As I was flying to San Francisco from Atlanta, I passed over a region southeast of San Jose about 11:00 last Wednesday night. To my astonishment, there was this giant, brightly lit swastika on the ground, easily visible from the plane. It looked like a neon version of the Nazca lines, but it was a swastika. Any clue as to what that is?
Has anyone else seen what I am talking about?
Not really sure what it is. What else might you remember about it?
Was it in the hills SE of San Jose, or in a more populated area? I guess I’m also asking how you’re defining San Jose – do you mean downtown or the entire city?
I’d guess the approach to SFO comes in about 1000-2000 feet above San Jose. How big was it? Compare it to, say, the San Jose airport (if you saw that as well).
Also, what color was it?
And if it’s any help, you can try terraserver images :
If that link doesn’t work, go to http://www.terraserver.com and you can search on San Jose to bring it up.
Also, here’s some aerial photos of the Santa Clara Valley from Ames (NW of San Jose, I know, but it might help with figuring out where you were). Note that the top of these is South :
Santa Clara Valley – San Jose Airport visible at top left
http://ails.arc.nasa.gov/Images/Ames/jpegs/AC95-0294-2_a.jpeg
The airport at the lower right is Moffett field
http://ails.arc.nasa.gov/Images/Ames/jpegs/AC95-0294-3_a.jpeg
Maybe it was the crossing of two main runways with some access runways at the ends? Just a WAG…
- Jinx
Well, it was in the hills SE of SJ (or maybe even a little east of that), I’m not sure how high we were, but it looked as though it were made up of street lights, except that it wasn’t in an urban area, and it looked pretty big. It was quite distinct. It looked about the size of a mall parking lot. There were little rays shooting from the swastika too. Also, it was a curvy swastika, no hard angles. I tried to draw it here, but couldn’t make it come out right.
I wonder how Lick Observatory is lit at night?
I would hope an observatory would be minimally lit. Around here, our local observatory is championing the fight against “light pollution”, trying to minimize outside lighting and enact zoning regs to force proper reflectors on the fixtures. And this link implies that the people at Lick feel the same way:
http://www.ucolick.org/~mountain/mthamilton/public/lighting/
If this was a curvy swastika, is it possible it was just a street intersection? There are lots of curving streets in the suburban hills east of the Bay Area.
Even when lit, Lick Observatory doesn’t have long lines (though I admit it’s been a few years). If further east, it might be some roads near Los Banos. Or it might be the nearby landing strip in Isabel Valley – perhaps the roads around it are lit up.
You can change to a smaller scale to get a better view.
It’s entirely possible, but it was symmetrically perfect, and it wasn’t really in suburbia. There were no other lights nearby except for the swastika.
Well, San Jose, CA, does have a sizable Buddhist population…
heres a modern German one: