For what it's worth, it's also pretty impressive with night sky images, if you give it an approximate date & time. (Yes, I know, it's not that impressive a skill, except the process was still pretty involved - no EXIF, postprocessed and stacked image, rotated field of view)
I gave it a (stacked) shot of M13, with date & time. It immediately recognized M13 (no search), figured out the shot also included NGC 6207 (which is already pretty impressive).
It further figured out the shot was rotated. (True, I was going for a specific field of View)
That was enough to pinpoint 37-38 degrees latitude.
From there, it inferred from the light pollution that it's probably Bay Area. (Yes, yes it its)
Furthermore, still based on light pollution, pinpointed I'm in a Bortle 4-5 area (also correct) and narrowed it down to "South Bay/Palo Alto" (still correct)
Given that this was a stacked, post-processed/color-corrected image that inference is still pretty damn impressive
And, fwiw, 4o gets all the way to "huh, 35-40 deg latitude", so that's a good improvement.
Because M 13 sits at +36 ° declination, it never rises for far-southern latitudes and hugs the horizon below about 30 ° S. The high elevation in the shot (no obvious atmospheric extinction gradient) suggests a mid-northern site—e.g., the U.S. Midwest such as Michigan (your home turf), Canada, northern Europe, etc. The star field alone can’t narrow it further than that.
So, in practical terms: the camera was pointed toward Hercules to capture M 13 and nearby NGC 6207, almost certainly from a mid-northern latitude location on Earth.
Yep, you need date and time to get closer, sorry. 4/27, around 11pm.
That's the impressive part. "M13 is in northern latitudes" is not particularly amazing by itself :)
And even in EXIF-stripped pictures, the creation date/time is often correct, which means for practical purposes - worth a shot.
But it's interesting to see it's completely making up the "mid-northern side". That's seven degrees of latitude off.
I'm curious what happens if you tell it date and time, and if it still sticks to its story. (I don't think I've told o3 about the Bay Area, it's not in memory, but... who knows ;)
I gave it a (stacked) shot of M13, with date & time. It immediately recognized M13 (no search), figured out the shot also included NGC 6207 (which is already pretty impressive).
It further figured out the shot was rotated. (True, I was going for a specific field of View)
That was enough to pinpoint 37-38 degrees latitude.
From there, it inferred from the light pollution that it's probably Bay Area. (Yes, yes it its)
Furthermore, still based on light pollution, pinpointed I'm in a Bortle 4-5 area (also correct) and narrowed it down to "South Bay/Palo Alto" (still correct)
Given that this was a stacked, post-processed/color-corrected image that inference is still pretty damn impressive
And, fwiw, 4o gets all the way to "huh, 35-40 deg latitude", so that's a good improvement.
[Image link](https://photos.app.goo.gl/2P7NFKn8ZycNhrXn7) here if you want to try