Today I set out for the post office to mail the last of the cyanotype prints that had been ordered. That trip to the PO led by several steps, each of which seemed reasonable at the time, the to Spiral Jetty at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, approximately at the intersection of No and Where. If you’ve never been there… it stinks. Like sulfur and sewage. Bleah. The water itself was distinctly *red,* which was a bit disturbing.

Relevant to this post. while I was there I noticed the sound of a very big, very distant engine of some type, like a large aircraft on the other side of the lake. Try as I might, I never could find the source of it. But in looking for the source of the engine noise, I noticed a tiny speck in the sky. I tried to take photos of it with my telephoto lens, but it was so distant and lost in the haze that focus was virtually impossible. From the first photo I took of it to last was about 40 minutes; it more or less hovered in one spot. Ever now and then in glinted, so I could tell that it was changing aspect, but with neither the naked eye nor through the camera could I make out what it was.

I’ve obviously returned home and downloaded the images. While nowhere near as clear as I’d’ve liked, I think I can now make out what it was: a blimp of some kind.

A collage:

With some fade correction:

I *think* this is one of those barrage-balloon type blimps often strung up over car dealerships and the like to advertise stuff. But the location seems odd… looking more or less due south from the Spiral Jetty, the blimp would seem to be roughly over the Stansbury Bay area, about fifty miles to the south of the Spiral Jetty. Doesn’t seem like there’d be much there apart from I-80, and it seems like it’s *really* high up to advertise stuff.

The “gondola” underneath it seems odd if it is an advertising blimp. In those 40 minutes it doesn’t seem to have moved much at all, arguing that it is actually tethered to the ground, not free-flying. Might it be an observation platform of some kind? Some sorta ecological something-or-other?

UPDATE: Blog reader/religious dissident B Lewis suggests that this is a Lockheed Martin 420K aerostat. Looks reasonable:

The question: what is it watching? well, here we go:

Radar blimp often seen in Utah’s west desert a future defense against stealth threats

It is apparently tethered at Dugway Proving Grounds… more than 70 miles south of the Spiral Jetty. No wonder this is the first time I’ve seen it.