How Did Google Maps Manage This?

Someone on a hiking forum I vist posted this and I figured the photo buffs here would enjoy it too. Anyone have any ideas or theories why this happened?

https://www.google.com …168887,217m/dat​a=!3m1!1e3

IMAGE LINK: http://s257.photobucke​t.com …0/media/Fly%20B​y.jpg.html

Separate B/W, red, green and blue sensor scans of a flying aircraft; between the shape (F-16, I'd say) and the track it's leaving in the tree foliage, I'd say that that guy was pushing his terrain-following radar to his limits.

Jon wrote in post #17859783
(F-16, I'd say)

The horizontal tail looks more like an F-18 (trailing edge sweep)

that's some serious CA, i'd say they should stop down a bit.

The "trail" looks to be heat distortion/mirage. Most likely just a passing jet under the camera at just the right moment.

Yeah, looks more like an F18

Interesting phenomenon.
Must be the speed of flying object in relation to scanning and registry of triple primary color of sensor and then the other colors are merging primary ones.

Looks to me as if they are exposing individual blue/green/red channel exposures. The high relative speed of the jet fighter, I initially thought F16, but the yellow section of the leading edge says F18, is resulting in the deregistration of the image channels. Why they would be sequentially exposing separate BGR sensors, instead of using a more normal integrated colour sensor with a RGGB Bayer CFA I wouldn't know.

Looking at the image it is obvious that the blue channel exposure was made first, followed by the green and then the red.

Alan

Am I the only one who sees a full-color (grey) image at the bottom/front of the color images. BTW, looks more like F-16 than F-18. This image looks to have a single vertical tail, like the 16. The 18 has twin angled-outward tails.

If you zoom out, and get a view of just how small in the overall area that thing is, it's almost certainly as previous posters mention; the relative speed had to to have split the recording of it over phases...sort of like a color shift version of motion blur.

Given where it is, it's almost certainly an F-18...we have so many navy bases out here that you trip over them.

Bassat wrote in post #17859973
Am I the only one who sees a full-color (grey) image at the bottom/front of the color images. BTW, looks more like F-16 than F-18. This image looks to have a single vertical tail, like the 16. The 18 has twin angled-outward tails.

I concede. It is an F-18. I zoomed in to 4:1 and it is blocky-pixelated, but you can definitely see the twin outwardly angled tails. My bad.

No, I mentioned the B/W channel (which is higher resolution than the colour channels) in my initial response. Many photogrammetric sensors capture the different channels separately/sequentiall​y and that's what happened here.

Bassat wrote in post #17859994

Bassat wrote in post #17859973
Am I the only one who sees a full-color (grey) image at the bottom/front of the color images. BTW, looks more like F-16 than F-18. This image looks to have a single vertical tail, like the 16. The 18 has twin angled-outward tails.

I concede. It is an F-18. I zoomed in to 4:1 and it is blocky-pixelated, but you can definitely see the twin outwardly angled tails. My bad.

Well, they're nearly identical until you get to the tail; at that point, both the vertical and horizontal profiles give it away.

Just curious what the difference between a low capability and high capability combat aircraft is?

The brand new sunk cost fallacy strike fighter is low capability combat aircraft, while the ancient F-111 is high capability. Is this payload based?

I found a 747 over ealing - very clear - given the likely height I would assume google terrain images must be from satelites. I have no idea what sort of camera tech they would use.