Ghost Plane in Desert

Northern Territory News ^ | January 30th, 2009 | GLENN MORRISON

[nickcarraway]

MYSTERY surrounds the discovery of what appears to be an aircraft sitting on the ground in the middle of nowhere in the Simpson Desert.

An Alice Springs man discovered the "plane" yesterday, which he estimates to be about 128km southeast of the outback town.

The man, who preferred not to be named, said he had been making a routine check of the region using internet-based satellite images available on Google Earth.

Alice Springs Airport general manager Don McDonald said it was not uncommon for images of planes to be found on Google Earth and that the image may be of a plane in flight.

Aviation authorities last night could not rule out that the aircraft might be military in origin.

But a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said it had received no reports of an incident in the region.

The Bureau's aviation safety director Julian Walsh said: "There is nothing missing or overdue in that area."

Mr McDonald said many planes have their image captured by the satellite's roving eye as it moves over the globe.

In addition, some of the images can be many months old.

"There's lots of airplanes operating in the skies above Alice Springs," Mr McDonald said.

"I'm aware that Google Earth's photogrammetry does capture these images from time to time."

"However there were significant differences between the Simpson Desert image and images of other planes that had been captured mid-flight," said the man responsible for yesterday's discovery.

He said that images of planes in flight normally leave what experts call an artefact, a second ghost image caused by the satellite's camera taking a number of photos in quick succession.

This can cause a bluish ghost image of the plane, usually to be found somewhere close to the first image.

"There is no such evidence of an artefact, or a shadow of the plane," the man said.

A close examination of the image also failed to find an obvious shadow of the aircraft anywhere on the ground - which would indicate the plane was in the air - despite the picture having been taken in bright daylight.

The Rescue Co-ordination Centre Australia examined the images late yesterday and a spokeswoman said it was hard to tell whether the craft was on the ground or in the air.

But she said the image was being treated as one of a plane in flight.

"It's quite clearly an aircraft ... all of our inquiries have led us to believe there is no indication there has been no rescue incident in the area."

But she said: "We're still looking at it. Were not dismissing the information provided."

[Oztrich Boy]

"Foster's. Australian for beer."

Actually it's Australian for Budweiser, not beer.

[FReepaholic]

Thanks doc.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Actually it's Australian for Budweiser, not beer.

In Ireland, it's not called Budweiser. They call it ButtWidener.

[armymarinemom]

Did you buy that one?

We didn't buy the house or the joke. It was a cute prank.

[SunkenCiv]

;’)

[Fred Nerks]

like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack, but I found it...what-ever it is, it’s still there...

[tanknetter]

Probably those pesky teenagers with a bag of chalk.

During the B-29 raids on Japan in WWII the Japanese would draw chalk outlines of B-29s, seemingly trailing smoke from one or more engines, onto fields, then surround those fields with AAA batteries. Goal was to lure other B-29s down to provide assistance to their "stricken" comrade, then shoot them down.

[Don W]

Using the long and lat from your image, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth shows nothing there but scrub.

Admittedly, the resolution is poor, but something 120 feet long would show up.