Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.

The editors: James & Alex

Another Plane in Flight

Posted by , Monday, 24th April 2006

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Please note that some or all of the objects mentioned in this post are no longer visible on Google Earth or Google Maps.

This is a nice high res shot of a plane over autumnal suburbia in Illinois. I can’t seem to find the shadow of this one on the ground, but is must be pretty high to appear so big.

Sarah says:

This is a great pic of an airplane, cruising approximately above our house in Palatine, IL.

I’m guessing that you went looking for your house and found this great big plane over the top of it :)

plane in flight

Thanks: Sarah Lopez

17 Responses to 'Another Plane in Flight'

  1. 1. Clay Smith says:

    That’s almost too simple. I’m guessing they went looking for that plane but noticed the 0.5 pixel wide “FOR SALE” sign in the front yard of the house underneath. Look at the square feet! The gabled roof! The circle drive! The well-manicured lawn and old-growth trees! They didn’t just find a passenger jet — they found a home.

    P.S. The large circular purple spot near the tip of the left wing!

  2. 2. rob says:

    I actually think this is one of the best in flight shots we have seen because of the fact that you can see the windows and the way it is turning. And it looks like it is on the ground!

  3. 3. Buzzdee says:

    Here is another one: Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

  4. 4. Krebber says:

    Ummm… maybe it’s just me, but the Google text ads are totally screwing the comments around into paragraphs of garbled text. Just to let you know. And it’s also overrunning onto the “Leave A Reply” background table image.

  5. 5. Krebber says:

    No, wait, it’s fixed itself. Sorry ’bout that :)

  6. Google Sightseeing Admin
    6. Alex says:

    lols, I couldn’t read your comment krebber cos the text was obscured by the leave a reply section…

    FYI, it fixes itself on refresh (you’re using firefox on xp I assume). Am looking into a permanent fix now though.

  7. Google Sightseeing Admin
    7. Alex says:

    Krebber (or anyone else), I *think* I’ve fixed the last comment overrunning problem, but I was having difficulty re-creating it very often anyway. If anyone spots it could they let me know please? Thanks :-)

  8. 8. rob says:

    Im having a similar problem on Camino (ie: firefox engine) on Mac OSX fyi. :)

  9. Google Sightseeing Admin
    9. Alex says:

    thanks rob, I’ll take a look in camino at home tonight.

  10. 10. rob says:

    Also, is it possible to work out the height of the plane based on the planes dimensions compared to the roads dimensions?

  11. 11. Chip says:

    It’d be possible if you could figure out what kind of plane it was. He’s probably low enough that the parallax isn’t much, though. If you scroll in the direction the plan’es going about 12 miles (or just zoom out a few steps), you’ll find… O’Hare Airport.

  12. 12. randall says:

    i’m seeing the garbled up leave a reply thing on firefox on xp. but i refershed it so its ok now.

    about the height of the plane, i’m pretty sure that you need the height of the satelite to figure it out

  13. 13. Olly says:

    Fixed the gmaps link to actually centre on the plane….

    Thanks to Jonothan for reporting it.

  14. 14. jeka says:

    Take a look at these:
    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

    Shot taken nearby Frankfurt airport. If you’ll zoom out a little you’ll find three aircrafts in a row (actually I think this is some kind of the bug - i.e. same plane was pictured three times)

  15. 15. scott says:

    Just about half a mile to the south-east towards O’Hare, here is another plane:
    Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth

  16. 16. Christian says:

    >”I can’t seem to find the shadow of this one on the ground, …”

    It’s probably on a neighboring image tile.

    > “but is must be pretty high to appear so big.”

    The size of the plane really has nothing to do with its absolute altitude rather than how close it was to the plane from which the photo was taken. You didn’t think all those crisp photos were taken from a satellite, did you?

  17. 17. Zipper tha Seven says:

    Dude!

    That’s about 2 miles south of the neighborhood I grew up in. My house was on Coral Reef Way in Lake Zurich!

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