Alert reader Randy sent me an email titled “A well-balanced cat,” with instructions on how to see the moggie.
Follow these instructions, and when you get to the Golden Gate Bridge, look very carefully. The object is to find the cat. Randy’s email:
To see, perhaps, the WORLD’S BRAVEST CAT, and among the world’s most spectacular 360-degree panoramic vistas,
in HD, and set to music ….
Go to: “AIRPANO.COM”
Click on: “ALL PANORAMAS” on top edge f screen.
Scroll Down To: “SAN FRANCISCO, USA” near bottom of page.
Click on: “FULL SCREEN”
Image will “Auto Rotate,” or drag the cursor across the image
to rotate for a full 360-degree view including straight up or
down.
When you find the cat, zoom in on it by clicking on the plus sign ( + ) in the lower left-hand corner of the image.
And remember, the drop to San Francisco Bay is 220 feet.
The other panoramas on the page are stunning. Spend some time there if you want some visual entertainment.
Cat with no shadow? (Yes I read the comments)
It’s probably a joke. It looks like a composite. I do that on films for a living and I can tell you there are plenty of giveaways. The most obvious ones are scale…it looks like an adult cat and it is just way too small. The other thing is shadows. It doesn’t have any. If you look at the bar it is sitting on you can see the bar’s shadow underneath below projected onto another part of the bridge. The cat’s cast shadow is nowhere to be seen. Still a very fun easter egg of sorts though.
Couldn’t see any comments (probably a Flash thing) but while I suspect that it is Photoshopped (it’s a long way from anywhere for a cat to go to, without a good reason), what little sahadow there is is reasonably consistent with the angle of the shadows from the pipework.
I’ll guess that it’s done with something technologically slightly more sophisticated than a fishing rod, and a remote-release wide-angle camera. Then some stitching.
Queue this one up for next Saturday: Hello Kitty in space
What impresses me even more is that this is from a child who goes to a Christian school… you more regularly hear about Christian schools being a lot less “Science-friendly” than other schools. That’s a refreshing change.
How would we see the cat’s shadow? It would be behind the pipe thing the way the light is hitting it.
The cat has shadow, but it ain’t so pronounced.
The shadow would be well below, actually. That pipe is set out from the bridge, and you can see it’s shadow cast on the structure below, separated from another shadow by a uniform gap. The cat’s shadow would be in that gap.
C’mon guys, isn’t the scale of the moggie a little off? Or is it a pygmy cat?
Yeah, I call BS based on the scale, and the lack of a shadow which should be clearly behind the cat visible base on the low angle of the sun.
Just when I was about to ask how it got there and whether the fire department had been called yet, I read these skeptical comments. Yes, of course! The cat is too small. Compare it with the man’s foot. I think there is something a little wrong with a lot of the shadows. The seem to be made from different light sources–there are harsh shadows on the left of one thing but on the right of something else. How can we verify these suspicions?
I can’t zoom in. After roughly 5 seconds zooming in, it stops. People would be the size of ants, judging by the size of the cars. Anyone?
Have you put it on full screen? That enlarges the image somewhat.
Full screen, Chrome, IE9.
It doesn’t do what is is supposed to do. Or something here in the Netherlands is not functioning.
Where in the picture would I find the cat?
You don’t need to zoom in I think. The cat comes in right at the start, so you have to stoph the Panorama as quick as you can when it’s loaded. See those three guys on the bridge? Then you can find the cat. I’ll only say, you won’t find it in sky above 🙂
If your computer doesn’t allow you to freeze the image fast enough, that’s how you miss the moggie.
There are two Golden Gate Bridge panoramas. The one with the cat is not the one from above the bridge with all the fog.
Just found out! In the other one, the cat is difficult to miss…
It could be a real cat, one hunting for birds. I noticed the white bird squirts below it… there could be a bird’s nest there in that gap underneath. Swallows maybe?
Spectacular site!
1) The cat’s shadow is underneath and slightly behind the cat, consistent with all
the other shadows in the image.
2) The optical dynamics of the lens and camera system required to take a panoramic 360 degree image that rotates on all axis, that’s in focus from close-up to optical infinity, and the software required to project such a rotating image on a flat two dimensional screen, cause the size and angle of the objects in the image to appear slightly skewed.
3) It’s a small cat
1) I can see the shadow of the pipe on which the cat is sat, but no corresponding shadow of the cat.
2) Even with the distortion from the optical system, the head of the cat is about the same as the size of the nuts on the fixture of the pipe onto the vertical of the beam, a bit to the right of the cat. The nuts and bolts look realistic enough in size to me. The cat’s head not so (and of course the rest of it, as well).
3) When I zoom out and look at the cat from a distance, it just has that ‘pasted’ look: the way the edges of a pasted object not quite fit in with the immediate surroundings. That’s subjective, I admit.
4) As I suggested, it might be a pygmy cat. Shrug.
If the cat hasn’t been photoshopped it may have hit the supermarket of seabirds by the look of all the guano just below its perch. On the other hand if there are raptors nesting or frequenting the bridge it would be easy pickings.
I HATE fracking Photoshop! That is to say, I hate the devaluing effect the existence of Photoshop is having on good photography. The more visually striking or unusual a photo is, the more instinctive the reaction ‘That’s photoshopped!’
I was given a calendar a couple of years ago, of really spectacular scenery – bright orange sandstone cliffs reflected in a blue lake in the southwest US, a string of green islands on a deep blue ocean in the Seychelles, amazing purple and orange shadows on dunes in the Namib desert – and everyone’s immediate reaction was a dismissive ‘it’s Photoshop’. It took me a lot of careful examination of the photos (and in a couple of cases, locating the actual scenery from the air on Google Maps) to satisfy myself that the views were all indeed genuine.
OK, sorry for the digression, it was prompted by all the speculation above.