harry potter - What keeps Hogwarts (or Hogsmeade, or Azkaban) from being shown in the Google Maps satellite view?

As I understand, those places are not in some kind of alternate space/dimension, but physically in the real world, and the only protection is that if muggles get close, they feel an urge to go elsewhere and forget about what they've seen.

As the wizarding world has little or no ideas how computers work, how can they prevent automatic tools, like drones, satellites, etc. from seeing them, if they don't even know they exist? To make spells that effect computers and wipe specific pixels out of images would require a very good understanding of the highest muggle technology.

Or am I wrong, and there are other protections besides wiping the memory of muggles who wonder by? (like bending light, other dimensions - like how the knight express does it, etc?)

Answer

I don't think that it matters (in other words, they didn't really need to make Hogwarts not visible on satellite view).

Hogwarts is in Scotland, which has a gazillion of old castles - I can't tell you how much because I didn't want to wait for pages-long Wiki page to load :)

So Hogwarts wouldn't exactly stick out.

And there's no discrepancy between having an old castle on a satellite image and having an old ruin up close that says it's unsafe.

Q: Can Muggles see Hogwarts ? (Melinda, 11, CA)
A: ... When they look towards it, as a safety precaution, they see a ruin with a sign saying it's unsafe. . .they mustn't enter. They can't see it as it really is.
("World Exclusive Interview with J K Rowling," South West News Service, 8 July 2000)

In addition, the events at Hogwarts preced wide availability of consumer grade satellite views (Google maps was started in 2005, and IIRC Satellite View wasn't there till 2007) - Harry was at Hogwarts 1991-1998

Comments

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