In this
day and age, many people rely on the assistance from some form of navigation
device, be it a stand-alone navigation system, or an app on a smartphone. The
most popular by far is the Google Maps app, and Google Street View. There have
been many anomalies reported by users of Google over time, and of course there
have been quite a few reports to MUFON based on anomalies spotted in these
images. In fact, I have a case right now that I am investigating thanks to the
sharp eyes of an individual who wishes to remain anonymous.
As with a
lot of the images used by Google Street View, this particular set of images was
taken back in 2008. The area where the photos were taken was San Simeon State
Park, just north of Moonstone Beach in Cambria, California. I followed the
directions supplied in the report by the witness, and I was fairly surprised at
the images that I saw.
The first
image shows an object at a relatively low altitude, directly over the area of
Highway 1, and is visible when using Google Street View by placing your point
of view at the end of the State Park Leffingwell Landing parking area, then
turning back to face inland. If you then place the cursor at the bottom of the
Street View and click so you move forward one position, the object is no longer
in front, however if you rotate the view to the northwest the object appears
heading out to sea, as seen in the second photo.
I was
intrigued by these images enough that I decided to take a drive up the coast to
Cambria, and take a photo using my Theodolite app so I could get an idea of the
altitude of the object. Since this is not an area with normal air traffic, I
wanted to know if it was possible that this was an errant private aircraft that
was captured.
Although
the above photo is a pretty good rough estimate of the estimated position of
the object, it is a rough guess, but pretty close for my purposes. The data in
the photo shows that I was standing at an altitude of 4 ft. above sea level,
and the cursor is place in the approximate location of the object in the photo,
which would give it an angle of 12.6%, which would mean that the object was in
the neighborhood of 120 ft. above sea level when caught on camera, well below
any approved altitude in this area.
I also
wanted to know the interval between when the first image was captured and the
second one. I was pretty amazed when I found out that the camera for Google
Street View uses a frame rate of 10 FPS, which means quite literally that the
object in question moved from the position in the first picture, to it’s
position in the second picture in 1/10th of a second. Not quite
anything that small aircraft around here can do.
While the
possibility exists of Google being hacked, and the image being artificially
inserted into the picture, I see no outward evidence of this being the case.
Furthermore, when I enlarge the photo I do not see a tail section where I would
expect one to be if the object in the picture was an airplane. While I’m sure
that there are a number of artifacts that could easily explain this objects
appearance, and in fact MUFON’s own Marc Dantonio thinks it’s a reflection
artifact, but I’ve yet to find one that actually fits and makes sense given the
two distinct photographs. If any readers have any insight into another
explanation for the images, I would appreciate you contacting me. I can be
reached at: jeff_krause@att.net, or
through the website; www.mufontri-county.com
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