There are people who spend hours exploring the most remote corners of the planet in the satellite photos of Google Maps, looking for surprising findings. But this time the surprise was not on earth, but in space.
It is not a plane, it is a satellite. It is easy to find airplanes on Google Maps or Google Earth. Every day they fly between 100,000 and 120,000 planes worldwide. Not even poachers, such as bomber B-2, are safe from the satellite cameras that nourish Google maps with their images. The B-2 He was hunted in full flight A few years ago.
But the bet has just risen with the most recent finding of A REDDIT user In coordinates 33 ° 44’39.0 “N 96 ° 44’46.2” W.: A rural Texas area, north of the city of Dallas. It is a satellite orbiting the land more than 27,000 kilometers per hour, which leaves the military plane at the height of a snail.
Five colored spectra. The photo was taken on November 30, 2024 by a Pleiades European observation satellite, developed by Airbus. It is a picture that perhaps would have gone unnoticed if it were not for the five silhouettes of different colors that seem to be ghosts of the same satellite.
It is actually the same satellite seen in five spectral bands. The black silhouette, captured first, is the satellite seen in the near infrared. They are followed by the red silhouette, the blue silhouette and the green silhouette, each captured with a different color filter in an instant infinitesimally different. Finally, the most clear silhouette of all, a pancromatic image of the satellite.
The five satellite spectra on Google Maps
Why do you look like this? It is a visual representation of two different phenomena: how quickly the objects move in the land low orbit, and how the observation satellites take their photos. They do not take a single photo, but several catches in different spectral bands (nearby infrared, red, blue, green and a pancromatic image on gray scale).
Next, these images are combine with a Pansharpening algorithm To create a full color photo. Normally from the ground, which is still with respect to the satellite. However, this satellite moved almost eight kilometers per second, which caused the camera to capture it at five different points in the very brief moment in which the capture occurred.
A Starlink satellite. Both Reddit users Like astrophysic Jonathan McDowell They believe it is a Spacex Starlink satellite. Unlike the first generation Starlink (which had a single solar panel), the V2 Mini have two large lateral solar panels that give them a wingspan of about 30 meters. According to McDowell, presumably is the Starlink 31147.
It is not strange that the first satellite that has been found in Google Maps is a Starlink. Most satellites travel above 500 km so as not to have the atmospheric braking compensate, friction with the air that makes them end up resenting in the atmosphere. But the Starlink are launched at this point to offer a Global Low Latency Internet coverageassuming that will have to be replaced Every five years.
7,200 and up. Today there is about 7,200 Starlink satellites Orbiting the Earth (more than all the other constellations of combined satellites), thanks to Spacex’s ability to land the propellers of their rockets. That is why the investigations pointed from the beginning to Google Maps was a Starlink.
Since Spacex has plans for Grow your network to a megaconstellation of 30,000 satellitesmost likely this is not the last Starlink that appears on Google Maps and other satellite photos, in the same way that it is increasingly common to see them in the night sky when we raise the view from below.
Images | Google, Airbus Defense and Space
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings