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Here’s how a satellite ended up as a ghostly apparition on Google Earth

Accepted submission by Freeman at 2025-04-15 20:23:01 from the layers dept.
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https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/heres-how-a-satellite-ended-up-as-a-ghostly-apparition-on-google-earth/ [arstechnica.com]

Dig deep on Google Earth and you'll inevitably find a surprise or two. Maybe you're looking at far-flung islands in the middle of an ocean or checking in on something closer to home.

A few years ago, online sleuths found an image of a B-2 stealth bomber in flight over Missouri. The aircraft is smeared in the image because it was in motion, while the farm fields below appear as crisp as any other view on Google Earth.

There's something else that now appears on Google Earth. Zoom in over rural North Texas, and you'll find a satellite. It appears five times in different colors, each projected over wooded bottomlands in a remote wildlife refuge about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Dallas.
[...]
Someone first shared [reddit.com] Google Earth's satellite capture last week on Reddit.
[...]
Google Earth data indicates that the image was taken on November 30, 2024, by a high-resolution Pleiades observation satellite owned by Airbus.
[...]
While the B-2's motion caused it to appear a little smeared in the Google Earth image a few years ago, the satellite's velocity created a different artifact. The satellite appears five times in different colors, which tells us something about how the image was made. Airbus' Pleiades satellites take pictures in multiple spectral bands: blue, green, red, panchromatic, and near-infrared.

Google Earth link to location of Satellite Image: https://maps.app.goo.gl/McDez7gsWz151Qb76 [app.goo.gl]


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