Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 228 posts

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #33

Related unrelated question : how come this is public? F117 was a dark skunk project shown years after being operational. That made sense to me for a super secret project with wildly new technologies and capabilities. I don't understand the announcements of such projects from the vision stage, with the details of capability, purpose, strategy, photos,etc. Is it commoditized sufficiently? Is it deterrence? Is there eno…

> Related unrelated question : how come this is public?

Because trying to hide the existence of strategic bombers is expensive, ineffective, and not particularly helpful to keeping the actually secret technology they use secret.

> F117 was a dark skunk project shown years after being operational

With the F-117, the shape was part of the secret sauce. The B-21 doesn’t seem to be a big departure that way.

> I don't understand the announcements of such projects from the vision stage,

This wasn't announced in the vision stage, except that a new strategic bomber was being developed. The unveiling was well past vision, and competition, stages.

> Is it commoditized sufficiently? Is it deterrence? Is there enough misinformation?

Deterrence is a big consideration,

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#62

Post by yalogin »

Sporktacular wrote: post #54
johnmcelhone wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did mention this later in the thread - was just a fun experiment to see if locating it was possible if we didn't know

Sure, but the reason you didn't lead with that, and also the reason you did this for a secretive aircraft and not a new campervan is clicks, no?

To be fair, a secretive aircraft would trigger thoughts about security in a hacker's mind. A camper van does not trigger any such thoughts. It may not be just clicks, with a camper van the whole thread might not even exist. I am not the original poster, so this is just my thought

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#63

Post by nomel »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #11
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #3

I believe it's exactly how 4chan would keep finding Shia LeBeouf's flags shown on webcam he was was hiding at remote locations.

With added train sounds and honking I believe. Excellent work!

This was downvoted probably from lack of context. They used the sound of honking to find the exact location of the webcam.

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#64

Post by colechristensen »

lortrq wrote: post #51
darknavi wrote: post #9

Note to self: Always, always, ALWAYS strip exif data.

I would like to know what else is embedded in digital pictures, similar to the printer yellow dots, except it will be undetectable.

Sensor noise has been used to successfully identify the camera used to take a picture. No embedded features just the physical characteristics of sensors being individual enough to identify.

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#65

Post by mk_stjames »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #40
mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I feel like the entire thread should have led off with "This is in fact a publicly known hangar in Palmdale and this was known as public information as soon as the unveiling event occurred, and thus this is just an exercise to show how locating the spot could have been possible from just this photo as a technical demonstration." Because I guarantee there are going to be a hundred clickbait articles by various 'news'…

I feel like when you diss journalists, it should generally be for something they actually did wrong, not preemptively based on your imagination. If they are so terrible, there should be no need to invent stuff. When people read something like this post, and they are predisposed to the idea, it’ll reinforce their skepticism of „the mainstream media“. If you want to test yourself, make a bet of how many media outlets w…

I put 'news' in quotes for this reason. I wasn't as much implying that this would be actual news, but instead would be used in clickbait articles on lesser publications. I admit I am being hypothetical, but this does reflect observation on how these kinds of discussions has been get picked up and spread and thus has made me want to avoid such writing style.

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#66

Post by 4gotunameagain »

pifm_guy wrote: post #59
folli wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting! Any links for further reading?

Nope - years ago I accidentally discovered this while trying to align star images for stacking. Some of my images were taken in daylight, and I was surprised to find my rudimentary image aligner still worked just fine. Never wrote it up into a blog post.

Do you mind expanding a bit more ? Because I don't understand. Even if you have oversampling, as you say, it would be after you know the locations of the stars, and also, how can you brute force every possible right ascension/declination/rotation ? Without a calibrated camera how do you account for the distortions ? Thanks

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#68

Post by johnmcelhone »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #49
rootusrootus wrote: post #12

With the casual change from "34-35 degrees" to "lets draw a line at 34 degrees" followed by the "and this is where the press release was" I got the vibe that this was parallel construction. Still some good sleuthing, don't get me wrong, but still.

I don't know if I entirely buy the line on "34-35 degrees off the horizon." Unless we knew the focal length of the lens it was taken with, and which camera it was taken from, you don't actually know that. A wide-angle lens is going to have a much larger field of view than, say, a 100mm macro. And different camera systems have different angle of view for the same focal length.

You don't actually need the focal length, it doesn't help accuracy that much but can help you line up the sky to the photo a bit quicker. Anyway, if we did, all that info was in the metadata anyway:

Camera: Nikon D5 F-stop: f/2.8 Exposure time: 5 sec. Focal length: 28mm Max aperture: 3

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#69

Post by leoh »

mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I feel like the entire thread should have led off with "This is in fact a publicly known hangar in Palmdale and this was known as public information as soon as the unveiling event occurred, and thus this is just an exercise to show how locating the spot could have been possible from just this photo as a technical demonstration." Because I guarantee there are going to be a hundred clickbait articles by various 'news'…

Right. It should be my responsibility to guard everything I say or write from lazy morons.

Re: Finding the B-21's hangar location from the stars in its press image

#70

Post by runjake »

mk_stjames wrote: post #24

I feel like the entire thread should have led off with "This is in fact a publicly known hangar in Palmdale and this was known as public information as soon as the unveiling event occurred, and thus this is just an exercise to show how locating the spot could have been possible from just this photo as a technical demonstration." Because I guarantee there are going to be a hundred clickbait articles by various 'news'…

It's pretty clearly an exercise in astronavigation.

The livestream event itself mentioned it was taking place at the Northrop facility in Palmdale.

This author is not responsible for what clickbait farms do.

Aside: I'm not even sure this plane will end up doing flight testing somewhere secret in Nevada. They may just do it out of Edwards South Base, which is an "interesting" location not many in the public know about.

Post reply on HN