Identifying Distant Features

[Slim]

This is a pic taken yesterday looking west into Warwickshire from Little Orton, a village in Leicestershire. One some days there's a pointy little hill on the horizon, just visible with the naked eye. It's just under the red arrow in this pic, although you can't see it. I've just included it here for context.



It's just visible though in the following pic, taken from the same location using a zoom lens. Just to the left of the clump of trees in the middle of the shot. You can just see that there's some sort of tower pointing out of it; also just about visible with the naked eye on a good day.



For a while I've wondered exactly where, and how far away this hill is. Well - you might notice that there's a little communication tower in the left side of the pic. This overlooks the M42 near Polesworth, a few miles away. Further along the road, I was able to get this exactly in my line of sight with the hill. I took a GPS fix using my Garmin to determine my precise location, to within a few metres anyway.

Then using Google Earth's 'path' feature, I drew a line from said location, through the communication tower and over the terrain in the distance. There's a nifty feature that displays the elevation profile, and this allows you to see where the horizon is.

So by following the line or "path" to the horizon, I was able to locate the hill (screen capture from Google Earth, below). It's Turner's Hill, right next to Dudley Golf Club, 23.6 miles away.

[Slim]

This is a view looking west from the B4116 near Measham. For some time I've been wondering what and where the little block on the horizon, indicated here by a red arrow, is.



You'll notice that there's a communication tower just poking above the horizon to the right. I strolled northwards until this was exactly in the line of sight with the little block, then took a GPS fix on my position.

It took me a while to find the communication tower using aerial photos on Google Maps and Street View, but it is a little over a mile away from the location of the camera, just NE of Measham.

So once again I drew a line using the 'path' tool on Google Earth from the camera location through the communication tower, over the terrain to the west. Then I located the point where the line meets the horizon, and found the mystery "block". It is Humphries House at Brownhills on the eastern outskirts of Birmingham, 19.1 miles away. It's actually a little way behind the horizon - which makes sense, because you can only see the top two-thirds or so of the tower from the vantage point where I took the pic.