Geolocation Exercises

[deirdre]

Why the rethink?
View attachment 79729

so did he get it right the first time?
easyJet 2936

 

[Trailblazer]

Why the rethink?
View attachment 79729

I then rethought my rethink because I think my first flight was a better match. I don't know, it's hard to work out the exact angle of sunlight from that photo. I guess a bit more analysis would involve measuring the depth of that projection and estimating the width of its shadow...

Looks like it's one full brick deep.

So if the shadow reaches just about level with the tip of the cornice which projects by a half-brick, then the sun angle is about tan(0.5) which is 26.5 degrees relative to perpendicular to the wall.

The wall is angled about 35º south of west:

So that puts the sun angle at about 35-26.5 = 8.5º south of west, or 261.5º.

Back to Suncalc:

Spoiler

That puts the time at more like 5.30pm BST, so I was wrong to go earlier.

There only seems to be one other candidate flight between 5pm and 6pm, which is a Ryanair passing at about 5.10. But that's a bit too far south:

So on balance I will stick with my first answer which had a sun angle of about 253 degrees. Looking back at the angle, the shadow doesn't quite reach a half brick.

How did I do, @Giddierone ?

 

[deirdre]

Try Yandex image search - it gives the correct answer in the first line of similar images.

mine doesnt in America.

 

[Giddierone]

measuring the depth of that projection and estimating the width of its shadow...

Yes this is exactly what I'd focus on in the image. The brick relief is more or less a brick width deep.

A better tool than using Sun Calc is Sun Path https://andrewmarsh.com/apps/staging/sunpath3d.html

It allows you to import a 3D model to see how the shadows would look at any given time. Here I've just made a very simple two blocks [using a https://www.figuro.io/Designer which is free and allows you a limited number of .OBJ exports] with a rough "brick relief" to make a shadow. You can then orient (offset) North using map to get the correct angle and then play around with the sun position (time) until you get a good fit. I'm sure this can be done as accurately as you'd like [by finding the exact dimensions of red brick, using on screen protractors etc], but here I've mostly just eyeballed the angles.

So you can see from the screen shots how 16:00 differs from 17:15 [the photo was taken at 17:17 GMT+1] and I was standing pretty much on the little blue bus icon in the Open Street Map inset in the image below.

I've screenshotted from a high angle so that you can see the cardinal points and the sun position (glowing red dot), but if you play around with it in a browser you can emulate the low angle.

Not quite the right time. The shadow is barely visible.

The correct time:

Unfortunately that's the easy part. ID-ing the plane might not be possible unless you delve into plane spotter forums. It's not a passenger jet, is much closer to the camera than it looks and didn't appear on any flight tracker I have yet seen.

mine doesnt in America.

Did you give it "London"? This came up in the first few results.

 

[Trailblazer]

It's not a passenger jet, is much closer to the camera than it looks and didn't appear on any flight tracker I have yet seen

Well that's just sneaky!

I found this but the timing is about by a couple of hours.

Source: https://x.com/ianvisits/status/1915305160546361800?s=46&t=pi-PW2h-zayk3Ew8WL18KA

 

[Giddierone]

Well that's just sneaky!

I only realised after I posted the quiz.

 

[Giddierone]

I think it was this plane. As mentioned by Flarkey a couple of years ago these flights don't appear on flight trackers, but their planes fly low and slow often retracing the looping path for hours.

https://flight-cal.com

 

[Trailblazer]

I think it was this plane. As mentioned by Flarkey a couple of years ago these flights don't appear on flight trackers, but their planes fly low and slow often retracing the looping path for hours.
View attachment 79798
https://flight-cal.com

So I was wrong about the direction too? I was assuming the long axis was the fuselage.

Is that a DA62? Looks like they have 7 of them in their fleet.

Looking at the flight histories, G-GBAS may be the most likely.

 

[flarkey]

I think it was this plane. As mentioned by Flarkey a couple of years ago these flights don't appear on flight trackers, but their planes fly low and slow often retracing the looping path for hours.
View attachment 79798
https://flight-cal.com

If thats a flight calibration DA-62 they should be on flight radar 24, like this one.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/g-gbas#3a08eb63

 

[flarkey]

I think it was this plane. As mentioned by Flarkey a couple of years ago these flights don't appear on flight trackers, but their planes fly low and slow often retracing the looping path for hours.
View attachment 79798
https://flight-cal.com

The planes I said that didnt show up over london were the very sneaky Islanders. I suppose it could be this one again...?

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/flight-tracking.12066/#post-290544

 

[Giddierone]

So I was wrong about the direction too? I was assuming the long axis was the fuselage.

Ah, to be clear the plane photo above is from a different day, but same area.
This is the plane in the church photo. To my eye (and ear, they make a loud droning noise) it appeared to be the same kind as the flight calibration aircraft (it's flying right to left).

 

[Trailblazer]

Ah, to be clear the plane photo above is from a different day, but same area.
This is the plane in the church photo. To my eye (and ear, they make a loud droning noise) it appeared to be the same kind as the flight calibration aircraft (it's flying right to left).

View attachment 79800

So I was wrong about the flight direction and @deirdre was right. I was thinking of it as a larger jet so thought it was flying towards the one-o'clock direction.

 

[deirdre]

Did you give it "London"?

why would i give it London? it just the pic of the top of a church.

 

[deirdre]

and @deirdre was right.

to be fair i really thought he'd lol and tell us it was a bird.

 

[Trailblazer]

This billboard image was shared on social media and claimed to be real. I'm not convinced.

Where is it? (I don't know the answer so I thought I would ask here...)

 

[deirdre]

Where is it?

a tree id might help narrow it down, but i'm not gonna try as not too familiar with trees.

anyway, ill leave it to you gents, i did remove the billboard for y'all real quick in my Gimp.

 

[Giddierone]

This billboard image was shared on social media and claimed to be real. I'm not convinced.

How about these?

 

[Calter]

The location is in Civic Center Park, Pueblo, Colorado.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/m5j9JzDAj8k9Ex1h9

Edit: To find it I first reversed searched the image which led me to a tweet that claimed this was in Colorado, I then looked up "street media colorado" to see if they show the locations of their billboards, which led me to their page that shows each location.

https://streetmediagroup.com/digital-billboards-in-colorado/

https://streetmediagroup.com/digital-billboard-pueb-300a/

 

[Trailblazer]

How about these?

View attachment 79934View attachment 79935

I know that GW and a few other organisations have bought billboards like this and they have existed. It was just the picture looked edited. But if it's an illuminated digital billboard then that could explain why the lighting looks so off in the Colorado one.

 

[Easy Muffin]

Just remembered I solved one of these but never got round to posting a photo myself. Well then -

taken quite recently around 2 pm

 

[flarkey]

Nice one. took me about 30 mins.

https://www.google.com/maps/@50.665043,8.7281971,3a,75y,246.69h,81.93t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sCIHM0ogKEICAgID8l8TupQE!2e10!3e11!6shttps://lh3.googleusercontent.com/gpms-cs-s/AB8u6HbZL0Ra6HA1eHTdU7fw1JDJ4Esd9F-yvWSDEGG5u0VQlSYVhoNaYNh9C7fZNZO2T9REUQFrI2eTUxuRlM0_UAZtDeOADxm79XPtEU1eOHy28tN1AKuQaxSnR5-cq12Di-f3m9ZH7Q=w900-h600-k-no-pi8.06652238421006-ya347.6933438469486-ro0-fo100!7i10240!8i5120?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDQzMC4xIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDUzSAFQAw==

Method - first I used Google Lens to find match for the round hill with the tv tower and that gave me Blick zum Dünsberg.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dünsberg

I then I just moved around in Google Earth until I found a high point that was an old castle. It wasnt long until I found Burgruine Stauffenberg, and guys - that was it.

 

[Easy Muffin]

Nice one, you work fast!

(In hindsight I really should have cropped the image, that hill is just way too conspicuous sticking out like that... I suppose you sort of start blanking it out and forgetting about it when you see it on a daily basis.)

 

[jarlrmai]

This is a genuine one I am not sure where it is, but might prove a useful exercise

I think the 2 wind turbines are at 53.54406125725688, -2.9859131898197595

 

[flarkey]

This is a genuine one I am not sure where it is, but might prove a useful exercise

I think the 2 wind turbines are at 53.54406125725688, -2.9859131898197595

View attachment 79980

I've struggled to find this too. However, could the original image have been horizontally flipped?

53.548169° -2.966600° looking roughly west ...?

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.549...=EgoyMDI1MDQzMC4xIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDUzSAFQAw==

 

[jarlrmai]

I'm pretty sure that's it

 

[flarkey]

So I'm currently looking at this thread on Reddit that apparently shows the 'drone incursions' over Langley AFB in December 2023- can anyone work out where the video was shot from?


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1bk9xta/langley_afb_event_video/?share_id=-gc4bKnswT761lmTp9YTw&utm_content=2&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1


I've stitched and brightened a few frames of the video together if it helps...

Edit: Additional info: https://www.timesnownews.com/world/...es-experience-on-60-minutes-article-119092963

In his conversation with 60 Minutes, Butner said he was at his family's cabin on the James River in Virginia when he started seeing "reddish, orange flashing lights" coming in from the Virginia Beach area and going over the Langley area. When asked how many drones he saw that day, Butner said, "upwards of 40 plus."

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

@flarkey I see you painstakingly trying to dig useful details out of them


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1kg9hot/comment/mr1xjgl/

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

Based on them being across the James river from Newport News, and there being such bright lights in the direction they're looking (especially that big bright thing in the bottom right of the stitched image), I'm guessing they're in the area right across from Newport News, not further up the river. Unless that is a large ship in the river itself.

I'm confused by this part of the description though:

There were also larger UAPs that would come in one at a time much lower than the orbs (it may have been the same one circling), almost tree level, and moved along the northern edge of James right past Ft. Eustis, went over Surry Nuclear Power Plant, and then elevated and left in the same direction they all came from. These appeared reddish / orange on the bottom but had three white lights on the top and a flashing light on the leading edge.

The first part of the video shows reddish lights moving from right to left. Which if the viewer is facing SE/E/NE/N on the west bank of the James river, across from Newport News, would make sense. The red light would be moving ~north towards Surry power station. But then the OP claims that after going towards Surry power station, they "left in the same direction they all came from" (so they left going towards the south? the opposite of the way they were just going?).

 

[MonkeeSage]

I was thinking the 6 lights on the right at the start of the video might be the six bays on the building on the right below at the Newport News Shipbuilding yard being open.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/5...=EgoyMDI1MDUwNS4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDU1SAFQAw==


In this video shot traveling North across the James River bridge, it's very blurry and out of focus, but you can see some lights at the shipyard at the right and a tower with two red flashing lights at the left. I think the tower might be the one at 8210 Orcutt Ave, Hampton, VA based on seeing it to the right of the Windward Towers when they get further across the bridge (4:03).

01:33

Source: https://youtu.be/HLpnuwlZGj4?t=93



But a point against that identification is if the lights in the video are the shipyard, I would think we would see the lights on the bridge at some point in the video.

This drone shot is looking across the James River from the shipyard side and the bridge is pretty noticable.

12:16

Source: https://youtu.be/9QfBRN34l_k?t=736s


There is also another building with 6 windows further South along the shore from the shipyard.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/5...=EgoyMDI1MDUwNS4wIKXMDSoJLDEwMjExNDU1SAFQAw==

Perhaps the locations of the towers in the video could also help identify the filming location.
https://www.city-data.com/towers/cell-Hampton-Virginia.html#mapFCC_Antenna_towers

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

Maybe if he's really zoomed in, the lights could be the on the cable towers that run parallel to the bridge. And the bright lights in the bottom right could be a ship in the river or maybe bright lights on the elevated portion of the bridge. The bridge does have streetlights along it and maybe the elevated portion would stand out more?

Like one of these lines of sight. I think this is a stretch though.

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

In this video shot traveling North across the James River bridge, it's very blurry and out of focus, but you can see some lights at the shipyard at the right and a tower with two red flashing lights at the left. I think the tower might be the one at 8210 Orcutt Ave, Hampton, VA based on seeing it to the right of the Windward Towers when they get further across the bridge (4:03).

This is a really good match. Including the larger door on the left being slightly bigger and farther away from the other 5 (assuming it is viewed from slightly to the left, not to the right, as the front building will obscure the one behind it as you move the perspective to the right). And the 3 doors on the building to the left of those 6 doors. And there is a cell tower behind and to the left of those buildings if you're viewing them head on from across the river. Best Google Street View I could get is here. On Google Earth I couldn't get both the buildings and the cell tower to render at the same time.

Google Earth:

Street view from the bridge overlaid with the beginning frame of the video:

This spacing especially with the cell tower suggests the camera is very close to directly across from these buildings, so that the angle does not deviate too far especially not to the right. So it may be narrowed down to here:

Here is the best Google Street View I could get in that circled region with a view over the water, with a much closer satellite view above it. Unfortunately it's really washed out and low resolution. But I think that large black building and the two large white buildings to its right are discernible at least. The field this google street view is next to is honestly a pretty good candidate location I think (36.989900, -76.543798). Street view shows there being a bench there looking out over the water.

 

[MonkeeSage]

Scanning along the shoreline looking for other street view locations, I came across what I think is a plane flying through similar to the satellite and plane in this thread. At least I hope it's a plane flying through, and not actually cut in half on the ground with red stuff leaking everywhere

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ESxmf7v7kp82pNf28

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

Happened across this one too in Google Earth. I don't see this often. This one has green, blue, and red layers.

36°58'45"N 76°30'31"W

 

[FatPhil]

Happened across this one too in Google Earth. I don't see this often. This one has green, blue, and red layers.

36°58'45"N 76°30'31"WView attachment 80150

One can only imagine the kind of flap[*] the chemtrailers would get in, were that image to leak out into their fora... Reds, greens, and blues?!?!? All those bromides, chlorides, and iodides can't be good for us! [**]

[* @John J. - thinking of an animal after reading that?]
[** chemical choices were mostly random, any association between chemical and colour are purely coincidental.]

 

[Mendel]

This one has green, blue, and red layers.

We had a thread on this phenomenon the other day:

So it seems an Earth-imaging satellite managed to capture another satellite whilst imaging Earth, I wonder if we can identify them?

[On second reading, I notice @MonkeeSage already linked to this.]

 

[jdog]

 

[Mick West]

Challenge, what gate is this?

 

[Mick West]

Challenge, what gate is this?

I asked ChatGPT the same question, and correctly got the airport and terminal, but then it hallucinated a gate label which was not there. Interestingly it was only off by one. I asked where the label was an it said

You're right to press for precision—thanks.

On close inspection, there is no visible […] marking in the image itself. I incorrectly inferred it from the context, but that gate number does not appear clearly in the photo.

What is visible:

• The aircraft is parked at a gate with …

 

[NorCal Dave]

Challenge, what gate is this?

I think I know where you're at. I finally recognized the mountain in the background. Still trying to figure the gate.

Spoiler

Honolulu. That's Diamondhead in the background. I think.

 

[Calter]

Honestly, ChatGPT's ability to identify the airport kind of surprised me.

I think that's gate

Spoiler: Guess

E10 (or maybe E8)