Plane in Oriflamme Canyon

[gon2srf]

I was checking out Oriflamme Canyon on Google Earth this evening and saw this image. I can't tell if the satellite caught a plane flying low altitude over the area or if it's an actual plane on the ground. It does not look like a hospitable landing area so I'm guessing the Google satellite caught a fly by? What do you think?

Plane Oriflamme Canyon.jpg (104.35 KiB) Viewed 2055 times

Plane Oriflamme Canyon High Alt.jpg (183.44 KiB) Viewed 2055 times

Anza Borrego 33° 1'22.61N 116°29'29.45W

Here is some info I gleaned from the Web and if you'll notice in the close up pic I posted there is a blue shadow next to the plane.

http://googlesightseeing.com/2005/04/13 ... in-flight/

I think the “blue shadow” phenomenon is an artifact of image processing. All the images I looked at with blue shadows appear to have been Color Infrared images. CIR is routinely flown by agencies that need to do vegetation surveys, since it is easier to tell different kinds of vegetation apart in CIR than in “true color” or “natural color.” In CIR images, vegetation shows as red. It looks like the CIR images have been processed to make them more natural, and that probably shifted the shadow into the blue.

This leads me to a common misconception about Google Maps/Google Earth imagery. It is NOT all from satellites. The best imagery (i.e., the really high-resolution stuff, with 1 ft or even 6″ pixels) is shot by relatively low-level aircraft. Notice that the best imagery is typically over cities, out in the middle of nowhere the imagery is low-res. That’s where you’ll find either national 1 meter resloution photos done by high-altitude aircraft for the US Geological Survey, or actual satellite imagery from a variety of sources (e.g., Digitalglobe Quickbird, 0.6 m; Geoeye IKONOS, 1 m). When you use Google Earth to see places outside the US that have no equivalent to the USGS, the best available imagery might be Landsat (15 m) satellite imagery.

[sdnative]

That is actually in Rodriguez canyon. Very doubtful a plane is there. Most likely an artifact or a low flying aircraft. Pretty cool though.

[BorregoWrangler]

Yeah, most likely a fly-by.

Here's one in Fish Creek-

[Voodoo Blue 57]

My guess is that it was a fly by . A group of us were buzzed in Coyote one time (low enough to read the plane's numbers). When we questioned the Ranger about it, She said it was probably a Ranger plane, they have one that flies around Anza.

[gon2srf]

Thanks guys, the spotting led me to learn more about the surveillance equipment that is used, I found that intriguing. Eric you are right about the location. I was looking at Oriflamme at the time, and followed the track into Rodriquez. If it is an artifact we'll know someday when they update the photo or maybe we can go geo-caching out there and find out for sure.