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{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
Well, being the military buff I am, and the certain things that I do…on zero sleep. I would instinctly look at this and say it’s a cruise missle or something similiar. Maybe Tomahawk, I am not really bothering to match it right this second. If you zoom out you find it is flying high above the sky in Utah. Just so happens this terrain is very similiar to certain areas we are and most certainly will be fighting in. I believe it is a missle test that is about it. If I get the time I might scan up all the bases I know around there, but if I don’t I hope one of you does it. Thank you.
Saw this on digg…take a closer look are you see the wings(they are black). Almost looks like a MD-80…
Harpoon.
It looks 90% like a AGM-84 Harpoon
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/agm-84-pics.htm
(The mid fuselage fins don’t seem to be angled on the satellite image.)
The size is the problem.
A Harpoon is only about 1/6th as large as the object on the photo.
My second guess was that it is a kind of atmosphere research rocket that is not flying horizontally but near vertically. That would easily explain the size – it could be much closer to the camera than any ground object.
Something like this:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03ze.html
But the MD-80 story seems sound, too.
It shows up in Google Earth too, where the measuring tool gives 27.5 meters nose to tail, 21 meters wing span. (It’s a little hard to be sure about the wings because they’re dark against a dark background.)
Naturally my first thought was “cruise missile”, followed by “AGM-84″ since there were no winglets- then I noticed the dark-colored wings that CW is talking about. Definitely an airliner.
Optical camo test bed?
Guys, it was taken by A Satellite and it has a contrail, which means it was at least 8 kilometers up. Using the GM measuring tool’s not gonna give you an accurate size.
It’s a SLAM-ER, picture here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/images/slamer01.jpg
Apparently it’s headed toward the White Sands range in Utah. Hard to tell where it was fired from, since it can be given waypoint guidance, but judging by SLAM-ER’s range it was somewhere over southern Utah.
On scale: The picture was taken by a DigitalGlobe QuickBird satellite at an altitude of 450 km. The vehicle in question was at an altitude of at most 15 km (more likely ~10), so the difference in ground level scale (for which the Google Earth measuring tool is presumably calibrated) and scale at vehicle altitude is going to be 3% at most.
As for the intrinsic accuracy of the GE measuring tool, I’ve measured a few things of known size on the ground and found that it comes very close — certainly to within the accuracy with which I can position the ends of the ruler.
Alright, but what’s the blurry grayish thing that’s leaving its own (fainter) contrail, just northeast of the missile in this picture?
Allen what do you base your 3% scale argument on? The Quickbird’s camera is calibrated for max ground-level resolution, a zoom effect that causes an exponential increase in the scale of high-altitude planes/etc. Take this cessna for example:
http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=299&c=2695&ll=37.587705,-120.900453&spn=0.008529,0.012081&t=k&hl=en
Think it’s really 425 feet long??
Allen what do you base your 3% scale argument on?
Geometry (or, if you like, trigonometry) plus the altitude of the satellite and the altitudes at which such airplanes generally fly.
> The Quickbird’s camera is calibrated for max ground-level resolution,
True.
> a zoom effect that causes an exponential increase in the scale of high-altitude planes/etc.
Huh? That seems to be technobabble. Could you provide a reference that explains what you mean, please?
> Take this cessna for example:
http://googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=299&c=2695&ll=37.587705,-120.900453&spn=0.008529,0.012081&t=k&hl=en
> Think it’s really 425 feet long??
No, I think it’s one of the parts of GE that was provided by an aerial photography company rather than a satellite imagery company. You really can’t fool geometry. Or at least not without serious Photoshopping, which I don’t think is the case in that image.
A 757 heading to Boise or Spokane?
Cruise missile, tracking an azimuth of approximately 310 degrees over southwestern Utah.
Olde Soldier sends…
This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Alitalia.md82.i-dawl.arp.jpg doesn’t seem to match a better contrast and magnification of the rear of object or the box-like sections where the wings attach. One would expect a v-shape wing behind twin engines. The distance between nose and wings seems to match the MDs as well as a more powerful magnification of the nose section. If the craft was tilted nose towards the ground the slight thickening of the rear and the expected rear wings/engine overlapping from an angle might look like the image. The only problem with that seems to be strange new distance between a MD’s nose and wing edge and distance between wing to engine this MD would have as opposed to the picture linked above.
As for the blurry image to the upper right, my guess is that’s some artifact of how Google combines neighboring images.
This is definitely an interesting photo, but not because of the jet (I do believe it is a jet). Someone else here mentinoed the blurry object to the upper right of the jet, which is giving a faint contrail of it’s own. Very interesting. Most likely it is a photographic anomaly, but it might be something else more interesting. No way to know really, unless you’re an ‘insider’.
:)
Its a plane, look close enough you can see the black wings.
I don’t accept the airplane theory. 1) The paint scheme is odd. Why leave the body a normal color, yet nearly blacken the wings? And 2) The shape of the wings resembles those of an ALCM. The cord does not appear to lengthen near the body. 3) I did zoom out. The object is about 50 miles south southwest of Salt Lake city, and it is headed towards the White Sands area. Also, the apparent presence of a slight shadow on the port wing suggests a mid to late morning photo.
If this is a cruise missle, then the presence of dual exhaust is unique.
The paint scheme and dimensions are a perfect match for a SkyWest Canadair CL-65-700. Skywest Airlines is based in SLC. Operating as a Delta Connection, their aircraft have white fuselages and grey wings.
Well through careful Photoshop testing, I believe that I have ruled out it being an MD-80 or variant. By comparing the shape with a schematic of the aircraft I found that the aft of the “craft” was too long and that the “engines” or stubs at the rear were too far back in comparison with the MD-80.
I actually thought that the most likely culprit was the MD-80 as I thought I could see the horizontal tail of the craft behind the stubs at the rear of the craft. However, I have not ruled out it being a smaller aircraft such as a private jet or a Fokker 100 series regional airliner.
So…basically the results so far have been inconclusive.
As for the Canadair hypothesis, I feel that it suffers from the same issues as the MD-80, the rear fuselage of the Canadair aircraft is too short to match up with the shape of the craft in the Google Maps image.
In looking at the paint schemes of Canadair I did find that the paint sections of thier aircraft in dark colors, however it seemed that the wings were generally of a light color, and the wingroots were dark. This represents the opposite of what is seen in the photo where the wingroots are clearly lightly colored and the wings are very dark.
On planes seen in aerial vs satellite photography:
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2005/09/planes_in_fligh.html
For zillions (well, many dozens) of GE pictures of airplanes in flight:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/360116/an/0/page/0/vc/1
Note that many of these are accompanied by ghost images, which are apparently an motion-induced artifact of the way the satellites’ cameras work.
On ghosts:
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/06/kc135_caught_re.html
and
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/551530/an/0/page/0
Im not an expert, but is it possible that the black wing type things are the product of distortion caused by a sonic boom.
Maybe some type of prototype for the rattler hypersonic cruise missile…
i did some diging and the angle of the black lines originating at the nose and at the sub wings (whose angles appear idientical)is consistent with the mach cone of an object traveling around mach 1.1. thats a little slow for for a rattler, but it is of note.
Apparently no html allowed. The links are:
Fark:
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2647737
Digg:
http://www.digg.com/general_sciences/Cruise_Missile_caught_on_Google_Maps_flying_over_Utah
Could it be a Northrop Tacit Blue demonstrator?
How easily we are led by our desire to see something that is not there. Once you read the debunking comments or just the comments containing the link to the debunking, and then go look at the image again. POW! There the wings are painted darkly with a light colored wing root surface. At that point it is obviously a commercial airliner.
Even though this has been pretty much established as a jetliner of some sort, here’s something else to think about. For anyone looking at the dark colored wings as evidence of some sort of optical deception…it’s not a very effective measure. The majority of that part of the country is desert, or light colored rock. Any conflict from here on out (except for DPRK) will be in a sandy region. I don’t think dark colored wings would hide anything against that sort of backdrop.
Well Ward…you posted this. Is it an MD-80?
Anytime baby.
Its a 737
Hey, CAG, I’m the one asking the questions here. What we’ve proved so far is DT readers are a lot smarter than I am. Good stuff, folks.
Ah, you may not that the scene won’t even go to the lowest resolution for Google, which would be about a meter using civilian imagery. Therefor, any cruise missile would surely be lost in the pixels as most are not much more than 3 meters long anyways, and less than a meter wide. An MD-88 makes a lot more sense especially considering the twin exhaust plumes that trail the plane. I doubt any satellite photo could pick up the exhaust of a cruise missile! Nice try guys, just a big plane with the wings painted a dark color.
But, slowly, we are all the reasons more and more distant from the RO, RO to leave the distance we have much more. I am a lot busier than before, not like before, often on the line. Although sometimes he also give me a little cheap zeny, but I l know that there are misunderstandings between us, and increasingly deep.
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