Comments on: Airplane race caught on Google Maps

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 10:11:07 +0000

Jeremiah beat me to it, but, yeah, it has to do with the way satellites capture images, which explains the identical planes in the opposite direction a little bit below.

By: chad

chad — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 05:36:58 +0000

@Blane

OMG that bug must have been atleast 8 miles long!

By: jeremiah johnson

jeremiah johnson — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 01:16:04 +0000

not a dual plane race, but an artifact of how satellites capture images. bbs.keyhole.com has tons of posts on the phenomenon.

By: xSmurf

xSmurf — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 01:02:15 +0000

Blane you beat me to it :/ But yeah The Register has a bunch, they ran a contest to find military planes and choppers at one point. One for navel ships. Bunch of stuff, just check the links at the bottom of that bug link ^.^

By: antillas

antillas — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:23:49 +0000

Yes… it does look pretty fishy. The second airplane doesn’t show the same lighting than the one at the left. Not to mention it’s very blurred.

By: blane

blane — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:21:53 +0000

yeah, just a kind of echo i reckon. Still a cool snapshot though.

this was good catch (so to speak…) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/05/giant_insect_obliterated/

By: amedika

amedika — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:21:11 +0000

I don’t think it is a set of planes racing because if you drag the map down an inch or two there is an identical set of planes that are side by side, so I think this is just some sort of shadow or glitch or something. Not to burst your bubble or anything, I might be wrong haha.

By: Jed

Jed — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:14:11 +0000

That 2nd plane looks fishy. I’m guessing it’s the same plane… probably something about how they stitched it together…