I hope he didn't crash, but if he did, is it possible to find the crash using public satellite data? I see what I think is a short-lived puff of smoke in an image taken at 10:30 am PDT (1 hour 45 minutes after takeoff) when I animate the GOES11 satellite images. This "puff" only lasts 1 frame (1 frame per half hour). If you try this, it is in the 5th frame of the 6-frame animation. In the 3rd frame, there is a bad pixel firing to the 8-o'clock position of the "puff" that will help you locate the "puff".

To verify this, or to tell me I'm crazy, Follow this link:

http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/sat-bin/d...OSAIC_SCALE=15

Click "Full Sized: (100%) of orig."
In the scroll list, choose these images:

20070903.1800.goes11.vis.x.sierra.x.jpg

through

20070903.1530.goes11.vis.x.sierra.x.jpg

Press "Submit Query"

Look for the small puff of smoke on the image from 1730 (10:30 am PDT). To the best of my ability, lining it up with Google Earth it is at
N 39 18
W 118 18

Looking at Google Earth, there seems to be a lot of military testing in this area, so perhaps there's another explanation.

I made a screen shot. It is in the blue circle in this image:


For comparison, look at the smoke from the fire near the Lick Observatory by using images 20070903.2100 through 20070904.0200 . It's southeast of the bottom tip of the San Francisco Bay. There's also at least 2 other fires visible in this animation, one on the California side, and one on the Nevada side, about halfway up the vertical part of the state boundry.

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Shouldn't that be 1730 instead of 1530? It's not clearly smoke to me. Maybe it's just the sun lighting the surface, maybe it's a small cloud like the other cous on the images. Maybe it's smoke. I don't know.

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You have to animate all the images between 1530 and 1800. The puff is at 1730. By itself, nothing stands out if you look at 1730 by itself. This dynamic feature only reveals itself through animation. It's very subtle, you have to look hard. I'll try to make an animated GIF to post here. It doesn't look like rugged terrain, so hopefully he got out before things started smoking.

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I've seen it now, but I couldn't say this is smoke rather than a cloud or surface. There's quite some cloud formation going on in the area anyway.

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I noticed the clouds. But they seem more white than the "puff", and the clouds seem to be building, while this comes and goes. Also, the clouds seem to be forming over mountain ridges. The "puff" is at the northern edge of a dry lake bed.

Here's the animated GIF. The real animation is more convincing, since data is lost in the GIF conversion. The bad pixel I called a "guide pixel" did not make it through the GIF process. The top image is a still image of the area. I put a red dot on the "puff". The bottom image is 4 frames of animation.




This is what the area looks like upclose on Google Earth. The puff is just north of the edge of this lake bed:

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Isn't it just the small white patch north of the lakebed that is lit up?

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The bottom image has much more resolution than the animated images, so I can't tell exactly where it is in the bottom image. The white patch north of the lake bed (a smaller lake bed?) seems pretty static. But in the animation on their website (not the animateg GIF I posted), it appears, then disappears, and it looks like a very small version of the larger fires visible if you use the 2nd set of images I list.

But maybe it just seems that way because that's what I'm expecting to see.

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A light patch of surface may light up for a short period because of the changing sun angle. Not saying this HAS to be what we're seeing, it's just a possibliity.

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Recommend we merge this with the Steve Fosset thread, already in progress...

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HELLO, HAS ANYONE PASSED ON TONY'S TIP TO THE CIVIL AIR PATROL?

If not, recommend that we do. . . .

I called the Minden-Tahoe airport, which is the headquarters for the search. The secretary was very appreciative, and meticulously took notes. She seemed most interested that the timing was right. I e-mailed her the details too.

It seems that they are searching in an area south of my suspected smoke plume, so I'm not sure if they'll use the tip or not, but they certainly know about it.

I'm just curious, has anyone else looked at the animation (not my animated Gif) on the satellite web site? An Nicolas points out, it could be a lot of things. Does it look like a short-lived smoke plume to anyone else?

More carefully counting the pixels, my percieved plume is on the red dot in this Google Earth image:
http://orbitsimulator.com/misc/sf4.GIF

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Off on a tangent, Mozilla under Mepis Linux wouldn't let me select full sized

The option wasn't even there, best it offered was 60%. It worked on a Windows box though, even though that screen is set to a lower resolution

On the image, maybe I see something, maybe I don't. I need a new prescription badly though.

Reuters: UPDATE 2-Branson hopes Google images help find Fossett

Satellites never did help find Jim Gray and his yacht.

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I guess Branson doesn't use the free version of Google Earth

It's tough enough to see at 100%, so I wouldn't place much faith in 60%.

As an interesting side note, the Northern California fire I mentioned for comparison at the bottom of my first post is still burning. And the winds have shifted offshore. Check it out by animating the most recent images. It's smoke is passing directly over San Francisco and we're having a blood-red sunset right now.



This was one of those refraction sunsets. The sun didn't completely disappear until 5 minutes after its predicted set time.

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hmmh---Potrero Hill?

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no, the building is one of the Parkmerced Towers, near SFSU. It's about as far from Potrero Hill as you can be and still be in San Francisco .

It's actually about a mile from my house, but I have a zoom lens.

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Good thing you called them and they listened. You can't know what the change between images is, I can't know, they can't know, but there is a sudden change and now they know about it. If it turns out to be nothing related to Fossett, at least they'll know where not to look.

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OT: But why do my eyes hurt when I look at that photo of the sun, but I can stare at the white background of this window with no trouble at all?

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Your eyes THINK they hurt (well, your brain thinks your eyes hurt). You want to squeeze your eyes because apparently the white light is so intense it washes out the trees in front of it. Nice effect eh.

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The human brain is an amazing thing...and yet, so easily tricked.

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While I find it highly unlikely that a puff of smoke from a plane crash would even register on a GOES image, it is good that they are following up on any possible lead. Good job.

CJSF

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I was looking up past the city lights
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See the constellation ride across the sky
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by They Might Be Giants

Good day, everyone. As I couldn't report it via mturk.com, maybe you can evaluate my finding ?

open this KML with Google Earth : http://s3.amazonaws.com/fossett/geo-eye.kml

and go to :
38.1426898618,-119.498720891

Isn't that an airplane-like looking object ?

Regards,
Wojtek

Not having Gearth here I cannot open the file. I'd just like to add that there are 150 known plane wrecks in the area and the search by aircraft for Fossett turned up 7 unknown wrecks already. But anyway, if you think it looks like a plane, it's interesting "period". I hope another BAUT member has gearth and wants to take a look at what you found. If it takes too long, just report it. They will not be mad if you'd report a known crash site or a bush that looks like a plane. reporting these things is the whole point of the project.

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I see it but the wingspan is only about 17 feet according to the Google ruler device, whereas the Super Decathalon has a 32 foot wingspan--but maybe the ruler's not that accurate.

Here's the link to "mturk"

HELP FIND STEVE FOSSETT

Supposedly it's been updated with new photos taken since Mr. Fossett went missing. Anyone can look.

I take back what I said about the accuracy of the google earth ruler.

Check out the coordinates to this airport:

38°59'53.97"N 119° 9'37.81"W

There's two airplanes. One has a wingspan of 32' (which is the wingspan of the Super Decathalon that Mr. Fossett was flying) and another one of about 36-37' which is the wingspan of a Cessna 172.

Problem solved.

On the Coast to Coast AM site, it is revealed that remote-viewer and anti-scientist Major Ed Dames has provided to the searchers some sort of landing ellipse (works for NASA planetary exploration) for the location of Steve Fossett, somewhat west-northwest of Mono Lake, in the Sierra Mountains, closest city Dardanelle, California.

No, I won't provide a link to the vulture's nonsense.

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Heh, it would be just as helpfull for me to call up the search team and say, "Just wanted to let you know that Mr. Fossett is not in my office here in Lancaster, Ohio."
Oh well.

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I've never heard of C2C anywhere but here, and I'm glad.

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Check out this possible debris field. It's about 45 feet across, and there's nothing else like it around:

38°05'56.88" N 119°25'06.47" W

Make sure you update your google Earth with the latest KML file for the region in the search area.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/fossett/geoeye-color.kml

Here's the link. . . .