shows up at the resolution limit of the camera when you zoom in on stationary objects.

If you have used a consumer video camera with "jitter or jiggle" reduction (image stabilization, to get fancy) you may have seen the same thing. It can keep a whole frame free from blur if the camera is shakeing or moving as in a shot taken from a vehicle, but if an object in the field of view has it's own independent motion it will still be blurred. That is what is happening here.

The satellite would be useless for google if it were "geosynchronus".
That would limit it to only looking at one small section of the earth directly below it. That may have an advantage for a spy satellite designed to only monitor one fixed area such as a millitary base. But google (or even the DOD) could not afford the number needed for full earth coverage if they were restricted to a narrow vantage point.

Also a satellite must be about 23,000 miles high to maintain a geosynchronus state. Compared to an orbit of 200 miles this would limit the resolution to 1%, by the 100 to 1 distance ratio.
If you use a better camera, at about 100 times the cost you can make up for this. But if you use that "good" camera at 200 miles you still get 100 times the resolution. So there is little incentive to spy for high resolution from geosynchronus orbit.
That would only make sense if you wanted to look at a whole hemisphere at lower resolution looking for ICBM launches for instance.

Google's satellites are actually in polar orbit so they can scan the whole earth as it rotates east to west and they orbit north to south. Giving them a raster scan of the whole surface over a period of time.

Can you estimate the speed of the plane from the blur?
Only if you know the filter field rate on the satellite.
And if you accept the idea that the size of the plane is typical for small general aviation. A few tens of feet or less.
Then splitting the images in photoshop and measureing the offset would let you determine the distance the plane moved between color fields. With the color field rate known the speed could be estimated.

There is a MUCH easier way to make an order of magnitude guess that will clearly show that what we do not have is a craft approaching warp speed and producing strange relativistic optical distortions.

At these co-ordinates you will find an image of the 605 freeway in Los Angeles. It is reasonable to assume the cars are moving at about 75 mph, give or take.

33°50'1.39"N 118° 5'6.75"W

You will see two types of blur. A chromatic blur with red tailing and a shadow blur. where the car's shadow cast at an angle is blurred into the image of the car itself as it moves during the color field image delay process. Considering the size of a typical car and the shadow blur you can estimate the time between fields by the lengthening of the shadow in relation to the shadow cast by a stationary car oriented in the same direction on a nearby surface parking space.

But this really isn't necessary. The chromatic blur is a little less then the chromatic blur on the plane. if it is about half then the plane is going twice as fast, maybe 160.
Could it be a bit faster, yes, 200?
Reasonable.
2000?
Not bloody likely.

So it is a general aviation size plane at moderate altitude going at a reasonable speed.

Does that make it a candidate for a HS drone?
Well it doesn't rule it out. Such a craft would fit that description.
But consider the number of general aviation craft in the air at any given time vs the number of HS drones.
That gives you the probability of it being an HS drone.
I have no idea of these ratios. But at present the number of drones is probably small. It will increase as the police state strangles the country. But by then google earth will be a thing of the past."

reply to post by HrdCorHillbilly


HCHillyBilly,
would love to see what you possibly have done
with the image using Photoshop to merge the three "ghosts"
of the aircraft to see if it can be positively identified...

nice find
im new too
i spend alot of time in google earth as well. i have yet to come across anything out of the ordinary.

Sorry for the slow reply folks.
The longer I spent working with this image, the more confused I became.
After looking through thousands of plane and UAV blueprints I have come to a conclusion.
I believe the culprit is a Cessna 177 Cardinal.