Planes In Flight Mega-Post
Please note that some or all of the objects mentioned in this post are no longer visible on Google Earth or Google Maps.
Well it’s my own fault really. Since I posted that I hadn’t seen any planes in flight, we have been absolutely inundated with submissions proving that I was completely wrong. Glad to hear it, ‘cos some of these are really cool.
- Ryan (Cool shadow - look about 4 plane widths west)
- nowak (Can you find the shadow? I think its all the way over here)
- Arvo Huru (Anyone know what kind of plane that is?)
- Eric Thelin
- Brian Lalor
- Miker
- Chris (Pink plane. You sure its not parked though? I can’t see a shadow anywhere!)
- Matt (From the comments - Three at once! Very cool but is it really three planes, or just one?)
- Geoff Sulcer (Tiny little one)
- Jason (This is the one in our first picture)
- Colin (This one is huge! Or perhaps just very high up…)
- Tobic (Another three planes?! One just off the top and another just off the bottom)
- Kent (Kent says this is a U2 spyplane!)
- josh k (Quite a few of the planes have this weird blue ‘ghost’ in addition to their shadows, perhaps its due to their speed…)
- caknuck (…or perhaps its a reflection?)
- Arvo Huru (Now that’s fast!)
- Stilt (Apparently this is over Graceland)
- Rod Levin (This is the one in our second picture)
- Tom (This is cool, its a razor sharp image. Can’t find the shadow though.)
- DDA (And finally… toy-town planes!)
Couple of extra plane related ones, first from punk floyd, who says that this is a SR-71 Blackbird Reconnaissance plane parked on Beale AFB, and also from Allen Ormond, who fittingly points us towards the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This is where the Wright Brothers made the first powered airplane flight.
Many thanks to everyone who submitted links but didn’t get a mention, there were just far too many of you!
I think Joel is right. There are many satellite image systems that take two images, one “panchromatic” or black-and-white, and one in color. The panchromatic image is typically twice or four times higher resolution, and final products use the color from the color image combined with the intensity from the panchromatic image. It seems the two images are taken at slightly different times so the position of the plane relative to the satellite changes. If you look carefully at the ghost images, one is an intensity image with the color of the background and the other is a more blurry color image with the intensity of the background.
I also wanted to say that the ghosts are surely due to the motion of the satellite and not the plane. Satellites move at around 17,000 miles an hour (7500 meters/sec) and planes at about 600 miles an hour.
The SR-71 at RIC can be found at:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Not as good of an image as the other. It’s a pity these awesome planes are just sitting there rotting.
Scott Said: April 13th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Planes flying high enough won’t cast a visible shadow. (The sun isn’t a point light source, so as you get farther from the ground, you start to “eclipse� less and less of it from any given point.)
Sorry dude… the sun is 93 million miles away and **IS** a point source at that distance. Shadows are not well defined when objects are high up due to atmospheric scattering of light. Without an atmosphere, all objects in the sky would cast shadows exactly their size. Simple trig calculations show this to be true.
An SR-71 can be seen at the March Air Force Base museum in Riverside, CA, along with a veriety of other planes, including a B-52.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Plane on final to LAX (on gray building), with Hollywood Park horse racing complex above and slightly to the left, as well as the Great Western Forum.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Dan said:
“Sorry dude… the sun is 93 million miles away and IS a point source at that distance. Shadows are not well defined when objects are high up due to atmospheric scattering of light. Without an atmosphere, all objects in the sky would cast shadows exactly their size. Simple trig calculations show this to be true.”
Actually, he was correct. When you look at the sun, what do you see? A point? No, you see a circle of emitted light.
The light emitted from one edge of the sun’s disc is travelling at a slightly different angle than the light emitted from the opposite side of the disc. As an objects gains altitude, the rays from each side of the disc of the sun eventually completely overlap one another and the shadow completely disapears. This is why shadows cast by the sun have “soft” edges, as opposed to the hard edged shadows that you would get from a point source of light.
Also, the reason we can’t see the shadows is because some of these planes are likely flying at 40,000 feet altitude. From the perspective of the satellite (many hundreds of km), there is no obvious way to distinguish between an object at ground level, and an object at 40,000 feet. As a result, we can’t tell if a plane is high in the sky, or sitting in the middle of a field.
Here’s another one just taken off from Toronto’s Pearson Airport:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Migon wrote: “I believe the shadow to Tom’s plane is just to the right of the field over which the plane is flying.”
It cannot be to the right of the aircraft. All the shadows fall to the west (left) of the objects. Note the angle of all the other shadows, such as those given off by trees. To me, it looks like 10 degrees north of west - roughly.
Take a straight-edge (ruler, piece of paper) and match the angle of a shadow. Then, keeping the same angle, put the right end of the straight-edge of the plane and trace along the path to find the shadow. I couldn’t find it, I think the background is too cluttered to get a good bead on it.
Found this one outside Harrisburg, PA near the Turnpike.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
that’s the shadow of the pink plane, left to the highway
Found this one near Winslow, AZ:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Here’s one coming in to land at Los Angeles.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
in the to the north of the U2 picture there are also 2 A-10s parked. and another U-2 parked to the south, as well as several planes i can’t identify (maybe t-38s?) parked in between.
Are you sure these are all _satellite_ pictures? I suspect many of them are actually from aerial photography, or a mix of the two sources. If that is the case it would be interesting to know what altitude the photo aircraft typically flew at - it would make a big difference to the apparent size of any aircraft in flight that they caught…
“Bugger. Lake Grapevine shot.”
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
i noticed this too… 5 shadows, but only 3 planes to match them with. this is certainly a time-lapse, as these planes would only be seconds apart. i guess the plane was out of frame for the last two shots.
1. The presence of shadow/lack of aircraft…..presence of aircraft/lack of shadow is caused by stitching together the cloud-free portions of images from different dates. The stitching “slices away” the missing feature but appears seamless at low resolutions like what’s on Google.
2. This also accounts for most of the places where multiple aircraft are visible on approach/departure but are within a couple hundred meters of eachother. Nowhere outside of carrier battlegroups do aircraft cycle that close.
3. The “reflection” phenomenon is indeed ghosting within the image. This is caused because the s/c takes both Panchromatic (B&W) and Mutlispectral (color) bands at very slightly different times. The higher resolution Pan bands are captured first, and then a fraction of a second later the lower resolution MS bands are captured. During that fraction of a second, the aircraft has moved to a slightly different spot, resulting in the “ghost”.
Here’s a plane over the Mississippi River in New Orleans:
Airplane over the Mississippi.
Another nice one is Barksdale AFB in Shreveport, LA - B52s everywhere, plus some A-10s, and what looks like a group of US bombers of the past.
Barksdale AFB
Here is one overflying Denver International..
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
I found a map where the plane (in the air) is really hard to find. Check out this map of Raleigh-Durham Airport and see if you can find the plane without messing with the zoom scale. Just pull up a chair, lean in and see if you it. (I couldn’t get the direct link to Google to work correctly.)
http://www.prouddemocrat.us/google_maps.htm
sorry, that was just too predictable. action speaks louder than bracelets.
Yeah, it’s a little predictable, but it’s a good way to scare others.
As for “actions speaking louder”, I agree completely, but if wearing a wristband motivates a person to get off the couch to do something, that’s a good thing.
the boeing international airport in Seattle :
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
may be an aircraft museum ?
Placemark: Taking off from Dallas / Google Earth. It’s pretty cool because the shadow’s so sharp. Put the plane into the bottom right corner and you can see it.
this one seems to crash into the water (but not really) :
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Kent’s U2 probably is a U2. Check out the web site for Beale Air Force Base (which is where the map says that picture is): http://www.beale.af.mil/#
Just arriving in Bermuda…
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
A lot of you guys are saying that the satellites are moving really fast and that is due to the differences in placement of aircraft, but did you ever think that maybe the satellites are in a geosynchronous orbit?
correction: the drone carrying version of the sr-71 is the m-21 with the drone being the d-21. it is not from what i can find on the net a combined desigination. sr-71’s are being retired since satalite imagery cost.
heres a interesting page that covers the a-12/m-21. http://www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/d21~1.htm
and yes according to this page Seattle is the only place to find the pair.
Avro Haru - your plane is most likely one of the many md-80 aka super 80 aircraft flown for medium haul flights. they are a unique airplane with the 2 engines on the back and the long body forward. Boeing took this model over and renamed it the 717 and later retired it from production.
I found the pink planes shadow guys. Left of the plane, across the highway is a zig-zaggin’ building. on the right of the upper “zig” is a blurry shadow. I believe this is the one.
Vegas plane landing. shadow is visible.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Business jet over Carmel, Ca.
Here’s one that looks like it’s parked on one of the holes at Cypresswood Golf Course, north of George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
I’ve never found a shadow for that one, but I KNOW it ain’t parked. I’ve played that hole before and don’t remember a plane on the green!