In the 3 most detailed zoom settings, I see what I think are reflections of a cloud in two lakes. There is a whiteness superimposed on the blue of the large lake, which continues into the smaller lake above and to the left. The whiteness is pretty much all over the large lake, so I thought it could possibly be some sort of plant or algae, but the whiteness in the smaller lake is confined to the area closest to the larger lake.
It is possible this is a reflection of a cloud? Is it likely? If so, I think that’s pretty cool.
I do not know for sure. In general, clouds are a problem when you’re taking a satellite picture (the camera is above the clouds).
However, in this case I think it’s possible, because the image is taken from directly overhead. The buildings’ southern faces are visible - they’re almost as large visually as the rooves. Therefore, the reflection in the lake is of something north of where the satellite is. So, sunny day, one cloud in the sky not blocking the satellite’s view. Plausible. And it looks like a cloud. I think it is a cloud.
This application rocks. Moving along is a simple grab and drag and not the clumsy arrows at the edge of the photo. And the watermarks don’t obscure the photo terribly the way other satellite photos do.
My question: what do they gain by whiting out the roof of the White House and pixellating the US Capitol? Surely these locations are well known to everybody and no significant info could be gleaned here. And if the roof of the White House is so important for terrorists, why couldn’t they simply take high resolution shots from the Washington Monument?
I don’t see it. Are you sure you’re not looking at the north and south halves of a sloping roof?
I’m not sure what the white features are, but if they are cloud reflections, it’s strange that the features don’t quite reach the northern and western shores of the large lake. Maybe just a choppy surface on a windy day? There are also grainy white features on the larger lake which could be reflections off larger waves.
I was thinking it could be a choppy surface too, but if it is, then why isn’t the whole small lake white-ish? I think the fact that the whiteness doesn’t reach the edge is a significant point in favor of it being a cloud.
BobLibDem: I too think it’s mostly silly, but in reality, a top view could be helpful. Terrorists/assassins might like to know where there are skylights, or access stairways, etc. I’m just guessing, because I obviously don’t know what’s up there.
Am I positive? No. However, on the big house the most directly south of the lake, I believe I see a door where the walk leads to.
I admit my logic has a lot of ‘ifs’ in it - notably that the houses and the lake are on different tiles that may have been taken at different times.
The whole image looks cohesive, though - the shadows are all about the same time of day, and the whole image looks like we’re looking from a southern vantage point. Things look slightly distorted north/south (especially the baseball diamond), as would happen if the camera were pointed northward.
I gotta put in a plug for NASA’s World Wind. Words can’t even begin to describe how cool this app is. And all free, unless you’ve ever paid tax or something.
Quick summary: World Wind provides a way to view Landsat imagery, topo maps, aerial photography and lots of other data I forget in an easily navigable format. Not to mention that all this imagery is mapped onto a 3D earth so you can view from any angle and do fly-bys and all that. Cooo-ool
Another thought. The large lake has what looks like both wispy, nebulous white clouds and tiny white (textured from this altitude) dots, which could be chop. Is it both?
The blocking out of the White House is likely more to prevent people from knowing what defensive measures were up there, rather than showing what access points there are.
I’ve got that on my computer too (this is between you and me because I pay my taxes in a different country and I don’t want to fall foul of your Inland revenue- or whatever you call it) and I agree it’s a fantastic presentation.
On a side note, with reference to security issues mentioned above, there are some incredibly detailed maps available as part of this programme.
Depending on the spectrum that the picture was taken at, it’s vaguely possible that the white streaks could represent sediment deposits along the bottom of the lake. They seem rather directional.
I think that it’s very unlikely that the light areas on the OP’s ponds are reflections of clouds. Some thoughts:
[ul]
[li]I think that the image is taken from an angle very close to vertical, judging from the relative sizes of the light and dark portions of house roofs that are presumably symmetrical (the sun is southeast of the image, casting shadows to the northwest). So, I’m agreeing with scr4 and disagreeing with bup. An older black-and-white Terraserver image shows exactly the same building shapes, and I think that the verticality of the image is even clearer there. If what I think are roof sides were roof and front wall, the image would have to be almost at a 45-degree angle, which a service like this tries to avoid as it makes stitching very difficult. In addition, the symmetry of the roof sides is independent of the building’s orientation (i.e. north/south vs northwest/southeast, etc).[/li].
[li] The satellites used to take these pictures (Keyhole, IIRC) are way above any cloud layer, which means that we’d be looking through the clouds to see the reflections, and there don’t seem to be any clouds visible in the vicinity of the ponds (for an example of how some clouds look from the same satellite, look at Halifax, Nova Scotia).[/li].
[li]I think that the ponds may be very shallow, and what we’re seeing is either choppy water with reflections or subsurface structure. We don’t see either on nearby ponds because they’re deeper. [/li].
[li]I may be imagining it, but it looks as though the peninsula in the southwest corner of the larger pond (which looks more like an island in the Terraserver image in my first link) has a structure that continues northeastwards under water in the OP’s image, which would lend support to the “shallow” idea.[/li][/ul]
Any Dopers near Pleasant Grove / Washington Township, NJ want to drive by and check it out?
Ah, I finally figured out how to make links to that MapMart site (pics 2 and 3 above). Very high res photos with no watermarks, if anyone wants to look at the surrounding lakes.
The reason I called the feature in the SW corner of the larger pond a “peninsula” is that it’s shown as such on the map overlaid with the satellite image in the OP’s link. Not a very reliable source perhaps, but I think that the pond may be so shallow as to make the difference between island and peninsula very small, and perhaps seasonal depending on rainfall.
All in all, I’m really impressed with the new Google service. It seems to complement Terraserver (which has higher-resolution color images, but with less North American coverage) rather well. I just wish that the overlay maps were more detailed!
Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to differentiate between “island” and “peninsula”. I’m no good at geography and I only meant to say that there was a little piece of land sticking out of the water there.
As for whether it’s shallow… hmm, the contour maps don’t seem to show lake depths. MapMart had a digital elevation map, but the resolution was rather low and that little lake looked about the same as the resevoirs nearby. Aside from that, I couldn’t find a name or any other data for the lake except that it’s supposed to have water all year long.
If it helps anyone, here are various methods of locating that lake:
Longitude: 40.774941
Latitude: -74.853673
It’s located just east of:
Stuart Ct.
Long Valley, NJ
07853-3620
