Shape family · 13 formations · 1973–2003 · widest pair 10 bits apart
A family of 11 diagrams 8024283422
Every drawing here lies within 4 bits of another one in the group. It says the drawings look alike; it says nothing about the fields.
shape hash: a hash of the ink alone, cropped to its own bounds: a fingerprint of the design, matched in every orientation · show this family in the grid.
These are similarities between drawings, not between crop formations. Three sites drew them, to three conventions: cropcirclecenter.com redraws every formation in one editor's house style at one size, and the other two publish scans and photographs of many hands. Two diagrams that hash together may be one design published twice, one editor's habit, or the same drawing reused — the archive cannot tell you which, and a family here is never evidence that two formations are related.
The biggest families are the simplest designs. Two circles, three circles in a triangle, a ring inside a ring: a plain design has few ways of being drawn and every editor draws it much the same, so it gathers a large family. Size here measures how ordinary a shape is, not how surprising the repeat is — a family of two rare designs is the more interesting find, and it sits at the bottom of the list.
The shape numbers are experimental. M3-6b graded the element count right to within one on 97.5 % of a hand-labelled sample and the rotational order right on 88.8 % against a gate of 90 %, which the extractor did not meet; the ring count agrees with a reader on 35.9 % and is not calibrated at all. Read any number here beside the picture, not instead of it.
The diagrams
Member by member
| formation | date | place | county | crop | site | elements | rings | rotational | mirror | stored size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rambin DE20030628_B | 28 June 2003 | Rambin | wheat | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 0.99 | 575×415 | |
| Kapuskasing CA19991333_A | 1999 | Kapuskasing | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 0.99 | 575×415 | ||
| US19951333_D US19951333_D | 1995 | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 0.99 | 575×415 | |||
| Draguignan FR19810109_A | 9 January 1981 | Draguignan | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 0.99 | 575×415 | ||
| Liverpool UK19900733_E | July 1990 | Liverpool | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 1.00 | 575×415 | ||
| Endeavor Hill AU19891017_A | 17 October 1989 | Endeavor Hill | grass | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 1.00 | 575×415 | |
| UK19731333_A UK19731333_A | 1973 | Wiltshire | wheat | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 0.99 | 575×415 | |
| New Sarepta CA19920506_B | 6 May 1992 | New Sarepta | grass | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 1.00 | 575×415 | |
| US19980413_A US19980413_A | 13 April 1998 | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 1.00 | 575×415 | |||
| Helena US19861333_B | 1986 | Helena | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 1.00 | 575×415 | ||
| Karoonda AU19901333_A | 1990 | Karoonda | cc | 1 | 1 | continuous (concentric circles) | 1.00 | 575×415 |
The element count is right to within one on 97.5 % of a 161-diagram hand-labelled sample; the rotational order right on 88.8 % of a 197-diagram hand-labelled sample, against a gate of 90 %; the ring count agrees with a reader on 35.9 % — it is not a calibrated number.