The Air Force Museum of New Zealand published 47 high-resolution images from a 1 December 1938 aerial survey of the Pacific atoll where Amelia Earhart may have crash-landed.
The backstory: Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished on 2 July 1937 while trying to circumnavigate the globe at the equator. A leading theory holds she ran out of fuel and was marooned on Nikumaroro, then known as Gardner Island, surviving for a while on rainwater, fish and turtles.
- The evidence for that includes signs of a castaway campsite and artefacts, among them glass from a jar thought to have contained cosmetic cream.
Zoom in: The negatives were found more than a decade ago by Matthew O'Sullivan, keeper of photographs at the museum in Christchurch. They were shot from an amphibious biplane during a New Zealand survey of Pacific islands hunting for suitable airbase locations.
- Ric Gillespie, Earhart's most prominent investigator, called the complete set a goldmine on his blog.
The other side: A Purdue University expedition is on the island this week searching for the Taraia Object, an elongated shape first noticed in a 2020 satellite image of the lagoon. Gillespie and other longtime searchers think it is probably a fallen tree.
What's next: Severe weather hampered the team's metal detecting, but Purdue said the expedition remains on schedule with two more days of field operations and an identification of the Taraia Object expected. Expedition lead Rick Pettigrew asked for patience: "You don't simply arrive at a site and immediately identify what's there."
Why it matters: The museum released the full set in high resolution after repeated requests, handing amateur sleuths the same raw material the professionals have on one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th century. The images show no object in the Taraia area.
