How in the world do people find these images LOL :) Awesome!
Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
311–320 of 390 posts
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#312I live on a farm very close to this area. All the B-2s are based at nearby Whiteman Air Force Base. They fly over often -- one even fly over my farm today about an hour ago. This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.
Do you think you could obtain video of base's plutonium isolation module?
(sorry, couldn't resist obscure early Simpsons reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8s4AvjnPFk)
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can get height if you can find the shadow, and find the time that the photo was taken, because at any given time and date, you can compute sun position, and you know the precise lat/lng of the shadow. The shadow would need to be in the same photo, though. (actually, it's a bit to the northwest, just found it). If you can find a vertical structure, like an antenna mast, you can measure shadow length and direction…
Aha! Here we go. Here's a telephone pole: https://earth.google.com/web/search/39.0303298,-93.58495/@39... We know that telephone poles stick about 32 feet from the ground. Measuring the shadow in Google Earth above, it's about 20 feet. Now, it's a simple ratio. Using Earth, I measured the distance from the plane to its shadow at about 2430 feet, that would put it at 3,900ft, which is surprisingly low, but I don't kno…
Not too low if landing? From another comment:
> This one was probably on final approach during the summer when the winds are usually out of the south and was probably about 2,000 feet above the ground.
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are pushbroom linear sensors stacked up in the focal plane. The spectral channels are physically separated by larger distance than neighboring pixels in a Bayer grid. There is a time delay between each channel sweeping over the same location that gets corrected when the final imagery is aligned. The moving plane at altitude violates assumption of a static scene and exposes the scanning behavior.
The B2 bomber photo isn't from a push boom sensor, because it would be distorted since it's moving relative to the camera. This would manifest itself as a shear along the motion vector . There is no shear in this photo, only spectral bands. I've spent a number of years doing image orthorectification, and satellite imagery post-processing, then also worked on Google Earth and Google Maps, so I can tell you precisely w…
Agree it wouldn’t be parallax from multiple cameras on the same satellite but the delay between images seems quite short for physical filter swapping (~20ms per filter).
(Edit: Actually DLP does it in about that amount of time, nvm)
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#315Hmm. Perhaps networked imaging satellites is a viable way to limit the use of stealth aircraft?
No post body was provided.
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#316Bit of an aside but I like that the B-2 Spirit has different "Spirit of..." for each aircraft. There are Spirit of New York, Spirit of Ohio, etc. [1] Also if you're ever in Ohio and you're an aviation or engineering geek, or have kids, or are looking for something to do the USAF Museum is pretty cool! [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit [2] https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/
They let our boyscout troop spend a night there, it was an amazing time
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Omg, are they sooo huge? I just realised how big they are for the first time in my life. What a sight! [edit] 172ft = 52m wingspan!
They don't really seem that big in person. And they're amazingly hard to see from any distance since they're essentially just a thin flat airfoil. Here's a not-especially-good video I just uploaded of one flying over my farm from this summer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyXSuFj0naQ
+1 to your farm's beauty. Would you be open to hosting me for a day or two there?!
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the initial years of Google Earth and similar services, a number of military and intelligence facilities were blurred.
This is still the case today. See for example this military base in France: https://goo.gl/maps/gRLEBcCQB9CCx8Au6
Why does _france_ need to hide their millitary bases? I mean, France?
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is still the case today. See for example this military base in France: https://goo.gl/maps/gRLEBcCQB9CCx8Au6
Why does _france_ need to hide their millitary bases? I mean, France?
Because they're a NATO member with a pretty large and advanced military force, in a very accessible area of Europe?
Re: Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
#320So how fast is it going according to the blur? 600mph?