The Impossible Geolocation

[rare sorrel]

I don’t expect anyone to find this, but i challenge you to try and narrow it down as far as you can
Continent:
Country:
Region:
Area:
Coordinates (if you’re a god):

https://x.com/gflocating/status/1786482443735761156?s=46&t=2vTpV41Jkxx6HmGZvIjwSQ

Gabòr Friesen (@GFLocating) on X

OSINT challenge: (no reverse image searching, although it wouldn't easily work in this case) Find/reason out the area where this image was taken, and give me the most "zoomed in" answer you manage to come up with (continent, country, region within the country, local area)

Twitter · May 3, 2024, 7:46 PM

It has to do with some tests i’m running to check the usefulness of a new geolocation method i’ve been working on, i want to see just how much closer i got than others would get using normal approaches

Feel free to ping me with questions for more information about the image as well if you get stuck at a certain level of “zoomed in”. I may or may not give the info

[crimson root]

||Portugal?||

[rare sorrel]

Nope, although i’m curious why you guessed that since it’s an option also in my test method at first glance

[rare sorrel]

@steady hemlock in case you’re bored ^^

[steady hemlock]

Too hard for me.

[rare sorrel]

🫡

The hint i sent in the reply might help if you can figure out how to use it (the idea is that its pretty much unsolvable to any extent without that hint)

[steady hemlock]

||Çeşme or somewhere in SW Turkey?||

[rare sorrel]

nope, curious how exactly you calculated it though

[steady hemlock]

|| Random scrolling on suncalc and guessing ||

[rare sorrel]

right approach, wrong solution

||did you measure the shadow length and scroll till you found a match for the shadow length?||

||(in that case its probably just a measuring error that gave you the wrong solution)||

[steady hemlock]

nope, just guesstimated time of sunset etc.

[rare sorrel]

there's a better way to do it ||with suncalc :)||, but you were on the right track

[steady hemlock]

I'm more into brute force than being smart 😂

[rare sorrel]

hah yeah but you gotta brute force the right way, want me to spoil the answer with the proof in dms (or do you want to try again)?

[steady hemlock]

Will have to give it a few more tries, I guess. || Ireland, Scotland, or western UK-ish ? or maybe WC Norway ||

[rare sorrel]

Very good

||Norway should be measurement errors but not that far off, so yes||

[plucky loom]

@rare sorrel Northern hemisphere?

[rare sorrel]

Yup

[rare sorrel]

for the interested to see how i got it narrowed down a little better

different shadings means error ranges, but in reality because we're cool i actually had 0 error in the measurement (up to the 2 decimals at elast). So you only need to look at the brightest yellow for the potential options (technically only the center of the brightest yellow parts but i can't make the map show those ranges yet)

well only really @steady hemlock probably lol

[plucky hinge]

I went a different route. There are several coniferous evergreen trees visible in the background. This does not look like a garden or park so my assumption is these are natural.

On this map that would be dark or light green areas

Also the little shrubs on the left look very wind-swept that would point me to either coastal or highlands area.

If you combine it with the map you posted I would be inclined to say || coastal washington/oregon (though my gut feeling is this does look very us like) uk/ireland or baltics ||.

[rare sorrel]

Gut feeling was right))

But i like your approach

This video i made with rainbolt and a Bellingcat researcher shows the idea i had that i sent this challenge for (as comparison to see how doable it was without this added info)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQIjDPFgdJA

[shell lava]

||Ireland?||

[rare sorrel]

Close but not quite

It’s actually ||dartmoor national park||

[shell lava]

Ahh

[violet jay]

found this "geospy ai" tool, it does go ireland here

[rare sorrel]

I mean it makes sense, the geography is similar in some ways

[violet jay]

yeah

[swift elk]

I’m fairly certain I’ve been here. Trying to use the spoiler but it’s not working.

[rare sorrel]

Dartmoor national park