UFO
Thursday, 12th May 2005 by Alex Turnbull
Please note that some or all of the objects mentioned in this post are no longer visible on Google Earth or Google Maps.
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.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
When shooting with a ultra-wide angle lens, condensation will form at the apex of the curve of the lens (a drip if you will), especially when shooting in the down position. Because of the field of view, it will look like it is “floating” between the camera and the object being shot. It is not an uncommon phenomenon.
Look at the way they hang there in the sky – in exactly the same way that bricks don’t. And since they look like flying saucers, and if 1950s sci-fi taught me anything it’s that flying saucers are the ideal shape for traversing the universe, they must be flying saucers. Preparing to attack. All this talk of weather balloons and lens effects is just Pollyanna wishful thinking. ET has arrived in 1950s styled UFOs, because they are the perfect configuration for interstellar travel, and this time he’s out for blood.
Honestly, does anyone actually believe that aliens, if they exist, travel in saucer shaped ships? Why would they? What possible benefit would a saucer shape be in traversing the galaxy? Just because some addle-brained 1950s era idiot portrayed space ships as being saucer shaped we automatically assume that every saucer-shaped thing in the sky is an alien craft?!? I don’t know what the images are, but they aren’t alien craft from another planet, star, galaxy or universe.
Sheesh!
Couldn’t this thing simply be some kind of water-mark for the maps due to any copyright purposes of google ?
I notice numbers in or through the sphere located west of the one in mention.indicating reference to location. It would appear to be a photo referencing mark.
“It is something floating in the air as it doesn’t interfere with any ground objects. And if some consider it to be a weather baloon why we don’t see other ones in TX, or NY or anywhere else?”
If it’s a weather balloon, it’s bigger than a house. Much bigger. If those are houses below it, it must be about 100 feet in diameter. Most weather balloons that not that that large, although Skyhook balloons are approximately that size:
http://www.cufon.org/cufon/taf_1.htm
I’m not sure that they fly those things anymore, though.
Don’t have much time to punch this in: reference evidence stored under file classifcation FNG070326 in the National Quarkives. It is a… OH NO… THEY’VE FOUND ME… IT IS A
I love conspiracy theorists!
The puffy metallic marshmallows are almost laid out in an Orion type constellation pattern…but not quite. Maybe out visitors are being graded on formation and artistic expression.
But seriously, for those of you still having issues with this, here is a photo from almost the same magnification of the Goodyear Blimp.
View Placemark
Please notice the dramatic shadow cast on the ground due to its elevation. The object in question here does not cast a ground effect, therefore does not exist in the air. There is no such thing as condensation in space, and these photos were not taken from aircraft as the resolution and coloration does not alter the more finite you make your view. Also this is not a software mapping anomaly. When satellite photos are rendered together you get mapping discoloration defects such as this
View Placemark
or this
View Placemark
as an elongation or distorted perspective of the image content (both of these links show the Pacific Northwest).
These objects were inserted post-render of the photos, and in the case of finding one where the Google watermark bleeds into one of them it should be unequivocal evidence that these were inserted into the photo after the product was finished. I can make the same objects and effects in Photoshop with simple gradation and blur effects.
Nothing to see here folks, move along.
This is a smoke cloud from a fire.
where is Fox Mulder when you need him?
No, No, No you are all wrong! These are the satelites of the NBA
Give me my Focusyn
Quite interesting. I think the first question to ask is: Is it a real object or is it a defect in the lens? I guess a possible way to find out is to have the picture analyzed and find out whether it is real or not. So far, a lot of people seem to have gotten the impression that it is round, grayish-metallic and to me it looks flat, too. I think the photograph/s should be analyzed first before jumping to any conclusions.
You’re all wrong. It’s a picture of me, close up. I am a small disc shaped object; some tell me I resemble an AOL disc.
WELCOME TA ERF
its an ad for the upcoming War of the Worlds movie.
You silly people….there are no such thing as aliens. Sightings of aliens and space ships are really human time travellers from our future coming back in time to observe us.
Duh
You did not see a UFO.
Swamp gas from a weather balloon got trapped in an air pocket and reflected the light of the planet Venus.
Now, just look at this red light…
This is definitely a satellite photo with a round, silver collored shape that could be an anomalous find with pure aesthetically ambiguous meaning accidently and/or intentionally confounding onlookers into guessing, investigating even, the deep rooted purpose of the State of Florida.
If someone will take the time to Google Map around Washington D.C., you’ll notice that certain…landmarks…are similarly blurred.
Capitol Hill is blurred, though strangely enough, the White House isnt….but the White House in the image looks very out of place and photoshopped. The Pentagon, of all buildings seems to fit in the most.
Somehow I doubt the government was willing to let Google take polaroids of our national nerve centers. The Capitol was blurred, a carefully remastered White House implanted, and obviously some deep dark Government installation (or Jeb Bush’s mistress’s house) deep in the heart of Florida supplanted with a blurry pond.
Speaking of that, anyone tried to GoogleMap Langley?;) Along those lines, anyone try to Google
They can run, but they can’t hide!
it looks like someone took the smudge tool in photoshop and went wild
Somebody above suggested going to the areas beneath these “objects” and photographing the sky above. I think that someone already has…
http://www.ufocasebook.com/stanfordlinearaccelerator.html
(OK. So they flew over to Stanford when they got bored with Florida. Who wouldn’t?)
Some points to consider: 1.These pictures are not taken in-sequence on one orbital-pass (then on to the next state,city, zip-code, etc). It’s a mosaic, meaning: some adjacent images were taken on different orbits- even days apart- Look at the clouds, way BELOW the “object”. Those are in-focus and thousands of feet above the ground. Some views show clouds in one square, stopping at the edge of that image. The entire image is made up of many of these smaller images- therefore, it is erroneous to assume that this THING is one object, only- it may be, or it may not be, the same object. 2. Any serious analysis of these images needs to be done by someone who knows (at the very least) the distances involved in taking these images- They ARE taken from space. 3. This “GRID” thing- take any number of random points in space, spread them out 2-dimensionally, and you can draw lines between any of them. These lines will always be straight. This means nothing. There are too many assumptions going on here. Why not just LOOK at the pictures and see what you see, without trying to justify it as something “explainable”. 4. One thing stands out (to me). This IS an object. It is out of focus, and consistently so. It appears to be spherical and reflective, and the reflections are consistent with the lighting and environment seen in each separate image-section in which it appears. 5. If (4) is true, it is closer to the camera (but NOT on the lens- come-on, now) than it is to the ground, and probably quite large- Huge, actually. 6. This is not the only image of a large, silver, spherical object- seen either in the sky (from the ground), or from air to air, or in seen in space: A Russian Cosmonaut is on record, having reported a large-Silver sphere between Mir and the earth. Because of the vacuum of space, it was impossible for him to determine either it’s size OR distance from him at the time, but he “thought it looked BIG”. It was visible for a long time (a few minutes?) . It was moving at his speed, so seemed stationary in relation to his window, with Earth and the clouds moving below. He said it just vanished (it didn’t move away) before he could get a picture. This photo should be sent to Bruce Macabee (spelling?) for analysis. Anyone using Google can verify anything I have stated here. Anyone with half a brain can debunk what I have stated here, as well. Anyone with both halves of their brain intact is probably just reading these posts- not adding to them.
i think that its the government trying to hide somethng.
I think I have caught one hovering over some trees at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.
View Placemark
Try blowing it up in an image editor.
What a loss for earth……they want Tiger Woods back……
They are not markers for stitching together images. First, why would they be so big? Its not like humans are stitchign together these images. Second, there is no reason to make them blurry greyish disks. I think it is condensation.
People! Its a Yahoo visual obsicle contraption lauched to block Googles sat-map site. Monica Lewinsky is flying it.
EasterEggs
It could also just be a blimp. This would explain why from the air it seems like a disk. From the side it would appeare like the normal eggdrop/blimp shape.
Just apply Occams Razor here 🙂
I think it’s a flying ninja.
Rumour has it, the japanese were trialling out a new form of gravity-defying soldier in the region!
Call it what you will!!
Who cares what it is, it made for funny reading 😉
My money’s on something on the lense, fwiw 😉
Maybe Google put those in to get us all crazy?!
Or the aliens have come!!!!
-pulls out Tin Foil Hat-
It is probably someone in google that doesn’t want there house to be shown.
Blimps don’t fly ABOVE clouds seen at +5000 feet. No wonder Bush still has his job…
What we have established: Its a weather balloon. Its not condesation/water drop The foto was not taken from an aircraft. … Oh and its is not a mentos or a UFO
It’s not Google trying to hide something beneath those spots. It is not.
As we’ve seen it in the White House screenshot government officials and Google’s staff don’t bother itself with making stylish effects like blurring, real shading, lightning to hide something. They just erase that place from the picture:
View Placemark
Now compare it to our THING.
And it’s not lens dust. Have you seen lens dust? On any pictures from your digital camera? Here how it usually looks:
http://www.pbase.com/image/43328271
So just drop that lens’ guessing. (‘Man, where’s my tin foil hat?’)
white spot, inner bevel and 5 of gaussian blur, when you makeing this kind of montage first thing on the mind is direction of light…
suckers
Jocko,
I don’t know if is a montage, but this “montage” is in googlemaps. I think that this site isn’t the author.
Personally I think that is an error of the satellite.
it looks to me like golf ball. Someone up there is playing golf.
The light hitting the orb shape is not necessarily sunlight – could be any kind of light, even light reflected off something else nearby.
What if, for the sake of argument, you remember that the lense has to be really powerful to magnify the details in that satalite picture, and then perhaps that a speck of dust could be lit up like that. Indeed, could not a speck of dust look like that when magnified? Or how about a drop of water or ice? If ice were on the lense because of an event of any kind, then the ice would melt if sunlight hit it due to the way sunlight is so hot in space (no atmosphere see?) and would freeze where the sunlight would not hit it (no heat in space when no sunlight because space is a vacuum see?)
I wish it was a conspiracy but I think that it is more likely to be something more banal.
Not sure what this can be…we live in 33432 and would love to have them “Beam us UP”……That’s all we have to say about that ..!!
Why couldn’t it be a chip in the lens from an encouter with a rock? Keep in mind that two tons of rocks and dust hit the Earth every day.
I used to drive to work on Austrialian; had a friend whose mother lived on 36th (and briefly, when she was ill, he lived there for awhile). While I officially believe in the “marker” theory (either to line up or for copyright purposes), my knowledge of the area gives me a different theory to espouse:
It’s smoke from the damn good mobile BBQ pit that sets up near there every day. Mmmm…
Looks like a “lenticular cloud” photographed from above to me.
http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/env/clouds/ http://www.crystalinks.com/lenticular.html
in that white house satelite picture, what is the blurred image just to the right of the that?
ITS A WATER TOWER GUYS! growing up in FL we have these everywhere bc water cannot be stored underground as the water table is too high
I have to apologize with all of you for kicking “that” day the ball so high up there! Gomen nasai!