Air-to-air refueling over northern California caught by Google Earth

[Mahesh]

Wow check this out! Not sure if someone already posted it.

The blue ghost images are apparently seen often with satellite photos of moving objects.

www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/06/kc135_caught_re.html

The article says that this is a new hobby, to find flying aircraft in Google Earth images.

 

[LoadMasterC141]

Damn I just became addicted to Google Earth.

 

[socalef9]

that kinda looks a bit photoshopped

 

[deserteaglle]

that kinda looks a bit photoshopped

Yup, looked pretty fake to me too.

 

[derg]

 

[Poopsmith]

here are the coordinates to a real one on google earth:
39deg 50' 23.42" N 104deg 38' 31.33" W

no blue ghost thingy

 

[Mahesh]

Oh no!

Sorry! This was posted on my company's internal site and they usually research anything they post.

I will look further into this. I mean one won't see clear images, even the real ones will look digitized.

 

[derg]

Don't apologize for something which you have no control over, bro!

 

[MDPilot]

Looks real enough to me, look for yourself on GoogleEarth at coord. 41°51'7.87"N 121°28'44.90"W

PS And after looking at FLIP AP1B, it appears to be on Air Refueling track AR7A between the IP and CP. Track is owned by Travis AFB, which would sync with the KC-135 and C-5 doing the refueling.

 

[LoadMasterC141]

Unless they photo-shopped it onto Google Earth, it looks real to me.

Man, I wonder how in god anyone ever saw that. It is in the middle of nowhere.

 

[jayllamas]

So that's the top view...pretty nice!

 

[FlyBullFly]

No Chance, that doesn't even look like a cruddy photoshop pic.

 

[Ripper3785]

no chance what? That it's real? That it's not?

I don't know why google would go through the effort to place photochops all around the world of aircraft over random places. The blue ghosts are odd, but are common across many of the in-flight aircraft photos on google earth.

 

[flyhigh]

that looks way too clear of a photo to be real. when i zoom in all the way on my google earth, everything gets blurry...nothing like this picture. but hey, if it is real then they fooled me

 

[Mikey_G]

When I zoomed in, it's perfectly clear, did you wait until GE dowloaded the area at 100%

 

[socalef9]

i searched it on google maps and it gets pretty damn close. i guess it is real

 

[flyhigh]

When I zoomed in, it's perfectly clear, did you wait until GE dowloaded the area at 100%

thanks. now i was patient and it looks clear

 

[derg]

Well, if the folks with experience say it's real, well mark me convinced!

 

[Killtron2000]

I went to those coordinates and saw the blue shadows.

 

[aloft]

I think the blue "shadow" is a result of some sort of parallax error, just like when you hold an object close to your face but focus your eyes further away, resulting in double vision of the near object. The satellite's optical sensors are focused at the range of the terrain, which is determined by either radar or the same terrain database in use by many GPWS systems, and the aircraft are substantially closer, on the order of 4-5 miles.