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.
For some unknown reason somebody is carving giant letters ‘HA’ into a sand bar near Abu Dhabi. The 500m tall water letters are very neat but it’s a lot of effort just to laugh into space.
Perhaps it’s just the beginning of a longer word? HARRY? HASTA LA VISTA? HALP (sic)?
Thanks: Heather Muise
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Maybe it was made by the people in the posh villas to the north? And how enormous is the stadium to the north east?
this is one of the weirder posts in a long time. no idea what this could be.
LOL, One word, HALIBIRTON!
I believe it has something to do with Hectare(HA) which are units for measuring land.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectare
heres an excerpt from the United Arab Emirates Land and Water Development site.
“…of which 66 682 ha were available for agricultural production, while the remaining 5 962 ha were occupied by farm buildings and…”
http://www.fao.org/AG/AGL/aglw/aquastat/countries/untd_arab_em/index.stm
Besides going to the trouble of creating this, they also did it in our alphabet rather than in Arabic. I lived in the UAE for the past five years and though they are building some strange things there, I had never even heard of this project.
It’s actualy spelled Halliburton and you might not be too far off!!
Here’s an O to add to your theorising
I love the way the H extends into the sea. Very very cool.
judging from alot of there water ways and land “architecture” I wouldn’t put it past them of making this… not to mention it looks like the site i sited is a UN site maybe some western influence?
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
The roads (?) around the perimeter of each leg of the letters are similar to the ones at this island.
I’m betting it’s in line with the rest of the development around here, uber-wealthy oil sheiks who want to live on the island of HA-ppy or something like that.
“And how enormous is the stadium to the north east?” -> with its 49.500 seats it’s not actually that enormous…it is the biggest sports arena in the Mideast though.
HA is the arabic abbreviation for hezbollah
Perhaps someone there is just a fan of “The Tick”. Villian Chairface Chippendale began to carve his name into the moon in one episode, but only got “CHA” done before The Tick stopped him. Later, The Tick was able to undo the C, leaving “HA”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairface_Chippendale
It occurs to me that it could be spelling ABU DHABI.
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HAmmer woi?t!
Why not start a search in order to build a full alphabet from A to Z with single letters (not full words) seen from space ??
Going to have to wait until they’ve finished I guess - but considering the H is in the sea, either they are very bad planners - or it’s going to be a long word.
HAL LIVES!!!
How about ALLAH?
That would even fit more than ABU DHABI, since that would need to go into the water.
Seems like half a kilometer long - quite impressive.
Well, the Island is apparently called AI Futaisi (or Futaysi), and according to this page “The number one United Arab Emirates (UAE) ecotourism destination, under the patronage of Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, is a unique harmony of fun, health, education and environmental awareness.”
So, my bet would be on “Hamad”, or “Hamdan”, or some combination of these.
The only place that i could find a name to this island is on this UAE Aviation map.
http://uae2.gsfc.nasa.gov/UAEAviation72dpi.gif
Unfortunately it is illegible, but it did point out that there is an airstrip not far from the HA.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
My guess is housing will go next to the letters or something (water front property!). They’ve done this in many places over there.
Monasterium: Its not the largest stadium in the middle east. Cairo Int’l Stadium has 80,000 capacity, and a newly constructed stadium in Alexandria, Egypt is planned to have 88,000. Also, the stadium Qatar built for the asian games this year might have an even higher capacity.
My take on this is that it seems like some sort of an ‘accident’ while digitizing the images. If you try to zoom out a couple of times the HA disapears (although at that altitude it should be possible - compare with the O to the west, which is roughly the same size, and very visible after u zoom out).
My guess is: it just isn’t there!
Yes, I too toyed with the idea it was nice Photoshop brushwork - especially the dragged grey color going out to sea, and the neat watery bits in the A which perhaps would not be that color, or even wet at all - but all the truck (lorry) tracks around the letters make it too real to be a fake I think. As for the zooming out: I think the low res images for further zoom out’s are taken at a different time, so quite possible the HA is not present on that scale.
This one is curious, and I’d love to know if anyone who has reliable info.
If you look in Windows Live Local, the ‘A’ seems to be visible… http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=24.348984~54.316578&style=h&lvl=13&scene=3702623
I agree with Ben - the smaller scale image was clearly taken at a different time so it’s quite possible the HA wasn’t there then. It looks real to me.
I know this may be radical, but hey, abu dHAbi maybe? Although the Halliburton idea is cool
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
In Egyptian mythology, HA was a god of the deserts.
According to Wikipedia, Ha was the god of the deserts WEST of EGYPT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_(mythology)
Abu Dhabi is east of Egypt and not exactly in the same neighborhood.
-g
My guess is that it is a name. The crown prince of Dubai’s name is Hamdan, while there is another big Sheikh from Abu Dhabi named Hamad. There is also a big family with large business (and construction ties) called Habtour.
The letters “H A” were carved by Sheikh Hamad who decided to carve his name on a private island, but the government disapproved and asked him to stop, which he has, but went ahead and added an “M”. Google’s satellite photos need to be updated. This information coming from someone in the know in Dubai.
it is for real, I have seen it. When flying offshore you go over it. He is up to Hamad now, that was the last I saw it in Feb 08
Thank goodness that’s sorted out now - it would’ve been too ironic to have the word ‘HAM’ written across the UAE in letters viewable from space!
This is the name of the ruler here. “Hamdan” Soon you will see “mdan”