This China balloon selfie was taken over Missouri. That’s how we know it

Possibly the best selfie ever taken. A pilot aboard the Air Force’s legendary U-2 spy plane looks down on a supposed Chinese spy balloon hovering somewhere over the United States.

It is reported that the photo was taken on February 3 and released by the Ministry of Defense on Wednesday. reached legendary status inside the Pentagon.

But where exactly was it taken?

In a world with very few secrets, it is indeed possible to answer this question.

The balloon and U-2 spy plane were just south of the tiny town of Bellflower, Missouri, with a population of 325, according to the US census.

So, if you’re wondering, how can you find a supposed spy balloon?

It’s not really an impossible task and I’ve put my process in thread on twitter earlier today (another Twitter user came to the same conclusion a few hours earlier).

For starters, you can roughly see where the balloon was on the day the photo was taken, according to the military, February 3rd. There have been several reports of the balloon flying over the Midwest from Kansas City towards St. Louis.

Then check the landmarks in the photo. Far on the horizon there is a river that is clearly visible, along with some high altitude clouds. A quick scan of publicly available satellite data showed that there was a cloud front along the Mississippi River that day.

That makes the Mississippi River a good candidate, but where along the Mississippi? To understand this, you need to improve the photo and find distinctive landmarks. One obvious channel in the center of the image is a Y-shaped channel leading to the river. The channel spawns next to a dam or bridge.

Indeed, by scrolling through this section of the river on Google maps, one can find a Y-channel and lock 24 on the Mississippi.

A little more work will give you the second point on the map, the highway bend in the foreground, US 61.

Once you have two points, use Google Earth or other mapping software to draw a line through them. Then follow it and of course the small town of Bellflower can be found and the position of the spy balloon and plane in the photo. It’s all a bit rough and doesn’t match up perfectly, but it’s good enough.

There are other co0l tidbits that we can tell by looking at the photo. The operating altitude of the Air Force U-2 reconnaissance aircraft is about 70,000 feet. Because the plane is looking down at the balloon, it is possible that the balloon is flying at an altitude of about 60,000 feet, the Pentagon claims.

And Chis Combs, a professor of aerodynamics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, points out that the shadow of a spy plane can also be used to better understand the size of a balloon.

But of course, there’s one question that a selfie can’t answer:

What exactly did the balloon do on its journey through the center of America?

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