Good view of a bolide meteor filmed by NASA

[Smersh]

I'm posting this in SS & A because it's certainly not a "UFO" in my opinion (although the YT poster thinks it is.) I thought it may be of interest to members in a serious astronomy forum. The object appears at 1.50 in the video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udgEEI84Rds[/youtube]

Unfortunately, there is no information as to which shuttle mission (if that was what filmed it) in the notes. I'm guessing it's a meteor but I suppose it could also be space junk, could it?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Certainly appears to be shuttle or ISS. Interesting how the video is inverted (Brightest areas dark, surrounded by bright ring) in the brighter areas...almost looks like it might be an IR camera.

MW

 

[crazyeddie]

I'm posting this in SS & A because it's certainly not a "UFO" in my opinion (although the YT poster thinks it is.) I thought it may be of interest to members in a serious astronomy forum. The object appears at 1.50 in the video.

Unfortunately, there is no information as to which shuttle mission (if that was what filmed it) in the notes. I'm guessing it's a meteor but I suppose it could also be space junk, could it?

I don't think it was either one.....it did not move in a straight line as you would expect of a bolide or some space junk re-entering the atmosphere. My guess is it's electronic noise, a light flare, or even an anomaly that someone doctored in to the film.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Yes it did move in a straight line; I have no idea why you would say it didn't. The camera moved during the event, but it looks exactly as a bright meteor (with the inversion at high light levels shown on the earth shots) would passing in the atmosphere below the shuttle or ISS.

remember you are looking rather sideways at an object that is glowing from ~ 120 to 70 km above the earth's surface from an observation point at ~ 350 km

 

[Smersh]

... My guess is it's electronic noise, a light flare, or even an anomaly that someone doctored in to the film.

I very much doubt it's an anomaly Eddie. If it was faked in order to claim it as a "UFO," a much more "UFO-like" object than that could have been edited into the footage, in my opinion. I wouldn't know about a light flare or electronic noise though.

I've seen one or two bright meteors in my lifetime that appeared similar to that, and I don't watch the sky anything like as often as yourself or MeteorWayne does. I'm sure you've probably seen several like that, haven't you Wayne?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Well, with the black/white inversion at high light levels, it's hard to tell how bright it really was. The camera was filming cities (still trying to figure out which ones) from 350 km, and the meteor didn't appear much brighter. So it may have only been in the -8 to -10 mag class; I've seen a few of those. But by the cosmic application of Murphy's law, trained meteor observers are generally prohibited from seeing really bright bolides.

And UFO's BTW :lol:

Wayne

 

[Smersh]

... And UFO's BTW :lol:

I didn't want to mention those too much if possible, in case this thread gets shunted over to you-know-where. :lol:

 

[MeteorWayne]

Yeah, but we can stick to science, not youtube titles

And BTW, thanx for showing me this; I've never seen anything quite like it. I'd like to find out where it came from but a YT poster is not likely to provide that info...

I'm searching, but haven't found the source video yet.

 

[crazyeddie]

Yes it did move in a straight line; I have no idea why you would say it didn't. The camera moved during the event, but it looks exactly as a bright meteor (with the inversion at high light levels shown on the earth shots) would passing in the atmosphere below the shuttle or ISS.

remember you are looking rather sideways at an object that is glowing from ~ 120 to 70 km above the earth's surface from an observation point at ~ 350 km

I think the camera's motion is what made it appear to me that it did not move in a straight line; I re-ran the video segment over and over and I see now that's probably what made me think that. Taking that into account, it does indeed look like a bolide.

 

[aphh]

There are atleast two possible reasons for the footage and it's bright areas appearing like that,

first is that both visible and infrared channels were recorded and IR superimposed on top of visible channel. Other possibility is that areas that are too "hot" for the CCD are marked. Hot here means too bright causing the CCD to clip.

This is a handy way to estimate the intensity of areas in the image. Since the over-exposed areas would clip, they do not contain useful info anyway and thus it is possible to determine the intensity of non-clipping areas of the image.

 

[centsworth_II]

It looked like a tadpole to me! :lol:

 

[greddytalon]

I dunno guys...if you look at where it comes from (at time code 1:50), it seems to appear out of the city. :shock:
If someone could explain that, I'd like to know how that would happen if this is a natural occurrence. We can see the other side of the city, so if it came from beyond the atmosphere, you'd see it come into frame...pass over the city, then continue the way it does. But all we see is it emerging out from one side of the city. We don't even see it go over it. :|

 

[gslippy]

The video indicates at the beginning that it is STS-80, which launched November 19, 1996. That's an impressive meteor entry.

 

[General_Kenobi]

Cool find, Smersh. It seems either really big, or really close to the craft where the video was shot from. It's odd how the tail sort of flails as it makes its way accross the screen.

 

[tescotacratta]

if it is a missile outbound from the city, it could have been a missile test out of india. on the other hand, sts-80 launched on the 19th so it seems unlikely to me that they were recording. plus, the beginning of the video shows sts-80 over the americas, not india. pretty cool to see either way!


November 19, 2006 :: AP :: News
India successfully test-fired its nuclear-capable Prithvi-2 short-range ballistic missile today, reports the AP. According to an Indian official, the missile was launched from the Bay of Bengal from the test range in Chandipur in the eastern state of Orissa. The test came three days after rival Pakistan carried out a similar test of its nuclear-capable Hatf-5 (Ghauri-1) medium-range ballistic missile. The Prithvi-2 is a road-mobile, liquid-propellant missile based on the Russian S-75 Guideline surface-to-air missile. It was first tested in 1996 and entered into the Indian Air Force in 1999.

 

[foundonmars]

A screen grab at about 1/6 second.

I cannot get over the Edvard Munch-like face of the old man watching the meteor zip past.

 

[Scimajor]

Sorry but this has all the hallmarks of something easily produced in Adobe After Effects. Notice that the light areas (lights from cities on the night side of Earth) of the Earth are clipped but in the "meteor" is not clipped. I find it odd that the "meteor" just happened to be exposed properly.

Additionally, look at both the shape and path. Both don't look right.

It's possible that it's genuine but the weight of evidence is not in favor of it being so.

As for it being a U.F.O., assuming people are misusing the term by implying that it's an alien spacecraft, that's laughable.

 

[MeteorWayne]

I dunno guys...if you look at where it comes from (at time code 1:50), it seems to appear out of the city. :shock:
If someone could explain that, I'd like to know how that would happen if this is a natural occurrence. We can see the other side of the city, so if it came from beyond the atmosphere, you'd see it come into frame...pass over the city, then continue the way it does. But all we see is it emerging out from one side of the city. We don't even see it go over it. :|

The relevant part of your first sentence is it seems to appear out of the city.

Remember, a meteor is only visible when it enters the atmosphere. Before that (like when it passes the shuttle or the ISS) it is invisible because it is not heated. The heat and light come from interaction with the atmosphere. As it first contacts the air it begins to heat up, then reaches maximum brightness as it encounters denser layers. That is completely normal for a bright meteor. In addition, the meteoroid can fracture as the pressure differential between the front and back of the object increase...once it breaks up, all the smaller pieces heat up at once causing a bright peak near the end of larger objects.

So it was invisible on the other side of the city because it had not entered the atmosphere. Meteoroids don't glow in the vacuum of space. They typically burn up beginning about 130 kn for fast meteors, and 110 km for slower ones, and are extinguished well before they reach 80 km except for the 1% of largest which may go a bit lower. About 0.000001% go lower where they may explode and sometimes even drop meteorites; there's no indication of that happening with this one.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Sorry but this has all the hallmarks of something easily produced in Adobe After Effects. Notice that the light areas (lights from cities on the night side of Earth) of the Earth are clipped but in the "meteor" is not clipped. I find it odd that the "meteor" just happened to be exposed properly.

Additionally, look at both the shape and path. Both don't look right.

It's possible that it's genuine but the weight of evidence is not in favor of it being so.

As for it being a U.F.O., assuming people are misusing the term by implying that it's an alien spacecraft, that's laughable.

there's no need to invoke photoshop here. Without knowing what kind of camera and exposure, the way it looks could be completely normal. Now that the flight has been ID'd, we can check out the circumstances.

If you look closely, the meteor was not exposed properly either. The brightest area (at the center of the fireball) also had an inverted (black) area just like the cities on the surface of the earth below.

 

[MeteorWayne]

If we asssume the lead view of the control room display and the later video are near the same time (there's no way to know that till I find the original) the display shows the shuttle just off the coast of South America at either 0746 (0346 CST for the CNN event) or 0752 GMT (based on the GMT display at the top) on Dec 2 1996. (STS-80 launched Nov 19 and was the longest shuttle mission lasting until Dec 7 IIRC) Since the video comes "later" it may have been taken of either the NE coast of South America looking behind as the shuttle headed east or the approaching NW coast of Africa if they were looking forward...or if it was even later perhaps Europe (Spain?)

Again, that's assuming the control room display and the video are related in time.

There are 4 low level active meteor showers as well as the antihelion meteors at that time, and also a sporadic meteor is possible. It's also right after the end of the Leonids and right before the Geminids.

I'll examine the video a little closer to see what else I can glean.

 

[MeteorWayne]

The more I look at it, I wonder if isn't a view of the Iberian Peninsula, the brightest city being Madrid? Have to look at a night view of Spain and Portugal to see how the brightest cities line up.

Another item of note is that stars are visible near the horizon, even through the airglow layer of the atmosphere. That means the iris was wiiiiide open, which explains the overexposure of the brighter areas.

MW

 

[budhenson]

My impression is that you're looking at an island atoll in the background. Probably in the Pacific Ocean. It's not a city on a continent.
If it were a city, the light bloom would be larger (presuming a large city). Think of the other large cities we've seen in NASA IR night-time photos. This area has a ring shape, it's discontinuous between its sections (islands) and doesn't have linear road leads into/out of the "city" which one normally can detect with true cities.
The prior observations about this image suffering from "clipped" areas (black drop out of what should be bright) due to detector saturation are right on. We have the same phenomenon in MRI imaging chains at times. This is a reproducible video - except for the meteor flyby (fly through?).
Meteor for sure.

 

[MeteorWayne]

If the time at the beginning was related though, the shuttle was over the Atlantic between South America and Africa at the time.

That would mean if it were the Iberian Peninsula, they were looking at a very low angle from several thousnad KM away.

 

[gordon_flash]

If you look at the frames posted by foundonmars, you'll note that the bolide comes into view just north (on the image, it could be any compass direction) of a small bright area. If, at that time you extend the track of the object forward, you'll note that in each succeeding posted frame the track, although straight, migrates to the "northeast". This evidently is due to parallax, because the spacecraft is travelling to the "west" in the frames. This fact, and an estimate of angles and first-appearance altitudes, should allow those of you who are mathematically inclined, to estimate a velocity of the object (altitude of the shuttle should be obtainable from STS records).

 

[bushwhacker]

call me crazy but that thing looks to be coming up not down