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January 21, 2009

Cool satellite image of inaugural crowd

Sunny skies yesterday allowed a passing satellite to snap a photo of the crowd on the Mall in Washington for the presidential inauguration.

Not sure what time of day the picture was taken. But I was surprised to see that the crowd did not totally fill the Mall, as it appeared on TV. They seem to be clustered around the Jumbo-Tron TVs, with plenty of space in between. Maybe it was very early, and the space was not yet packed.

Nevertheless, it's a very cool image - of a very cold crowd. 

Posted by Frank Roylance at 12:01 PM | | Comments (4)
Categories: Cool pictures
        

Comments

Prominent in this photo is... a Giant Sundial! So we can say with some certainty that it was... 11ish?

FR: A reference to the Washington Monument, whose shadow is cast off toward the north northwest in the image. Had it been pointing straight north, we could have guessed noon. So 11 is a good estimate.

I saw this photo linked to an article on the CNN website. The caption stated it was taken at 11:19, or almost an hour prior to when the crowd was nearing or at its peak. Not sure how many people entered the Mall through the security checkpoints between when the photo was taken and when the oath of office was given (when peak crowd most likely was), but I'm sure it was in the 10's, if not 100's of thousands.

Based on the linked photo, Jane's estimated the crowd at 1.5 million at the time the photo was taken (almost an hour before peak crowd).

We ended up by the Jumbotrons by the WWII Memorial, and, yes, there were some gaps. There were a lot of people who couldn't get to the Mall, due to what appeared to be completely overdone security manned by untrained people. There was no signage to unticketed areas and minimal signage for ticketed areas. Volunteers, police and soldiers gave us the wrong directions every time we asked. We talked with a number of folks who just gave up, especially after squeezing through one of many random chokepoints.

It was a wonderful day, and I'm glad I went, but it was a mess down there.

The reason for the gaps, is because the security closed off the checkpoints for each section really early. They didn't want it to be jammed packed in each section. It was almost 2.5 million people.

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About Frank Roylance
Frank Roylance is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. He came to Baltimore from New Bedford, Mass. in 1980 to join the old Evening Sun. He moved to the morning Sun when the papers merged in 1992, and has spent most of his time since covering science, including astronomy and the weather. One of The Baltimore Sun's first online Web logs, the Weather Blog debuted in October 2004. In June 2006 Frank also began writing comments on local weather and stargazing for The Baltimore Sun's print Weather Page. Frank also answers readers’ weather queries for the newspaper and the blog. Frank Roylance retired in October 2011. Maryland Weather is now being updated by members of The Baltimore Sun staff
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