5/9/2004: Satellite view of Burj Al Arab Hotel
 

http://cellar.org/2004/dubai_640.jpg

Two months ago IotD featured Tiger Woods teeing off from a heliport at the top of a unique hotel. This is that same place, the Burj Al Arab Hotel, as seen from satellite.

somebody PLEASE Photoshop crosshairs on it! I beg of you!

Brian

Tiger sure picks nice places to whack off.:)

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of sand in that place:eek: I don't see the first bit of natural vegetation down there.

The best bombsight pic I could come up with on a quick Google search. It's from a B-17 WWII bomber but still looks pretty good.

Thankyew! :thumb:

Re: 5/9/2004: Satellite view of Burj Al Arab Hotel
 

Are you sure it's a satellite image, and not just an aerial image? There's an awful lot of detail for a satellite image.

I can't for the life of me reconcile this aerial photo with the first Tiger Woods shot - what is the camera's position and angle in relation to the aerial map?

In the Woods shot, the most prominent feature is the squiggly lake in the midst of palm trees and other greenery. To the right of the lake, away from the green, is a collection of what look like temporary buildings or trailers, sitting on the beach. You can see what looks like surf breaking in the bottom of the shot, so it is almost certainly beach. Another important background detail is the diagonal strut in the foreground, closer to us than the heliport. Presumably, it's one of the borders of the 'sail' the hotel was built to resemble.

So, easy, I figured, just find a lake in the aerial shot that looks like the squiggly lake in the Woods shot. For the sake of argument, let's say that "north" in the aerial photo is straight up, like on most maps.

There are two candidates, both of them in the 'northern' end of the greenery, close to the other vaguely s-shaped hotel, which would mean the camera would be pointing due "east". But this doesn't make sense, because if the camera was pointing at the lakes close to the other hotel, the beach would appear to be to directly in front of the lakes, not to the right of them.

The orientation of the beach, plus the presence of the diagonal strut suggest to me that the camera is pointing "south". But I see no squiggly lakes in that direction. What am I missing? Did the landscape change that much in two months?

I think this statement is correct. The camera is pointed "southwest." Almost parallel with the beach. The lake you see in the background is too far away to be included in the aerial photo. Telephoto lens compresses the image to make the lake look much closer than it actually is.

My coworker thinks it was shot from a helicopter behind (to the "North") of the hotel.

It could very well be that the original photo was taken with such a long lens that the pool in the Tiger photo doesn't even appear in the field of view of the overhead aerial photo.

That makes sense. Now that's thinking outside of the box, or at least the picture.

I was assuming the lake was part of the hotel.