Identifying the Mountains in JTolan's "Rocky Mountains" IR Video

J

jumboseafood

Member
I watched this Jtolan media vid and I need help finding some landmarks.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LI5sU_LWDU
. at 10.14 he said he was 50 miles south of the reservoirs at snowflake Colorado at a elevation of 28000 feet

Screenshot (28).png

This pic was taken 9.42 at a right angle from the reservoirs


Screenshot (29).png


This was taken at 10.15 head on from the reservoirs

Screenshot (30).png

taken at 10.5 this are the reservoirs.


Screenshot (31).png


Here is a picture of his flight path and horizon at his elevation. Note he has been caught lying about elevation before and he says he's at a abnormally low elevation for a plane so take this data with a massive handful of salt.
 
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jumboseafood said:
for a look at this.
Click to expand...
people might be more open to look at it if you gave specific information. what is the gps (latitude/longitude) of his position during those screenshots? what flight was he on. (flight number and date, so altitude can be checked) etc.

if he doesn't give that information, I would just dismiss him as stretching the truth.
 
He doesn't say the map at the bottom is the best information I could get from him. And I really want to know what he's seeing but I lack the skills to do it myself. But we do know he's around 50 miles south of the reservoirs
 
ok I did play but not sure you can follow it.
this pic is at 30,000 feet whatever distance I needed to make the sludge pools (im tired of trying to type reservoir), about the same size as your pic. my red line is 255miles. the light blue lines in the pics are border lines in Google Earth.
30a.png


this is the look at 28,000 feet 50 miles south of the sludge pools.
50a.png


now im following the red line but not changing my altitude because I don't know how to calculate the angle my camera would change as I move closer to the Mountains. This means I am way too high as I move forward. but at least we can see what we see. here i am past the sludge pools at border line "A"
blue.png

now im at the mountain range just past border line "B". you can see the red line break in the photo just above. my yellow mountain range line to the sludge pool is 122 miles. i am still at 28,400 feet, so i should be lower.
the elevation of my yellow mountain range line is 8,391 feet.
bline.png


according to horizon distance calculators at 28000 feet the horizon is 205 miles. (i'm assuming planes use sea level)
1583905322349.png



and you can determine what any of this means. because of the infrared?, everything looks white so i'm not sure why he thinks he sees snowcaps.
 
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I have overlaid one of screenshots on Google Earth, fitting the reservoirs, a road, some middle plan details and the horizon:
Screenshot GE overlay.jpg


Here are the resulting parameters of this overlay:
Screenshot overlay parameters.jpg



The plane at this moment was practically above Snowflake town, not 50 miles from it:
Screenshot location map.jpg

Red and green line are 100 miles long.

Attached is the KMZ file for this overlay that can be opened in Google Earth.
 

Attachments

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hmm. your shot is at 34,350 feet altitude. so shouldn't the Chuskas be like half way between the plane and the horizon? I have chuska 122 mi from the sludge pools and 34350 altitude is
1583956970147.png




so these little white bits likely are the rocky mountains, esp once we factor in their height. ?
1583957234134.png
 
deirdre said:
cool. I was looking at the eye altitude on your screen shot.
Click to expand...
I see. Well, the eye altitude is above the sea level and I used the altitude above the ground, the elevation of which is 1791 m.
8679 + 1791 = 10,470 meters, the same as you used. But the horizon in the picture is also well above the sea level, so the distance given by the calculator is overestimated.

Anyway, the altitude and other parameters of my overlay are only estimates of the actual ones that we do not know.
 
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jumboseafood said:
The mountions are dead center on the image.
Click to expand...
As already said, these are Chuska Mountains. I have added another screenshot from about the same camera locations but with a narrow field of view to account for zooming in:
Chuska Mts overlay.jpg
Chuska Mts parameters.png


The white picks correspond to the bare mountain tops, which may be snow covered at the time of filming. But they probably will stand out without snow cover.

Edit

Here is another overlay of the picks to the left of above with the horizontal FOV of 4°. A perfect fit:
Screenshot 2020-03-11 at 23.27.14.png


Edit 2

After a closer inspection, the white picks belong to some of San Juan Mountains in the southwest corner of Colorado, 250-270 miles away from the camera. These are twice farther than Chuska mountains, obscuring the horizon by themselves, but as they also are much taller, their white tops can be seen above darker Chuskas from the flight altitude.
 
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White peaks actually were less than 270 miles away from the camera.
Screenshot 2020-03-12 at 14.30.20.jpg


Hesperus Mountain at the end of yellow line is about 237 miles away and Mount Wilson at the end of blue line is 265 miles away:
Screenshot 2020-03-12 at 14.31.23.jpg


Here are overlays on Google Earth of two screenshots with the above mountains and their neighbours:
Screenshot 2020-03-12 at 14.35.18.jpg


Screenshot 2020-03-12 at 14.36.18.jpg


Thus the terrain in this video is fully compatible with that predicted by the round Earth model (i.e., Google Earth).
 
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This is using Trailspotter's coordinates in Panorama Maker:

1584112502057.png


It's a useful tool for this sort of thing. Have a play with it here:

https://www.udeuschle.de/panoramas/

Btw, I've had a look at several of these "JTolan incredible distance shots" and they're always wildly optimistic and poorly analysed. His one claiming to see mountains in Baja California 760 miles away was actually hills in Texas 165 miles away, for example.
 
Trailspotter said:
White peaks actually were less than 270 miles away from the camera.
View attachment 39838

Hesperus Mountain at the end of yellow line is about 237 miles away and Mount Wilson at the end of blue line is 265 miles away:
View attachment 39840

Here are overlays on Google Earth of two screenshots with the above mountains and their neighbours:
View attachment 39841

View attachment 39842

Thus the terrain in this video is fully compatible with that predicted by the round Earth model (i.e., Google Earth).
Click to expand...

Hey trailler spotter could you also recreate my screen shot that was taken at 9.42
 
jumboseafood said:
Hey trailler spotter could you also recreate my screen shot that was taken at 9.42
Click to expand...
What purpose would it serve? What is so special about that particular frame?

I did try a month ago. This is a part of the south end of San Juan Mountains, east to the peaks I identified above. They are in the same distance range (~250 miles) away from the plane. I made several plausible fits, but, as there were little characteristic features, I could not unambiguously identified individual peaks.
 
jumboseafood said:
It would be nice to have when I get into arguments with flaties
Click to expand...
Then you better learn how to use Google Earth tools yourself ;)

I only have done it for the second time, because it turned out that the original clip is not a single continuous piece, but consists of two separate parts with an unknown time interval lapsed between them. Each part starts from a wide angle short, zooms in on the mountains on the horizon, then zooms out.

In the above analysis of the second part, I used the wide angle short to derive the camera position, then I used this position to zoom in on the distant peaks and to identify them

Here are the results of a similar analysis for the first part, including your frame of interest. A minor problem was to find the camera location in the beginning of this part, as the wide angle infrared shot did not provide readily identifiable features. I've solved it eventually by finding the camera location at the end of the second part, extrapolating the flight path (white line) and backtracking along it. The plane was over St Jones, AZ at the time. The magenta line shows the direction of the zoomed shots at 9:42 and 9:45 (maximum zoom). It ends at the Runlett Peak of San Juan Mts 235 miles away.
Screenshot 2020-04-19 at 18.21.07.png

Screenshot 2020-04-19 at 18.16.00.png

Screenshot 2020-04-19 at 18.14.31.png
 
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In the image at 10:20 is not Chuska mountains, they are below the snow capped ones which is Hespurus mountain.

121Screenshot 2023-02-28 163400.png


distance.png


Earth curvature calc says Horizon is 205-239 miles for 28000 to 35000ft. It would be interesting to see what is visible with a more powerful zoom. For me what is most interesting is, as Jtolan says, there is a immediate drop off rather than an a gradual curve, as in the landscape rises up to the eyeline, not down away from it.
 
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robomartion said:
For me what is most interesting is, as Jtolan says, there is a immediate drop off rather than an a gradual curve, as in the landscape rises up to the eyeline, not down away from it.
Click to expand...
I don't understand your meaning here.

1. The horizon is below eye level, but that can't be determined from the picture.

2. the ground between the observer and the horizon fills the bottom part of the image

3. the ground beyond the horizon is not visible

there is no way you could see the "landscape rise down" from the horizon; generally, the horizon is far away, and the further down you go in the image, the closer it gets. That's just how perspective works.
 
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