Cathedral Rock (Catalina Mountains) BLACKED OUT!

[jajohnson11]

I was on Google Earth the other day and was looking at the Catalina mountains. I noticed that the summit of Cathedral Rock is completely blacked out. It turns out this is a very rare thing to have on Google Earth. Does anyone have any idea why this area might be blacked out?

You can also see this on Google Maps if you switch to Satellite Imagery.

[chumley]

@jajohnson11
per the all-knowing internet:

It's just missing data. Those 3d maps are put together using software that compiles photographs from several different orientations as well as topographical data. They work really well for cities and towns and rolling hills and stuff like that, and not as well for tall mountains because of the random angles. What you are seeing is a gap in photo data. You can see the stretching of the existing photos around the gap, but there just was no photo to fill in that side if the mountain.

If you view the historical photos in GE, you will see some years have clear imagery, while others do not. The black shape varies from each of the years where data is missing. It's not actually that rare at all, as a quick web search will reveal.

[markthurman53]

I've heard it referred to the Black hole of the Catalinas. Maybe If you step into that area you could end up on some other mountain top somewhere.

[nonot]

Google can often black out areas if someone reports that the photo shows nudity or drugs or things like that. Happens with the street view photos more than the satellite photos but some of the satellite photos seem to be pretty sharp.

Perhaps some people were doing something in that area and they caused the photo to be censored.

[chumley]

@nonot
There are about 15 different historical photos of the area on GE.

The following have blacked out areas:
current
2/2017
11/2015
3/2014
11/2009

While I don't rule out unspecified HAZers getting naked in the Catalinas during those years, I doubt Google is blacking out the area due to that kind of exposure.

Of the other 10 or so imagery dates interspersed before and after the blacked out dates, several are clearly duplicates of the previous photos. Meaning you can see new imagery around the peak, but the peak itself uses the same imagery as the previous generation.

Others show big distortions or blurring indicating a problem in the calculations/software that generates the 3D image from the data.

It seems to be a fairly regular problem with this particular peak, though it is not unique to this mountainous area.

It's good to know that computers still can't figure out everything on their own!

[Jim]

@chumley
I never summited Cathedral, so you can't blame ME! ha! ha! ha!