Shadow Study Proves Compositing

I recommend a great new study by Portuguese researcher Rasga Saias, "Enlightening the Shadows". He discovers a novel method of determining the azimuth angle of the sun's shadow at 9:03 am on 9/11, the time of the second "plane crash". He confirms the azimuth with NOAA's handy calculator. Then Rasga proceeds to demonstrate that the shadows on the planes are not where they belong.



When I encountered this work, I wanted to check it against my model of the WTC in Google Sketchup. The buildings in Sketchup are geo-referenced to Google Earth, and shadows can be set to any time on any date. I typed in "9:03 a.m. on September 11", but the shadows agreed with the 9/11 videos, and not with Rasga.

After dialoging with Rasga by email, we quickly discovered my error - daylight savings time. Google Sketchup does not account for the clock change. 9:03 a.m. in September would be the same as 8:03 a.m. standard time. Using the correct time, my model agrees very well with Rasga's study.

Of course the 9/11 composi-traitors would never just forget about adding shadows. But I think it is quite possible that they made the same mistake I made - they forgot daylight savings time, and their shadows were off by one hour. This would make the azimuth angle almost exactly parallel to the tower, which is consistent with the (lack of ) shadows on the "UA175" as it glides into the tower.

Here are gifs made from my Sketchup model.

View matching CNN Hezarkhani Ghostplane



View matching Evan Fairbanks




View matching Spiegel TV




View matching Luc Courchesne



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