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jupiterbeings Grey Joined: 04 Mar 2013 Total posts: 26 Location: Aquila Gender: Male |
 Posted: 15-08-2013 09:39 Post subject: Giant matchstick UFO caught in photo |
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This was captured looking due west from my backyard. I would have seen that if it was a meteor. I keep capturing anomalies in my photographs so have a look at this one from May this year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDonswNHitI |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21365 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-08-2013 11:00 Post subject: Re: Giant matchstick UFO caught in photo |
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| jupiterbeings wrote: | | This was captured looking due west from my backyard. I would have seen that if it was a meteor. |
You're assuming it was big and bright. But the evidence is that it wasn't!
Its image covers just a fraction of the photo's area. When a photographer looks through a viewfinder, or looks at the display screen on a digital camera, he's not looking at small details but at the over-all view, the composition of the picture.
My own photos are full of birds in the sky that I never noticed at the time, because I wasn't looking for them. You certainly weren't looking for a distant meteor either, in a sky full of interesting clouds.
The most amusing intrusion into one of my pics I've already posted here:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1241965#1241965 |
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| jupiterbeings Grey Joined: 04 Mar 2013 Total posts: 26 Location: Aquila Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-08-2013 12:54 Post subject: Giant matchstick UFO caught in photo |
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| Sorry I cannot make anything out there. Cannot seem to save image either. |
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| jupiterbeings Grey Joined: 04 Mar 2013 Total posts: 26 Location: Aquila Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-08-2013 13:13 Post subject: Giant matchstick UFO caught in photo |
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| OK. Where I was positioned in my backyard is facing west thereabouts. I have been taking photographs for over 5 years in my yard. I study the clouds, know roughly how high the Kites fly etc. My estimation of the objects height is due to fact that the nimbostratus clouds that covered the sky that day are clouds that have an average altitude at their base of under 9000ft. These looked lower than that so I would hazard a guess at around 6-7000ft. I would also estimate the area in the picture to be around 3000ft from ground levels. It is a big object whatever it is. |
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| jupiterbeings Grey Joined: 04 Mar 2013 Total posts: 26 Location: Aquila Gender: Male |
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| eburacum Papo-Furado
Great Old One Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Total posts: 1587 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 08:56 Post subject: |
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| rynner2 wrote: |
I said from the start that I thought this was a rare photo of a daytime meteor, but the evidence is that it was not "a big one". The cloud base level is not known, so cannot be used to make assumptions about the object, as it probably was on 'its last legs' when photographed, which is why no more was heard of it. Most of it probably burned up before it penetrated the cloud base. |
I'm pretty sure you are wrong, Rynner. The cloudbase is quite low, a few thousand feet -almost certainly much lower than any meteor either you or I have ever seen. If a meteor does penetrate that low it will have already been braked by the atmosphere and would be falling more or less straight down - it probably wouldn't be glowing or moving up the frame in a straight line or smoking. You probably wouldn't even see the falling debris at that height, as it would be too small and cool.
What you are describing is an almost impossible sequence of events that doesn't seem to match the image... it looks like something wrong with the camera to me, especially since the same camera has captured several other inexplicable anomalies that are not visible to the naked eye. |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21365 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 09:31 Post subject: |
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| eburacum wrote: | | If a meteor does penetrate that low it will have already been braked by the atmosphere and would be falling more or less straight down... |
I don't know of any evidence for meteors falling 'straight down'. Most debris fields from breaking up meteors are spread out horizontally for miles along the direction of travel. (I suppose a meteor might enter the atmosphere vertically to start with, but that would be incredibly rare.)
Meteors come in all sizes, from just a few very large ones to gazillions of microscopic ones. They can be solid or aglomerates, metallic, stony, carbonaceous, etc. They come in from all directions, at a variety of speeds. With so much variety to choose from, I reckon that some of them would behave as the object in the photo seems to. In other words, of all the natural phenomena I know, a small meteor best fits the bill as an explanation. I can't prove that's what it was, but none of the objections put forward rule it out, IMHO. And the object appears too structured to be a camera defect.
I'd like a professional meteor specialist to look at the picture. Maybe I'll get one to take a look...  |
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| eburacum Papo-Furado
Great Old One Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Total posts: 1587 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 10:36 Post subject: |
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One clue as to how far into the atmosphere a metor will penetrate is given by Newton's approximation of the impact depth; I didn't know about this myself until the Russian meteor event, but it is a useful guide to the height at which a meteor will stop moving forward at orbital speed and start moving towards the ground under the influence of gravity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth
. | Quote: | | For a cylindrical impactor, by the time it stops, it will have penetrated to a depth that is equal to its own length times its relative density with respect to the target material. |
For most meteorites this means the impactor is stopped by an equivalent depth of atmosphere many tens of kilometres above the ground; the Russian one was stopped well above the ground, despite massing many tonnes.
Sometimes the meteor reaches the ground while still moving at speed - but only if it is either moving straight downwards, or if it is incredibly massive. Once the impactor has reached its maximum penetration into the atmosphere, it will either explode or simply fall in a ballistic arc toward the ground; at this point it will be rapidly cooling.
The object in that photo (if it is an object, which I doubt) is not detectably falling in a ballistic arc, and it appears to be still glowing at a height of a few thousand feet - neither of which attributes are easily reconcilable with a meteor, particularly not a small one, which would have run out of momentum a few tens of kilometres higher than that . |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21365 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 11:05 Post subject: |
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| eburacum wrote: |
The object in that photo (if it is an object, which I doubt) is not detectably falling in a ballistic arc.. |
Hardly surprising, as it was taken at a daylight shutterspeed - how much curvature could you see of a distant moving object in hundredths of a second?!
For that matter, you don't see 'ballistic arcs' in sports pictures with footballs or cricket balls, etc - only video captures the movement under gravity.
All we know about jupitebeings' 'object' was captured in whatever brief time the camera shutter was open. We know nothing about it beforehand, or what happened to it afterwards - it may have dropped like a stone, or sailed almost silently over the next four counties!
More data, such as radar tracks, would be useful, as I mentioned earlier. |
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| eburacum Papo-Furado
Great Old One Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Total posts: 1587 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 11:11 Post subject: |
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Well, if it were falling in a ballistic arc, I wouldn't expect to see a smoke trail nor a bright glow from the object. A meteor falling (like a stone) would cool externally quite quickly in the airstream (remember that inside it is still at space temperatures, so can be quite cool). If this object is at a height of a few thousand feet it has almost certainly already fallen several kilometers at the speed of a normally falling object.
Whichever way you look at it, the meteor explanation seems unlikely. |
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| petrosio Great Old One Joined: 17 Nov 2009 Total posts: 162 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 11:12 Post subject: |
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| At least Rynner seems to know what he's talking about. |
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| eburacum Papo-Furado
Great Old One Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Total posts: 1587 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 12:21 Post subject: |
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I'd like to hear from a meteor expert myself too; as far as I can see there is no way the maths would allow a small meteor to still be moving sideways (and glowing with a visible smoke trail) at an apparent height of a few thousand feet. To get to that height at that apparent angle and still be aerobraking it would need to be several metres long.
That does not look like a bolide caused by a meteor many metres long. I suspect it is either something close and unnoticed, like an insect, or a camera fault. |
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| eburacum Papo-Furado
Great Old One Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Total posts: 1587 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 16:20 Post subject: |
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This calculator may be useful for working out the height at which bolides disintegrate; all the smaller ones run out of momentum above 20 kilometres which is much too high to be seen in those cloudy conditions.
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
However if we enter the parameters for a two-metre ball of solid iron travelling at 40km/s, even though it doesn't hit the ground intact, fragments of the meteor will reach the ground, and will have a 'residual velocity' of 18 km/s. These large fragments might look pretty impressive when they come out of the cloudbase.
Note that the detonation of such a large meteor would be equal to three kilotons of TNT; a respectable detonation, but apparently only barely audible at ground level. |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21365 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 16-08-2013 17:04 Post subject: |
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| eburacum wrote: | http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
However if we enter the parameters for a two-metre ball of solid iron travelling at 40km/s, even though it doesn't hit the ground intact, fragments of the meteor will reach the ground, and will have a 'residual velocity' of 18 km/s. These large fragments might look pretty impressive when they come out of the cloudbase.
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Good find! As I suggested, amongst all the impactor types, and speed and angle variables, a match can be found for most observed meteor events.
I'm now studying the associated PDF... |
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| dannycheveaux1 Great Old One Joined: 30 Apr 2003 Total posts: 103 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 01-09-2013 22:41 Post subject: |
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| Your "Matchstick" looks similar to the "telegraph pole" that I witnessed from the airplane window in the early 90s soon after taking off from Manchester. I posted a reconstruction here a few years ago - sadly no camera with me at the time - never without one since! |
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