How to geolocate the photo of a spy plane flying over China spy balloon

March 3, 2023 5:22 AM

This selfie above China's balloon was taken over Missouri. Here's how we know that. (SL:npr)
posted by Multicellular Exothermic (15 comments total)

I was expecting "we got it from the EXIF data in the image" or some other tech wizardry other than "I found it on Google Maps" (which, I guess, is sort of tech wizardry, but not in the same way).
posted by briank at 5:31 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

It's arguably the greatest selfie ever taken.

no this is the greatest selfie ever taken and it's not even close


posted by logicpunk at 6:16 AM on March 3, 2023 [25 favorites]

This was going to be my counterpoint.

There's a lesson to be learned here, I think, about starting your article with a sentence that people are immediately going to want to dispute. That's as far as I made it before looking up better selfies. (It's pretty cool though.)
posted by obfuscation at 6:18 AM on March 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

TIL: The USAF is still flying the U2. That has to make is something like the second-oldest aircraft still in active service, after the B-52.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:25 AM on March 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

If this topic interests you I recommend the book We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News. Open source intelligence is wild stuff.
posted by Nelson at 6:31 AM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Was anyone else reminded of Angelica Houston's phone message deduction in Life Aquatic?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:32 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you've never seen the Mythbusters episode where (Metafilter's own) Adam Savage gets to fly in the U2 plane, it's worth seeking out. There is no other plane quite like it. There's some clips here but the episode is worth finding.
posted by bondcliff at 6:36 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I hope this now turns into a thread of better selfies. This one was my pick.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:50 AM on March 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

Does this one count, or did Buzz take it?
posted by Molesome at 6:58 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I was expecting "we got it from the EXIF data in the image" or some other tech wizardry other than "I found it on Google Maps"

The OSINT (Open Source Intel) crowd have some scary talented people. I'm not going to derail the thread with a bunch of links but look into what Bellingcat has done in the last few years, or the story of the stalker of a Japanese pop music idol who found her by identifying features reflected on her eyeball.

It seems like merely "I found it on Google Maps" but the rabbit hole goes down a long, long way.
posted by tclark at 7:07 AM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

The OSINT (Open Source Intel) crowd have some scary talented people.

And they consult.
posted by flabdablet at 7:13 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was expecting "we got it from the EXIF data in the image" or some other tech wizardry other than "I found it on Google Maps"

I would be shocked if images taken by/on a spy plane didn’t have all EXIF data scrubbed before being released to the public, as a matter of routine. That, or replaced by generic dummy data.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:18 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

If the spy balloon could have a thought balloon in this photo, it'd be thinking, "Flyover country." More seriously, I wonder if it flew over Whiteman Air Force Base, where all the B-2s are stationed, about 150 miles west of Bellflower, MO.
posted by jabah at 7:41 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

TIL: The USAF is still flying the U2. That has to make is something like the second-oldest aircraft still in active service, after the B-52.

The C-130 beats the U-2 by about a year but any operational C-130 is almost certainly a newer airframe than an operational U-2. What's unique about the B-52 is that the *youngest* B-52 in service is over 60 years old.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:42 AM on March 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

I love this kind of stuff. Years ago I remember seeing a blog post finding the exact(ish) date, time, and location of a photo of a man sitting on the carcass of a dead horse in the 1800s. I can't find the blog post now, but this Forensic Genealogy pdf has the basics of how the researchers figured it out based on architecture and shadows in the photo. Apparently it's also the subject of a book, The Dead Horse Investigation: Forensic Photo Analysis for Everyone, but the book is comically expensive on Amazon.
posted by msbrauer at 7:42 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]