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.
Alright, I’m composed again. I appreciate the party of the third part taking part in enforcing my claim. Definitely my kind of entity… problem is, I won’t know who typed what.
Seriously? I agree with everything you said. I find the triangle in the desert more disturbing than this, but this is more intriguing because it defies simple explanation (such as we are mind-controlled sheep slaves under the iron fist of multidimensional sorcerers, as is the explanation for just about the entirety of what I saw on CNN a moment ago – as well as the triangle).
I don’t think this is a UFO. If so, it’s smiling for the camera. I don’t see where it was ever closer to the camera than the shots linked to. Further, it’s hard to tell. It would presumably come into focus more and blend in with ground images better.
Jeez, folks, lighten up! It’s obviously some system artefact. By “system,” I mean the whole Google satellite service, including the human operators who don’t always clean up after themselves the way they are supposed to. I even saw one of them disappear from its position over LA, from one frame to another as I zoomed in on it. Oh well, it was a fun puzzle for a while. I gotta go, never know when the next ship outta this loony bin will come along. Bye!
We watch you for the same reason you watch ants. For fun, science, profit and because we can’t wait to see what stupid things you will do next.
not to be alarmed….a common atmospheric polar refractive prism convergence caused when high altitude lenses are aligned with the axial elongation of the sun’s rays…a visual ‘resonance’ if you will…
You are very correct, Bolton!
“what stupid things you will do next.”
I know.
Like acting as if you were one of them?
Hahaha.
It’s still a fun puzzle for me…
If an artifact, what sort? I would like some human operator in this system to chortle and say “why, of course, it’s blahblah” and see if that make sense. Usually, that’s where things go weird, just when you’re pretty sure of your own theory that you’ve been chortling about and along comes the horse’s mouth and it says the image is a weather balloon.
That’s why I’m still into it.
It’s obviously not a raindrop or anything natural.
It’s perfectly round. Look at where the light reflection is, you can tell.
Then, it is moving fast. As the right side is almost a bit transparent inside the circle. Given it, if you look closely, a pac-man feature.
The camera couldn’t capture it good enough, it had to be moving.
It seems to be moving to the left.
All due respect, James, are you chortling? Perhaps a little?
It’s a plausible enough sounding thing, but the qualifier ‘common’ doesn’t sit right. I’m sure many people here have spent countless hours looking at air and sat photos, that’s why they’re here. I’ve never seen anything like that before. Neither has any poster here except you apparently.
Common… any link to other instances (pictures) of this phenomena or a stuffy explanation of it?
It’s a UFO with a cloaking device!
If this was condensation or any type of fluke, it would be showing up on the other maps as well with the same conditions as Florida. I’m looking around, there’s no other descrepencies with it that are relating to this.
I guess after the dispensation, there was no need for James to hang around for questions.
Hahaha.
Well, aside from these UFO’s, here. Now the Russians want to take weapons to space. Or something. I donno what that is about?
Because there is insufficient data about the photographic protocol and procedures used, it is impossible to make a conclusion, or even make an educated guess either way. Were these photos taken by satellite or airplane (as someone suggested) Were they taken on the same date using the same camera or are we seeing pictures taken at different times using different media? Perhpas it is an artifact having to do with file corruption of the data stored and delivered….. so many possibilities, so few facts.
Although the spots seem to be at regular intervals are they really? I have not seen a rigorous examination of that question in the media yet. It is, however, definitely a puzzle worthy of analysis and I am hoping someone has the tiome and expertise to do a rigorous analysis of the facts to rule out some of the possibilities being bandied about form UFO’s to system artifacts.
where are the links for the other shots shown on the site like for the stealth bomber parked and the other few it showed on rense.com
Hi
IMO u should save the picture,then use a better zoom 😉 Indeed you should also change the colours (2 many shades of blue can be confusing)
re-colouring will show it to not be a circle at all 🙂
“Were they taken on the same date using the same camera or are we seeing pictures taken at different times using different media?”
Seems as if it was taken at the same time as you can zoom in and out and that sphere will still be there, smaller, zoomed out, and bigger zoomed in. The clouds remain the same as you zoom in and out, so that must mean it was taken all at once.
Also, if you zoom out the “sphere” at some point becomes very clear as to what it is. It eventually disapates as you zoom out, meaning most possibly it must not be on the lens. If not, we must be viewing a atom of some molecule.
“re-colouring will show it to not be a circle at all :)”
Yeah, I did that except re-coloring doesn’t work with a monocromatic looking object very well for accuracy. Do a greyscale of the image, then an inversion. You can tell better.
Given they’ve been found on the site owned by the company that shot the photos originally, who further state they were shot from an airplane, I think that is reasonable enough proof that they are not satellite photos.
The “lens flare” theory (aka “a common atmospheric polar refractive prism convergence caused when high altitude lenses are aligned with the axial elongation of the sun’s rays”) is the first interesting argument in a while. The shape and positioning don’t seem to be consistent with commen lens flares. Granted we are not talking normal photographic optice, but don’t they normally occur in sets along those “axial elongations”?
Oh, lens flares, that’s what he was talking about. No, it doesn’t match shape of any I’ve seen, but it could be. If it is a lens flare there’s nothing at all common about its appearance.
It looks like an aspirin. Maybe it fell out of the photographers mouth when he took the picture? Or it was placed there on purpose to try and fool the rest of the world, what with UFOgeeks already in the bag.
Why would a lens flare be in several pictures, in difference sizes when you can zoom in and out. Shouldn’t the lense flare be the same size on all the pictures?
A lense flare can get re sized?
It would be in several places since these photos are assembled from several overlapping shots:
This article has a good explaination of how it is done: http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/1001/standup.html
Then that is one tiny lens flare for that lens.
If you’re just zooming up on the same hires image that gets resampled/resized according to the zoom, yes, the flare will resize along with everything else. The thing that makes a lens flare seem unlikely to me is the uniformity of appearance; except for a few images, it’s a single circle. ‘axial elongation’ I believe, was the made up term. The sun does not appear to be low in the sky which would favor (methinks) a symmetric single flare in the center.
A lens properly shrouded shouldn’t show a flare, anyway, right? Surely these setups do not generate lens flares – it would be a crappy product and scrapped in favor of something that does better than a dime store disposable digital.
Never have I seen a lens flare in photography of this nature. Never. But to see a kind that I’ve never seen in ANY photos before and to have them be so similar across so many shots… I don’t think lens flare is it.
I really honestly do not see how this can be a lens flare. At all. It doesn’t seem right, at all, that it is a lens flare. I will be honest, I do not understand the physics behind lens flares. But I have worked with cameras and cam corders that have recieved all kinds of lens flares.
But for this metallic orb, with a defined shape, and illumination on that shape from the reflecting off the side of this object as the direction of where the sun is.
I can only see this as a particle. Or something that was shot up in the sky.
How long as googlesightseeing been doing this?
Why has this not occured BEFORE. Until May.. 13th? Right?
Why have we not seen a weather balloon like this. Or a lens flare, ever, like this. Given it being every day, also.
ok people, stop looking at these, we will not tolerate wild conspiracy theorys
http://www.infowars.com
Even though that’s not it. That site rocks to some degree, thanks G.W.!
Nice link Derek
I think it’s Glinda, the Good Witch of the North coming down to munchkin Land, to make sure that Dorthy will be not give up the Ruby slippers to the Wicked Witch Of The West.
This thread is now closed as it is too large to manage!
Please post new comments on the UFO Update thread:
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/2005/05/18/ufo-update/