Is Burning Man bonfire visible from space???

Imagigrl · Post by **Imagigrl** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 4:11 pm

Earth, Wind, & Fire's
SERPENTINE FIRE[Maurice White, Verdine White & Sonny Burke]

When I see you're face like the mornin sun you spark me to shine
Tell all the world, my need is fulfilled and that's a new design
As long as you're near, there is no fear of a victory
But when I'm away, influences stray my mind to disagree
I wanna see your face in the morning sun ignite my energy
The cause and effect of you has brought new meaning in my life to me
Gonna tell a story morning glory all about the serpentine fire
Gonna tell a story morning glory all about the serpentine fireo
h yeah oh yeah oh yeah, oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah
I need to see your face like the morning sun ignite my energy
The cause and effect of you has brought new meaning in my life to me
The moments I find when I'm inclined to do my best
Negative wins when I give in and then I lose the test (not many times)
Gonna tell a story morning glory all about the serpentine fire
Surely as life begun, you will as one battle with the serpentine fire
oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah, oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah
Surely as life begun, you will as one battle with the serpentine fire
Surely as life begun, you will as one battle with the serpentine fire
Gonna tell a story morning glory all about the serpentine fire

...And IF The Man burning is visible from space then where's the satellite picture?????! Anybody??? ...Vault of Heaven... what does it seeeeee?

Apollonaris Zeus · Post by **Apollonaris Zeus** » Mon Feb 02, 2004 1:20 pm

would it it still burn?

A II Z

III · Post by **III** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 12:25 am

>>where's the satellite picture?????!

there are a range of resolutions available from our current satellite technology. 10m resolution is fairly common (sort of) but is only useful for looking at large scale things. the city would be visible during the day, but features such as roads would be barely discernable. the burning of the man would appear as a slight bright spot.

with 2m resolution (the highest i currently know about) you'd be able to pick out theme camps, and tell where people are, but not who. the burning of the man would be nicely visible. however, arranging for those pics to get taken is extraordinarily expensive, and i don't think burning man warrants that sort of attention.

BlueBirdPoof · Post by **BlueBirdPoof** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 10:34 am

Dang what happened to being able to read the liscence plates on cars?

Or is that the lost technology of the cold war?

Living in the shadow of a fading empire. . .
BlueBirdPoof

III · Post by **III** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 2:15 pm

>>being able to read the liscence plates on cars?

hype. a talented analyst can differentiate makes of cars at the 2m scale, but to me they all look like oblong blobs.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 3:45 pm

if you wanna play around, globeXplorer is freaky. put yer (or a stalkee's) address in to see how easy it is.

http://imageatlas.globexplorer.com/Imag ... ImageAtlas

AuldAne · Post by **AuldAne** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 3:53 pm

I've worked with ~.3 meter resolution imagery before. Determining the makes of cars isn't hard at that resolution, and I think that we had better available. However, it's been a few years and I'm not certain if it was satellite or aerial photography.

My guess about the license plate thing is that they might be able to do that with aerial photography (spy planes). A plane is a lot closer than a satellite, moves slower, and has more room and power for equipment. However, even that would be quite difficult I think.

I think that aerial imagery of the burn itself would be pretty lousy. Too much smoke. But the people/things gathered around would be cool.

III · Post by **III** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 5:31 pm

>>~.3 meter resolution

my bad - i'm obviously more uninformed on this than i thought.

AuldAne · Post by **AuldAne** » Wed Feb 04, 2004 8:57 pm

>globeXplorer is freaky

Even freakier, type in a phone number to google and get their name and address. Then get the photography from globeXplorer. Internet + caller id = great way to get back at prank callers.

That, by the way, looks like roughly 1 foot resolution, maybe half, about what I worked with. You can guess actually just by counting pixels. Still a far cry from reading license plates, though.

Imagine looking at that with .5 foot res height maps taken from airplanes, so you can see the countours of the cars, too. People are little bumps, hee hee.

spaceboy · Post by **spaceboy** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 3:01 pm

There have been a few threads about this...
You could definately get a photo of the playa, but the timing would be hard to get worked out. Unless you own your own satellite (if you do, I've got some pirate radio for transmission!

). The photo sat's can't just fly over wherever & whenever you tell them to... they take photos in batches, at the sat's owners' preference. Usually they shoot photos in area bunches/groupings.

here, check this thread out:
http://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic.php?t=2355

jmdinn · Post by **jmdinn** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 12:21 pm

Let me start by saying that I'm certainly no professional on the topic of satellite technology. But I know a little bit of physics. My understanding is that the idea of satellites reading car license plates or newspaper headlines is almost entirely pop-culture bunk. Movie science. An intriguing idea, more or less made up by creative writers looking for clever plot devices. Another perfect example is the myth that the human body loses 21 grams of mass upon expiration. Bunk.
It may be true that we have the technology to see images as small as license plate numbers or newspaper headlines. I couldn't begin to speculate on our capabilities in reagards to resolution, or image refinement.
What I can tell you with fair certainty is that the angle of incidence of imaging satellites is very close to 90 degrees (straight down), due to the stratospheric altitude at which satellites fly/fall/orbit. So even if we can see numbers on license plates, they could only be seen on cars whose license plates are pointed skywards. If we try to change the angle of incidence (think of a satellite taking your picture from the horizon, instead of straight above you), we distort the image by the increased distance through the atmosphere (isn't this is why stars twinkle?).

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 12:49 pm

jmdinn wrote:Let me start by saying that I'm certainly no professional on the topic of satellite technology. But I know a little bit of physics. My understanding is that the idea of satellites reading car license plates or newspaper headlines is almost entirely pop-culture bunk. Movie science.

Actually, I knew that, more or less. The last time I remember talking about it, it was about 4 ft resolution. that's enough to see a car. . .

I just like whining about nonsence. Wasnt' someone looking for his helicar now that it was the 21st century?

Alpha · Post by **Alpha** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 1:56 pm

Declassified information about the KH-8 spy satellites launched in the early 80s reveal that these 20-year-old satellites have resolution down to about 4 inches. I suspect that information that is currently still classified would be quite an eye-opener. I have it on good authority that even in the 70s the U.S. was launching satellites that could indeed read a license plate from space.

matttt · Post by **matttt** » Fri May 20, 2005 1:31 pm

[url]http://maps.google.com/maps?q=gerlach,n ... &t=k&hl=en[/url]

damon · Post by **damon** » Sat May 21, 2005 12:24 am

matttt wrote:http://maps.google.com/maps?q=gerlach,n ... &t=k&hl=en

NIce :)

the_iconoclast · Post by **the_iconoclast** » Sat May 21, 2005 9:52 am

Alpha wrote:Declassified information about the KH-8 spy satellites launched in the early 80s reveal that these 20-year-old satellites have resolution down to about 4 inches. I suspect that information that is currently still classified would be quite an eye-opener. I have it on good authority that even in the 70s the U.S. was launching satellites that could indeed read a license plate from space.

A few things...
Satellites up through the 70's were optical satellites that ejected film cannisters which were collected at sea by specially equiped planes that snatched them from the air or ocean in carefully synchronized operations. Though incredibly detailed it lacked timeliness.

Present technology, such as the Ikonos sattelite, are running an Electro/Optical system. The advantage of E/O is it ability to be transmitted from the platform to the ground in a very timely manner. The disadvantage is that the resolution is typically degraded from purely optical imagery.

In regards to look angle... I can say that NO, all/most imagery is NOT from 90 degrees overhead. Though orbit of a satellite is not changeable, the lense housing is certainly mobile to a certain degree, allowing those people at ground control to manipulate view angle for areas of interest. In fact if you look at the pic of BRC on google, you will note that everything looks upside down... that has to do with orienting the image to north instead of along the axis of the look angle.

Resoultion is a bit different when it comes to non-air-breather imagery. Each image is requested at what is known as a NIIRs rating. The higher the NIIRs the better. UNderstand that when someone mentions a "resolution" of say 1 meter, they are not saying you can see every thing that is in a meter. 1 meter resolution means that the image will differentiate objects as close as a meter apart. Something needs to be at least 1 meter in diameter just to SHOW UP on the image.

How do I know these things? Look up DSIATP. That "good authority" is really wanting to impress you with inaccurate information.

the_iconoclast · Post by **the_iconoclast** » Wed May 25, 2005 8:04 pm

I love killing threads... MUahahahahaha!!!

TheJudge · Post by **TheJudge** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 6:48 am

And nicely done, too.

Using NASA's World Wind, there is USGS Urban Area Imagery for select areas at about .25m/pixel resolution. With that, I was able to pick out my truck in a parking lot full of other cars and that's about it.

Is there anything out there for civilians better than this? I havent been able to find anything.

czar · Post by **czar** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 11:38 pm

http://earth.google.com/

http://www.7hertz.com/archives/2005/06/ ... lecom.html

find your way to black rock city...
TheMan = 40.75477,-119.23642

EvilDustBooger · Post by **EvilDustBooger** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:14 am

Here`s a cool image of NYC during a very uncool time:

http://www.unc.edu/~sinko/NY/New%20York.jpg

......Let it load.......

bradtem · Post by **bradtem** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:38 pm

That's from an airplane or chopper, not a satellite, and was passsed around a lot at that time.

Is Burning Man bonfire visible from space???

Is Burning Man bonfire visible from space???

And if it wasn't...

Is this BM from satellite?

Re: Is this BM from satellite?

miss the black rock city vista??