Plane Image on Google Maps in Cambodia - MH370 Speculation

[Mechanik]

I came across this article today and while it may fuel CT chatter, the article debunks itself. Maybe this just belongs in a Fake News category.

First off, it comes from the New York Post, which should immediately made me wonder whether is as real news, but I clicked it and the lead reads:

Aviation experts have used a helicopter to search the Cambodian jungle in a daring bid to find Flight MH370 after a sleuth claimed to have spotted the wreckage online.

There follows a video of a dramatic Google Earth zoom. However, the area is supposedly mountainous forest and the plane appears completely intact in spite of spending years in the jungle after crashing.

Then there is a description of efforts by someone who rented a helicopter to survey the area, and others using Chinese satellite information to look for it. They found nothing.

Admittedly, the article states:

Images from Google Maps show the outline of a large plane in a remote part of southern Cambodia — which could simply be an aircraft flying directly below the satellite which photographed it.

Link follows:
https://nypost.com/2018/09/13/searc...-possible-mh370-discovery-on-google-maps/amp/

 

[deirdre]

12°05'20.4"N 104°09'05.1"E

which could simply be an aircraft flying directly below the satellite which photographed it.

there are a lot of clouds too.

 

[deirdre]

the article also mentions the "broken tail" in the Google image. In this 2008 video, the very first plane shows the same type of "broken" tail.

 

[Mechanik]

Awesome research. It'a obvious just from the photo that the broken tail is just a shadow.

 

[Matt33]

In Google Earth you can scroll back in time, the satellite images from 12/31/2014 and 12/31/2015 do not show a plane. So either this has nothing to do with MH370 or someone took the wreck after the crash and placed it right in the middle of the Cambodian jungle.

 

[cloudspotter]

Possibly on the way to Ho Chi Minh or Phnom Penh

 

[Trailblazer]

How about this stunt plane captured in Austria?

Planes being captured in flight are a pretty common sight on Google Earth.

 

[Izzie Kirk]

I'm quite fascinated by this (although it pains me to ignore the wash up of debris in impossible places), particularly as there seems to be some Investigative interest in it now.

If you zoom in as close as you can get in 3D mode in Earth Pro, it gives you the option to escape ground view which suggests you're currently on the floor looking at it. It's measurements are close if not spot on for the 777-200, if you take the tail break into consideration and project the length of the wings as if the ends are obscured. The edges of wings and tail do appear greenish when zoomed as though maybe partly covered. What puzzles me is that the tail appears squashed together.

 

[Mechanik]

According to the UK Mirror in an article about a specific airplane image that appears to be at the bottom of a lake:

Susan Cadrecha, a spokeswoman for Google maps, told The Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "In short, each satellite image you see on the map is actually a compilation of several images.

"Fast-moving objects like planes often show up in only one of the many images we use for a given area.

"When this happens, faint remnants of the fast-moving object can sometimes be seen."

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/google-earth-mystery-plane-bottom-7429468

By blending the photos, you can end up with odd artifacts, like planes that appear to be in lakes or jungles. I came across an A320 in a playground in Brooklyn.

 

[Trailblazer]

If you zoom in as close as you can get in 3D mode in Earth Pro, it gives you the option to escape ground view which suggests you're currently on the floor looking at it

That doesn't mean anything. The ground shape in Google Earth is taken from digital terrain models, so any object, no matter how high, will appear to be draped on the ground. (See the example I posted upthread with a plane appearing to fly down the side of a mountain.)

 

[Mechanik]

Slightly separate subject, but is a follow-up to @deirdre's Ilyushin video and @Trailblazer's "stunt" plane.

In researching the way Google Earth's automated 3D mapping works, I came across these interesting links that explain quite a bit about these artifacts.

The rainbows are produced by the imaging system taking 4 "images" of the target area, giving moving objects a rainbow, just like Deirdre and Trailblazer showed. Also some interesting information on the sensor arrays and why they produce rainbows.

VOLUNTEERS SPOTTED SCORES of ghostly planes while hunting through satellite images for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Many of these false positives stood out because they showed up as three separate brightly colored airplanes, an interesting artifact of the way many satellites record a scene.

https://www.wired.com/2014/03/satellite-hunt-flight-mh370/

Another had to do with Google's automatic 3D terrain generator messes up moving and stationary objects (like Trailblazer's stunt plane):

it involves taking pictures from different angles and using that to automatically generate the 3D structure

https://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2014/09/more-analysis-of-3d-imagery.html