


That's why experts say images taken by a private-sector satellite company and released by the Australian government provide a clue that needs investigating, but they aren't conclusive evidence that the objects in the images are from the missing Boeing 777.



"It would be very nice if you could see a whole wing floating there, then you could say, 'OK that's an airplane,"' O'Connor said. "When you're looking at something like this, you can't tell what it is."

One of the objects was almost 80 feet (24 metres) long and the other was about 15 feet (5 metres) long, according to John Young, manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's emergency response division. The images were taken March 16, but Australian officials say it took time to analyze them before they were released.


The search was expected to resume at daylight in the area, about 7 p.m. Eastern time in the U.S.



Commercial satellites may be able to pick up stripes on a parking lot by using interpretation software and the contrast of the colours of the stripes and asphalt, but a similar size object in the ocean could easily be missed, said Joseph Bermudez Jr., chief analytics officer and co-founder AllSource Analysis, which specializes in satellite imagery.



A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said that as far as he knows, the U.S. has received no specific requests to review its satellite data in response to the discovery in the southern Indian Ocean.




DigitalGlobe said in a statement that its understanding is the search area expanded to the southern Indian Ocean and waters near Australia in the last few days, "at which time the Australian government started combing through imagery of this extremely large area."
