There is really not much too see in this video since the base wasn't doing a test, but it does show the capabilities of night vision snooping from Tikaboo. The video starts out looking towards Las Vegas, whose glow can easily been seen 90 miles away by the naked eye. Without having a compass handy, I'd only be guessing at the other lights, but here goes:
| TIME | LOCATION |
| 0:00 | glow from Las Vegas |
| 0:05 | unknown area a bit north of Las Vegas |
| 0:37 | well in the ranges now, probably a communications tower |
| 0:41 | glow from the TTR |
| 0:52 | start of area 51 pan |
| 1:05 | end of area 51 pan |
| 1:08 | unknown light between area 51 and the guard shack |
| 1:15 | guard shack |
Note that most night vision equipment is designed to have little magnification. For use in viewing Area 51 from Tikaboo, it is necessary to have night vision equipment where the lens can be replaced with one of suitable magnification. This is pretty common on the older Russian night vision, which stole the Pentax screw mount, AKA M42. This video was shot with a 300mm F4 Takumar. The stock lens for the scope has no specifications, but I would estimate it has a focal length of 50mm and thus would have 1/6th the magnification. That is, the individual lights of the base would be hard to see with the stock lens.
This photo shows a Janet landing. The very bright lights towards the center of the photograph are at the Janet terminal. The light in the foreground are probably due to lens flare. [Photograph done on Fuji Provia 100F, time not recorded but probably 10 minutes]
The straight line in the background is probably due to a plane or chopper heading towards Pahute Mesa near Area 20.
A not-so-good night time panoramic can be found here. [Hopefully to be replaced with one taken with some moonlight.]
This photo is included here because it was taken from Tikaboo Peak, which is the origin of the Area 51 panoramic photographs. This structure is located on a live bombing range. The photo was taken in May 2003.
The above photo was taken in October 2003. Note that the one of the building blocks on the left was knocked down.
The photo abouve is from June 2007.
From Dod3200.11,
C16.3.4.1. Range 61. Located in the northwest corner of R-4806. The single target is a simulated ICBM site located on the eastern side of the range.
Compare to the Ikonos satellite image here
After careful examination, only the marks on the ground are new. The photo below was done on the same day, indicating that between the two photos that two hangar doors were opened (see numbers in photograph):
Note that some differences are due to the filters used in making the photograph and the time of day.. That is, the roof on hangar didn't suddenly change color.
I overexposed some photographs of the open hangar door. The image below (left) was overexposed by 3 stops and just barely captures a shadow in the hangar. [BTW, I caught a Janet plane as a bonus.] The middle photo is just the door cropped out of the left photo. The right photo is processed in a manner to highlight the shape of the object in the hangar.
On a Tikaboo expediton in May 2004, the non-existent base decided to air out some of the hangars. To the best of the Lazy G Ranch research center knowledge, the hangars contained F117a. Not even the reported supersized one.
In the next two photos, it looks like something is propped up against the center support between the hangar doors. The first photo is "raw", and the second has an artists deception of the objects.
This is a black F117a on the runway at Groom Lake.
Compare to the Ikonos satellite image here.
Some information on these hangars can be found here.
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Area 51 panoramic (May 2003) using Fuji Provia 100F, green layer, converted to grayscale.
Area 51 panoramic (May 2003) using Kodak TMX with orange filter
Area 51 panoramic (May 2003) using Macophot 820C near infrared film
Area 51 panoramic (August 2001)
I've had a few requests to upload the panoramics in jpg format. [Mostly Mac owners complain that the djvu plug in doesn't work, or they can't install it.] Due to the large bandwidth, please don't download these photographs more than once. That is, do a "save as" on the image if you think you will view it again.
Area 51 panoramic (May 2003) using Fuji Provia 100F, green layer, converted to grayscale, in jpg format [about 22Mbytes, due mostly to the grain in the image rather than detail]
Area 51 panoramic (October 2003), TMX, green filtered. Some parts of the image are blurry due to camera shake [about 3.8Mbytes; a 1.4x teleconverter was added to reduce the grain]
This area is visible from Tikaboo, though really not very important. It is one of the atomic test sites that is not inside the NTS boundaries, though it is inside the NTTR (Nellis Test and Training Range.] A map indicating the location can be found here and the official NTS coordinates are on this map [By the way, it's pretty hot in a nuclear sense.] Note that many NTS documents use State Plane Coordinates (SPC), which can be converted to regular longitude and latitude using information in the links below:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/TOOLS/spc.html
http://gpsinformation.net/state-plane-mag.html
Several Area 51 panoramic photos can be found:
http://www.desertsecrets.com/bestpan.html
