Originally Posted by SoulInflicted
The size is wrong. There is no way the camera could pick up the helicopter blades individually as opposed to them being a blur. And there is no trace of a shadow anywhere under the helicopter.
It seems to me unlikely that someone (who?) is Photoshopping this sort of insertion into the GoogleMaps images.
An alternate interpretation is that the helicopter was flying at a substantial fraction of the altitude of the platform which took the image, giving the "wrong size", and placing the shadow out of frame to the northeast. If you zoom in all the way you can see a bit of blur.
Here is a photo I took at 1/400 second at an air show. Given the large rotor blade diameter and other differences in the Google Maps photo, I'll hazard a guess that an exposure time of roughly 1/1000 second might do. Without knowing how fast the lens and sensor are, I can't justify that as likely, but we should expect the image contractor to be using both lens and sensor much faster than those on your cell phone or point and shoot camera.