Do the shadows match the satellite imagery?
The report by WarOnFakes attempting to ‘debunk’ and discredit Maxar’s satellite imagery from Bucha also indicates that there was a discrepancy on the shadows in the satellite imagery.
The report references work done by Telegram account ‘Rybar’ as the origin of these findings.
According to Apollo Mapping the acquisition time of Maxar’s March 19 satellite image was at 09:08:31 UTC.
On March 19, Ukraine’s Bucha was in the UTC+2 timezone. The specific time in Ukraine moved to UTC+3 on March 27, 2022.
Therefore the satellite image was taken at 11:08AM local time in Bucha, Ukraine.
Rybar’s claim was that the shadows seen in Maxar’s satellite imagery from March 19 could not have matched the timestamp of 09:00AM, as the shadows would have looked different at that time. However, this seems to be an error in converting the times, as Rybar was attempting to match shadows from a 09:00AM timestamp, and not an 11:08 timestamp.
The satellite imagery was taken at 11:08AM local time, or 11:08 UTC+2; a link to this reading can be seen on Suncalc at this
link.
These findings can also be confirmed by matching the angles cast by the shadows in the satellite imagery.
By layering the imagery into Google Earth, we can obtain the angle at which the sunlight would have been coming from, which is in proportion with the angle of the shadow. The heading for the direction of the sun was 161 degrees in the image. The location of the post is 50.541771, 30.230175.
(images removed)
At exactly 11:08UTC+2 on March 19, 2022, which is when the satellite image was claimed to have been taken, the direction of sunlight was at 161 degrees - an extremely similar figure to that seen in the direction given from the reading on Google Earth. This indicates an accurate fit as to the time and date of the satellite image.
The link to the suncalc.org with the prefilled values as seen above can be seen
here. A screenshot is included below to see these readings.
