Unusual airliner image within Google maps

[Phil Bunch]

Turn on the "hybrid" or "satellite" view in Google maps and check out this location:

6000 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL

Zoom in until the airliner is approximately full-screen.

The airliner caught in mid-air is seen as 4 separate images, each of a different color.  My ad-hoc guess is that perhaps this is a satellite image taken with a camera that uses a 4-segment color filter wheel, as 4 differently colored images.  Since the airliner moved between photos, it was recorded as 4 slightly shifted images.  The ground images either didn't move during the photo or their images were spatially registered in post-processing.

The airports around Chicago are either roughly 10 or 20 miles from this location (Midway vs O'hare).  This location isn't really on a commonly used flight path as best I can recall from my youth in college and grad school at the nearby University of Chicago.  Thus, I tend to suspect it wasn't taken from a photo-recon plane but instead was perhaps taken with a satellite.

I wonder if the airliner is actually at cruise altitude.  Hard to tell from this photo without more information.  It seems out of focus but that might be partly due to its motion, I guess.

Interesting effects.