Tempe Butte is more commonly known as “A Mountain” - for obvious reasons. Each year in the run up to the Arizona State University vs. University of Arizona football game the ASU students take shifts to guard the steel and concrete ‘A’ from being painted a different colour by the rival team.

Just to the east is Sun Devil Stadium, home of Superbowl XXX. Apparently the parking lot is full not because of a game, but because students can park there cheap.

Apparently one of the most popular (and picturesque) sports in Boston/Cambridge is rowing on the Charles River. This view near Harvard University captures several 8-person racing shells in mid-stroke. Very cool.

Cashman Andrus says:

You can clearly see the paddles of these boats (8 rowers plus a coxswain). That’s the Harvard boathouse in the lower right corner (The one with the red roof).

Further down-river you can see one of Boston’s “Red Line” subway trains crossing the Longfellow Bridge (aka “the salt and pepper bridge” because of the shape of the towers). The train shown in this shot is travelling from Cambridge to Boston. David says that:

A train crossing this bridge is used in virtually every ‘establishing shot’ for movies and tv shows that take place in Boston.

And that’s good enough for me to put this post in the Movie Locations category

Many thanks to P-Dunny, Cashman Andrus and David

Unfortunately this one was too late for entry into our ‘Coolest Bridge Shadow’ award, but the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge would definitely have scored highly with our judges. You can also see an odd image alignment at Yerba Buena Island, where one part of the shadow appears much darker than another.

More about the bridge at Wikipedia.

Thanks: Chuck Cheeze

Tensuns says:

I have no idea what this is. I can’t find anything similar on any google map referenced sites. It doesn’t show up on terraserver and I live nearby so I know there are no towers in that area. It has the same shadow as ground objects and when you zoom out it appears to be too small to be something really close to the satellite.

Well we’re completely stumped. Any clues anyone?

Update: See the UFO Update entry.

Here’s a tanker being tugged off the coast of Mexico, there’s another one not too far off as well. Scarily, the first one (thumbnail #1) looks a little like it’s leaking… Here’s another off the coast of LA (captured alongside a plane too), and yet another near New York (thumbnail #2).

Tankers are cool, they’re so big that you can actually see them clearly all the way out at zoom level six!

Thanks to Jason and Adam Williams.