Big Brother is watching - Alien Spotted in NY?

[Z...]

Translated from Croatian internet portal net.hr:

The grandpa cought on picture is probably just feeding the parking meter but he happened to be on the wrong place in the wrong time.
Internet users will remember him as dirty old man just coming out of Peep Show.

Immediatly after new function of Google Maps Service - Street View was released, idle internet users started their search for people in embarassing situations.

For now Street View is limited on to some larger US cities and it remains to be seen if it will be extended to cover the globe.

How does it work? After you click on any street marked in blue, panoramic view of the marked spot will be shown in Google Maps. But unlike usual panoramic views where you can movie only around your axis this time you can move through space.

Update:
Seems some of the New Yorkers are not from this planet

 

[Cyre2067]

that's odd, when you move around the image follows you... it's as if the camera's busted.

 

[Mikey]

Alien Spotted in NY?

Ehm, no. It's a lens flare artefact. The "alien" which looks like a blue transparent ET can be seen in other pictures as well, just scroll to the left.

Except, of course, the "alien" tracked the car! :)

 

[notanothermonday]

so how does this work? does it refresh every so often? i am technologically impaired so it is hard for me wrap my head around how this works. i am thinking it is with all the so called traffic cameras.

 

[Mikey]

How does it work? This is my best guess:

They drive around with a car with a small 360° camera on top. Those cameras acquire a vertical line at a time and must therefore spin (probably at a high rate) to assemble the whole image. The camera is triggered every 50 meters or so by a computer with actual GPS coordinates. It does not refresh! I'm sure it is a totally automated process, with one or two persons driving around in the car and having a good time. It's a cool way to make money!

As can be seen, those are not hi-quality images, so I guess that it is a small and cheap 360° camera / fisheye lens. This means, that there are optical artefacts when imaging the sun, such as the vertical strikes which can be seen clearly.