Mrs. OSINT Challenge 10

Hello, readers! Today we’ll be solving Mrs. OSINT’s 10th challenge: Silent Coordinates. I wanted to try something a little different and give you the chance to participate, so make sure to stick around until the end.

Let’s get started!

Challenge 10

Tasks:

1. Location Centroid – Identify the centroid of the orthophoto. Provide latitude and longitude in decimal degrees (DD) format.
2. Intersection – Name the main thoroughfare and the nearest intersecting street shown in the imagery.
3. Green Striping – What’s the purpose of the strange green markings/striping visible in this area?
4. Risk Assessment – Identify any infrastructure, economic assets, or nearby facilities that may be at risk if this location were compromised.

Bonus Challenge

Reference Image Landmark – Based on the secondary image, identify the nearest known landmark to the location shown.

The challenge explains there is no metadata in the images, and I was able to confirm this using my own tools. So, what can we gather just by looking?

The first image clearly shows a train labeled 71, and the second reveals a nearby railroad track. My approach was:

1. Conduct a reverse image
2. Find out the train’s route
3. Find the location

The reverse image search pointed to the “Napa Valley Wine Train.”

Since the official website didn’t offer a clear train route map, I turned to Google Maps. By searching “Napa Wine Train”, I scanned user-submitted images until I found a possible route.

The area I circled in red in the picture stood out to me. I traced the route from Napa to St. Helena, following the blue line from top to bottom, and eventually matched the scenery from the challenge.

Note: This is our second train-related challenge so far. I plan to explore these types of challenges more deeply and will hopefully share a tool or methodology to streamline the process in future posts.

Next stop is finding the centroid of the orthophoto. After matching the orthophoto with Google Earth, I determined the centroid coordinates to be: 38.477724002366394, -122.4366843095485.

The main road seen in the picture is CA-128, and as you can see in the image below, the nearest intersection is Zinfandel Ln.

Now if you follow the green stripe you will soon find out that the purpose of this marking is to designate a bike lane. These lanes are used to indicate safe spaces for cyclists along the road.

Solutions

1. Location Centroid on Google Earth: 38.477724002366394, -122.4366843095485
2. Intersection – Name the main thoroughfare: CA-128, St Helena Highway, California
   Name the nearest intersecting street shown in the imagery: Zinfandel Ln
3. Green Striping – What’s the purpose of the strange green markings/striping visible in this area?
   Solution: This is a bike lane.

Remaining Tasks

I chose not to address the Risk Assessment or Bonus Challenge in this post.

But here’s where you come in:

Use the coordinates I’ve provided to complete the challenge! Share your findings in the comments, in your own blog post, or on Mrs. OSINT’s website here.

I hope you enjoyed today’s exercise. Challenges like this are an excellent way to refine your observation skills and strengthen your geolocation techniques using open-source tools.

Looking forward to the next one!

Resources

• https://www.mrsosint.com/challenge-10/