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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:35
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Banned you are.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Last Conformist
I'm not disputing that MtG saw something. I'm reserving the liberty to doubt he's got a very good handle on how quick it moved, how constant the brightness was, etc. |
I've been doing astronomical observations for 32 years. My first job was on a survey crew and I've dealt with civil engineers, topo maps, and bearings for over 25 years, off and on. Then there's the 30 years of off and on darkroom and photo work. Throw in orienteering and celestial navigation for a bit of overkill. So between those, I have a pretty fair handle on angular dimensions, traverse rates, and color and illumination properties. Then there's the playing with reticle eyepieces and doing arc and optical bench calibrations of telescopes and binoculars.
On a night with good seeing conditions and Saturn above about 20° above the horizon, I can see the ring disk of Saturn with my naked eyes if the rings are not edge on, so my vision isn't that bad, either. (The Saturn ring thing is possible for many people with 20-20 vision and is typical for people with 20-15 or better vision. My daughter can do it too.)
On top of that, I cheated. I saw the thing from an alley where there were all sorts of physical objects to reference observation points, and I took notes and sketched the movements right after I saw them. Then I was anal and dug out my astro tripod and plopped it down and took arc and angular measurements after the fact with help from my next door neighbor, because the thing was so odd. Having nearby visual references and being able to take notes and then check measurements helps. If I wasn't an astrogeek, I wouldn't know how or bother, but I am an astrogeek, so there ya go. There's always slop in any visual observations, but I'll lay heavy odds I'm well within ±10% and probably closer to ±5%.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:35
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There are no UAVs at Miramar, it's a straight fighter and heavy airlift base. There's a few Harriers that I've seen operate from Pendleton, but they're loud, slow, and there's no single point light source in anything near that color.
Since there was no aspect change to the light source, no sound, and no visible object when passing across two different stars (wings would have blanked the star for a moment, or else it would be too far away to see at all), I ruled that out.
Especially since it was originally nearly the apparent magnitude of Jupiter, so that would have been one hell of a fixed navigation light to put on a UAV. (Why waste the weight and create the power drain?)
I don't buy into it being an alien spacecraft, but it sure as hell wasn't anything like a UAV - they fly like ducks anyway, since the whole goal is to maintain a sensor package on a target and stay in communication with that sensor package.
The original transit rate was a bit slower, but order of magnitude close to satellite and space vehicle transits I've seen from Skylab to Mir to the shuttle to ISS and smaller satellites, but significantly faster than the angular transits of commercial airliners at altitude.
I'm also working right across from the end of the runway at Miramar nowadays, so I see about a dozen F/A 18 flights a day and can compare apparent size, sound and angular transit for fighter size aircraft in a variety of altitudes, speeds and apparent aspects changes.
Scale down from there to UAV sizes, and there just ain't no way to believe we have a flying, silent, trans-sonic UAV capable of maneuvers like that. If we did, it would have dropped bin Laden's sorry ass on the White House lawn. 
Whatever I saw, it just didn't fit with any type of standard flight characteristics.
Last edited by MichaeltheGreat on 09-06-2005 at 04:43
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:35
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Too make sure civies don't run into it. |
Civies wouldn't recognize a single, fixed orange light as something they could run into - the whole red/green flashing thing is a standard for a reason.
And I've seen formation lights at night on fighters on take off or late final approach or low flights over Torrey Pines, and they're bluish-green elongated strips.
Besides, why would you test something all hot and fancy in the middle of a major urban area, when you could use Vandenburg or 29 Palms or a zillion other places to test with a lower probability of observation?
We DanS'd each other.
The testers would have data and telemetry feeds from the commlink and possibly radar as well - they wouldn't have any need to bother with visible light to know where it was, and the interesting data would come from onboard nav, flight and attitude control, throttle, and accelerometer systems, not some blank light. Besides, it was a visible disk, so a reflective or diffuse light source, not a point source.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:35
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I considered that too, but I've seen test launches from Vandenburg - they're real pretty, but the flames are elongated, variable, much yellower in color, and they'd change aspect as the flight aspect changed.
That's if they're even visible - a lot of times you just see the effects of ice crystals formed in the wake, due to shockwave and turbulence effects, and that's a real trip to watch.
This appeared as a flat, round disk with no visible variation in color at any time, and a distinctive reddish-orange color similar to that of Mars at opposition in excelent seeing conditions, but shifted slightly redder.
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:35
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"I don't buy into it being an alien spacecraft"
blah
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:35
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If it emits light, flys around too fast making too sharp turns, and drives MtG (not easily amused) and his bud to distraction, it's an alien space ship. If it isn't, it's human, and since MtG already ruled that out...
MtG, ET. ET, MtG.
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KrazyHorse
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Macedonia
May 2001
time: 00:35
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MtG:
a) what was the direction of the original 40 degree straight line flight of the object relative to the horizon?
b) how many degrees above the horizon did it end up when performing rapid maneuvers inside the box of 10 or 15 degrees on a side?
In other words, I want beginning and ending positions for straight line flight.
did angular velocity over this straight line flight appear to be constant? what was the approximate time for 40 degree flight?
did angular speed when maneuvering inside box appear to be constant? what was the approximate time for each leg of flight inside box? From what you've said so far it sounds like it was 10-15 seconds or so.
How certain were you of resolvability into disk? 45 arcseconds is rather small even with a good pair of binoculars. Could disk shape have been due to atmospheric or binocular-related haloing of an unresolvable point source?
Last edited by KrazyHorse on 09-06-2005 at 09:49
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Apolyton Time is 00:35. |
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09-06-2005 01:42
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