OSINT (open-source intelligence, intelligence based on open data) - collection of information about a person or organization from open sources.
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We describe the process of geolocation of a bald eagle nest near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. We use OSINT techniques to analyze photos, search for additional images and identify landmarks to pinpoint the location of the nest. The steps of the search are outlined, including the use of Google Maps and Street View, as well as the verification of the obtained data to confirm the result.
Sometimes the photos do not contain clear landmarks or objects by which the area could be identified. It may seem hopeless, but geolocation is still possible, albeit with more effort. This blog entry demonstrates one such case.
On February 10, 2023, NASA released a photo of an American bald eagle in a nest. According to the information provided, the photo was taken on February 8, 2023. We decided to try to locate the nest using a photo that says it was taken “near Kennedy Park North at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.” The image was available on Twitter and archived for further analysis.
Consideration was given to turning this into an OSINT exercise, but it was decided that it might be too difficult for novices. Therefore, a full explanation of the process is provided.
If you want to try it yourself, it is recommended to stop here and continue your research. Everything below this line contains a detailed explanation of the task.
The first step in any geolocation is to look at the available data to identify landmarks that will help determine the exact coordinates. If the available data is insufficient, additional information should be sought.
Analyzing NASA’s tweet, you can see a pine tree, an eagle, and a hint of a nest under the bird. Although the nest is not completely visible, there is reason to trust the photographer’s statement about its presence.
A photo is not enough for accurate geolocation, so additional information or images from other angles are needed.
Given that the American bald eagles that reside at the NASA Space Center may attract the attention of visitors or staff, they have likely been photographed before. Need to find these pictures.
A quick Google search for “Kennedy Parkway North eagle nest” led to a Wikipedia photo titled “East in nest-by NASA.” Here is the image!
And what do we see in the distance? Building! Perfect photo for geolocation. To the right you can see the road highlighted in blue and a building with interesting features highlighted in red. We can use all of this to triangulate the nest.
According to the Wikipedia article, the photo was published in March 2008, but was taken in 1992. The accompanying text mentions that “the nest is particularly well known because of its enormous size and close proximity to a busy road.” Fortunately for us, we can already see the road, so we already know the approximate distance from it.
If the absence of American bald eagle chicks in the nest is disappointing, understandably so. Also found a photo of a nest on an old NASA page, this time showing a single fluffy chick. Although the page was last updated in 2008, the same photo was found on the website as recently as July 2007, so the exact time it was taken remains unknown.
Now that you have a general idea of the location, you need to focus on the details to pinpoint the location of the nest. The photo shows a building, but there are a lot of buildings at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, so aimlessly browsing the maps isn’t effective.
To speed up the process, I Googled “NASA Kennedy Space Center Buildings” and then checked the “Images” tab in hopes of finding a similar building. This turned out to be quite simple as almost all the results were for “Vehicle Assembly Building” as shown below.
You can compare the building seen in the distance in the 1992 photo of an American bald eagle nest (left) and the vehicle building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (right). They are clearly identical in structure. The old photo had a different logo at the time, but other than that it hasn’t changed much.
After the building was identified, its location was found on Google Maps. It turned out to be the “Vehicle Assembly Building”. Using the street view function, the area around the building was surveyed. The man on the map was facing the building seen in the 1992 photograph. The image below shows attempts to align the corner of the building to determine the cardinal points on the target road. From this, it was concluded that the nest is located to the southwest of the structure, and the vehicle assembly building should be visible from the northeast direction.
Based on the fact that the street going south had Google Street View, the navigation was started to look at the trees on the side of the road. Street viewing has been available since 2012, but American bald eagles are known to have been present in the area since at least 1992 and reuse their nests each breeding season. There is a possibility that the nest will be visible from the road.
For confirmation, a Google search was performed for “Kennedy Park Eagle’s Nest” with the “images” tab selected. It was hypothesized that if the nest is near a road and can be seen, other people might also notice it and even photograph it. This guess turned out to be correct, and several photos taken from the road were found, as shown below.
These photos led to the Foursquare page, which featured a gallery of 46 images of the nest that can be seen from the road. All of them are very similar to the pictures found earlier. Although there was no information on the date the photos were taken, this was enough to confirm.
After looking at a few photos and memorizing the pattern of the trees, you can easily find the nest while driving down the road in Google Streetview. Using this information and a general idea of the distance to the building, the tree nest was quickly located. In the screenshot, the building in the distance is highlighted in red, the road that was visible at first and the nest in the top of the tree are highlighted in blue. You can check this by the coordinates: 28.547877, -80.658811.
Geolocation requires careful verification. Although the image above indicates the likely location of the nest, it is always important to double and triple check the information.
First, you need to confirm that there are no other nests in the area. Simple Google queries such as “are bald eagles territorial” and “do American bald eagles always use the same nest” were used. The answers were positive: bald eagles are territorial and they reuse their nests every year. This indicates the unlikely presence of another pair of eagles in the area or an abandoned nest.
Finally, a YouTube video was used to compare the tree. Entering the query “eagle’s nest at the Kennedy Space Center” led to a three-year-old video titled “East Nest Along KSC Bus Tour.” This is exactly what was needed!
The video was stopped at 2 seconds to take a screenshot of the tree with the nest above (bottom left image). This image was compared to the Streetview screenshot (right image below) to examine the branches. A few details are highlighted in the images for comparison, and power lines in front of the trees are also visible.
Task completed. You can be 100% sure that this is the correct tree with an American Bald Eagle nest, as seen in this February 10, 2023 NASA photo. This completes the geolocation process.
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