If you go to maps.google.com and type in the coordinates 34.5N117.6W and zoom out 5 clicks there is a strange shape that reminds me of a river delta. What is it?
Note to all: You have to be in “Satellite” view to see it.
I think similar oddities have been asked about, and someone once said that the photos that Google uses are sometimes dirty or stained. That sounds plausible for this example.
It looks like a flood plane. The San Gabriel mountains are to the south, and you can see where the water comes down.
I have no idea, but here’s a direct link to it.
A valley maybe? If you zoom out further it doesn’t even stand out stand out compared to the terrain to the East of it.
It’s an alluvial fan, i.e. a fan shaped deposit of sediment caused by a river flowing from a high point into a flat area.
I don’t think it is. I have driven through there on my way from Palmdale to Victorville and it is as flat as a pancake.
The terrain view of the map agrees with you on the flatness. It sure does look like an alluvial fan, though.
It looks like an alluvial fan that forms from a wash coming down from the San Gabriel mountains and terminates at El Mirage dry lake.
I grew up near there.
It may look flat when you are there, but the bulge from the alluvial fan is clearly evident on a contour map. The general terrain slopes down at about 50 meters per mile. The fan appears to bulge about 50 meters higher at its maximum.
If you zoom in very tight, the dark color disappears. I’m confused.
Isn’t this El Mirage Dry Lake?
It’s an alluvial fan, as other have said. I’ve played around out there near that one many times in years past and now fly over it frequently. There are hundreds of those in the desert southwest.
Having said that, This particular one is NOT that distinct dark color in the real world. The actual color difference is much more subtle. They might have gotten a hyperspectral false-color image from someplace and used that. Or that shot was taken on the one day every 5 years it rains like heck there and the whole fan is damp from runoff from the mountains.
If you slide the map East so you can see farther out to the West, you’ll see 2 much smaller lighter fans, with the westernmost of the two going through the village of Crystalaire. A bit more to the West is another larger one extending from Valyermo to between Lake Los Angeles & Antelope Center. Those more accurately depict the colors seen on the ground today.
If you zoom in you can see the sediment and the braiding from the streams.
what are the textures you see over the oceans when you zoom all the way out? they look huge. for example, there seem to be some kind of mountain range from the Bering Sea all the way to the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam, hugging the coast of Japan in between. what’s that? is it in the ocean? also, to the east of Guam, there are pock marks that sort of looks like an old, badly painted wall. what are those?
thanks!
The long “mountain range” that you see is in fact the edge of the continental shelf, and the rest of the textures are mountains or mountain ranges. Those that are tall enough to stick out above the water become islands like Hawaii, those that aren’t are undersea mountains. This is why Mauna Kea is technically the tallest mountain on the planet, substantially taller than Everest.
It represents the topography of the ocean floor. It’s not a “real” satellite image, obviously - Google Maps using commercially available depth sounding data and “drapes” the blue ocean colour over a digital relief map.
Previous discussion here.
As for the alluvial fan in the OP, you can see the sandy stream beds in Street View.
oh, they’re not satellite images. thanks.
If you zoom out you can see a similar but smaller feature to the west of it. It seems obvious to me that these are features that at some point were formed by flowing water.