That does seem to line up correctly...so the QC is not in the original photo...and Clinton's lights might be HWY 30...not neccesarily the riverfront.
Dubuque photo with Chicago and Orion's Belt in the background [edited, not Des Moines]
- Thread starter Clone83
- Start date
That does seem to line up correctly...so the QC is not in the original photo...and Clinton's lights might be HWY 30...not neccesarily the riverfront.
Nailed it. Down to the shape of 20 heading west out of town. On top of that if you look at satellite images around the Asbury area North of 20 there are a couple of big swaths of land that looks like it's being developed that are dark on the map.
Lastly, there is an abrupt halt to the lights along what sure would line up with a river. That's not how the DM river is at all in DM.
Chicago is closer to dm than people think of in day to day life and the light or light pollution is pretty massive compared to Iowa cities and probably even compared to places like KC or STL.
Growing up around Sioux City, Ames,DM and Omaha I never got the whole “stars are so bright in the country” thing because the stars seemed pretty bright everywhere. The past 24 years in Chi and LA make it really obvious that I don’t see as many stars. Takes about 50 miles away from either metro to start getting the change.
Growing up around Sioux City, Ames,DM and Omaha I never got the whole “stars are so bright in the country” thing because the stars seemed pretty bright everywhere. The past 24 years in Chi and LA make it really obvious that I don’t see as many stars. Takes about 50 miles away from either metro to start getting the change.
I would say because she is a pilot, and is kind of her job to know where she is at. Plus there is probably some sort of instrumentation in the cockpit that tells you where she is at. Maybe she had an app on her phone as well.
Agreed, 100%. The satellite view could be zoomed out just a bit, and you can clearly follow the light trail all the way down to Peosta in the bottom right corner and you can also see the dark areas of the Swiss Valley Park/Nature preserve just south of that light trail.
So does your employer send this pilot lady a bill for the time you spent on this today or how does that work?
(Good work, by the way).
Here's the image with some drawing on it for towns around Dubuque.
Blue line: Mississippi River
Red line: US 20
Orange line: US 151
Pink circle: Dubuque Area Airport
Green circle, west side (below) river: John Deere Dubuque Works
towns along river: purple = Bellevue, red = Savanna, yellow = Clinton
towns in Illinois/Wisconsin: magenta (lower left) = Dickeyville, pink = Kieler, yellow = Cuba City, blue = Benton, red = Hazel Green, green = Galena, white = Shullsburg, purple=Monroe
towns along 20 (red line): purple = Peosta, green = Epworth
Blue line: Mississippi River
Red line: US 20
Orange line: US 151
Pink circle: Dubuque Area Airport
Green circle, west side (below) river: John Deere Dubuque Works
towns along river: purple = Bellevue, red = Savanna, yellow = Clinton
towns in Illinois/Wisconsin: magenta (lower left) = Dickeyville, pink = Kieler, yellow = Cuba City, blue = Benton, red = Hazel Green, green = Galena, white = Shullsburg, purple=Monroe
towns along 20 (red line): purple = Peosta, green = Epworth
I think we've found our new offseason activity-- guess the city based on the nighttime view from 33,000 feet.
This sure looks correct. So many things align. There's Highway 20, it looks like lights on a bridge over the Mississippi, and that big string of lights that otherwise looks out of place south of Des Moines.
I was going to post satellite images of lights at night over North America, but decided not to. If you look at Chicago, though, you will see it very bright more towards the south, merging into Gary, IN, on the south side of the lake. Other images looked closer to a solid block up to Milwaukee, but generally, the light looked more centered towards the southside than what you might think if you just thought of downtown.
Regardless, it looks like the correct view towards Chicago, what you would expect.
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So, kind of unsettling this pilot was 200 miles from where she thought she was, no?
I think she just got the names mixed up in the tweet.
Yes. From the air you are kind of going along a river either way, the Des Moines or the Mississippi.
Didn't she double down to a response on Twitter by saying you can see I-80?
Except someone already posted the flights went by DSM. And she flies this route regularly it appears. I'm gonna trust the pilot with the off chance she did pick the wrong picture from her camera roll the next day when she posted it.
It isn't clear, but it seems there may have been a mix up here regarding the two images in her Twitter feed that were discussed:
CYaeger here tracked flights for "early Sunday morning." But the image we are all talking about now, -- the one many think is instead of Dubuque -- was posted to her Twitter feed 11-6 at 1:46 AM, which is early Saturday morning (not Sunday). The DMR article linked in the OP said it "was on a UPS cargo flight from Anchorage to Louisville, Kentucky, around 1:45 a.m. Saturday." Some discussion above was that that could have reasonably just been when she posted it to Twitter, but that it might have been taken the prior evening (late on that prior Friday evening, 11-5).
So I'm not sure that the flight under discussion was previously tracked. Even though I'm not sure the correct flight (date) was tracked, note what else I bolded in CYeager's post:
"Two were flying along the Mississippi River near the Iowa - Illinois state line,"
In any case, it seems like she likely does regularly travel through Iowa and is familiar with the terrain.
Regardless if you follow her on Twitter she follows some great stuff from her travels around the world.
Her response was the line of lights on the right was I-80, which would be impossible if this were a shot of Des Moines from the west looking east, where I-80 would go through the middle of the lights.
I think she just confused Dubuque for Des Moines, which is understandable for someone that flies over and sees a lot of the area from maps and high in the sky. If you assume that she confused the names, the idea that the line of lights being I-80 makes more sense as they would be to the south in the image. Though I still believe that those lights are US 30 in Clinton, but again, as someone not familiar with the State the mistake is reasonable.
