Whidbey Island Object Looks Like Missile Launch

[Canine]

Greg Johnson of Skunk Bay Weather on the northern Kitsap Peninsula has one of the most impressive weather cam facilities in the nation, including high quality digital cameras photographing the clouds at night.  He is an extremely reliable weather observer.

But early Sunday morning he picked up something that is both startling and unexpected:  what looks like a missile launch from Whidbey Island.

Here is the picture (with a 20-second exposure) at 3:56 AM Sunday morning from one of his cameras (looking north towards Whidbey Island).  Can you see the bright vertical streak on the left side of the figure?   Note the illumination both inside and outside the cloud.  It really looks like the ascent of a rocket.

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2018/06/was-there-unannounced-missile-launch-on.html


What do you guys think it is?

I don't see any wings or blinking lights.

[Canine]

here is the video of the thing:

[fansongecho]

I see that there is a Naval Air Station there -


I had a quick look on Google Maps and was looking for a area where they might be a test bed for launching missiles - couldn't see anything obvious though.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Naval+Air+Station+Whidbey+Island/@48.337575,-122.6731977,1563a,35y,39.09t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x548562f58ebec7b1:0x2c26cc86ecadcd!8m2!3d48.3410904!4d-122.6722573

[The Seeker]

It definitely appears to be a missile 

as for a launch source, at a naval air station on an island, there could be several assorted launch systems to hand

[zorgon]

What do you guys think it is?

Looks like a rocket to me

HOWEVER... it's an H-135 N952AL "Airlift 5" Helicopter with lights on in a time lapse photo

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21461/lets-talk-about-that-mysterious-rocket-launch-over-whidbey-island-photo-from-washington

PS you have to accept the certificate to view that site

[petrus4]

Looks like a rocket to me

Agreed.  I don't really know anything about such things at all, but I was under the impression that missiles do not usually fly vertically, because that would defeat the purpose.  Missiles are usually either fired from an aerial target with the intention of hitting another one, or from the air with the intention of hitting a ground target.  In unusual cases they will be fired from the ground with the intention of hitting something above the ground or in the air, but generally the target won't be high enough up, for the missile to fly purely vertically.

I could accept that ICBMs will need to go fairly high, but I would still expect that they would be fired at a steep diagonal angle, rather than an exclusively vertical one, because they are still intended for ground targets.  That photo to me looks like the photos I've seen of the space shuttle, which was intended to go outside of Earth's atmosphere.

[Canine]

Assuming it was a missile - and it certainly looks like one to me -  it was an SLBM launched from the water off the island.

It had to come from Skagit Bay or Saratoga Passage.

Depth in the middle of either one is about 300ft. Plenty deep for subs, even boomers and not far from Bangor (boomer base).

The pacific SSBNs are based slightly SW of Whidbey, near Bangor, WA.  They pass right by Whidbey on their way out of the canal.

[The Seeker]

 As I stated above it appears to be a missile, or rocket, for those wanting to quibble over semantics; appearances can be deceiving 

It is a time-lapse video; notice that the streak at the bottom of the object that would normally be the exhaust plume does not expand, but remains as a straight line just as a star trail does during time lapse photography, and there does not appear to be any exhaust plume at all

[zorgon]

Airlift Northwest
@AirliftNW
Replying to @cliffmasst and 4 others
Just spoke with the pilot: They were transiting from Bremerton to Bellingham on a standard instrument flight plan, flying in the clouds with night vision goggles. The search light was retracted flush under the nose, but did not switch off and was facing straight down. #HEMS

[Canine]

[fansongecho]

@Canine, funny, but I was looking at the draught of the SSBN and the depth of the sound as well bud late last night. 

@Zorgon, thanks for the detailed info - most excellent. 


Mystery = Solved

#KeepThemComing

Fans' 

[Canine]

So you are sure it's a choppah?

I'm holding off on any declarative statements.  For now I want to see how this plays out.

[Canine]

For those who like to go deep - just putting it out there:

The missile launch was detected at approximately 3:56 AM PDT which translates to 6:56 PM local time in Singapore.

DJT was in Air Force One en-route to Paya Lebar Air Base at the time of the missile launch.

DJT arrived at Paya Lebar Air Base at 8:35 PM local time.

This failed attempt was discretely confirmed by DJT's tweet. Both the words "missile" and "stopped" were deliberately misspelled.

[The Seeker]

This is what is being reported:

http://q13fox.com/2018/06/11/missile-launch-lens-flare-mysterious-object-spotted-over-whidbey-island-raises-questions/

But Tom Mills, a spokesperson for NAS Whidbey Island, said it wasn't a missile launch from the facility. There are no missile launch capabilities on the Navy base at Whidbey Island.

In fact, Navy workers are wondering what it was, too.

"There's a lot of speculation around here," Mills said, suggesting it could be lens flare. "But it's definitely not a missile launch."

Cliff Mass, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, posted the photos on his blog Monday. Speculation in the comments runs from a Photoshopped picture to airplanes. But Mass agreed with Johnson's assessment.

"It really looks like an ascending missile," Mass wrote on his blog.

On Wednesday, it appeared the mystery had been solved.

Johnson tweeted that a helicopter pilot with the Airlift Northwest ambulance service said on Wednesday that his chopper has a searchlight that was pointing straight down when he took off -- and that's what left that vertical light streak in the sky.

"This morning I contacted Air Lift NW to find out if the Nav lights on the helicopter were different in any way," Johnson wrote on his Skunk Bay Weather Blog. "I got a fairly quick response back from them after they talked with the pilot.  Here is the text:

"'They were transiting from Bremerton to Bellingham on a standard instrument flight plan, flying in the clouds with night vision goggles. The search light was retracted flush under the nose, but did not switch off and was facing straight down.'

"So, the path of the helicopter matches perfectly and now that I know the searchlight was in a locked down position and still on, it makes sense now,"
Johnson wrote.

"I know my cameras very well.  This was a unique situation that would have resulted in exactly this type of image.  I never thought it would be solved like this....  What an adventure.

"I know that many folks will vehemently disagree with this assessment, much as I did in the beginning.  I hope they do continue to keep searching for another explanation, but in this case, I am 99% convinced this is the real solution.  I will always leave that 1% open out there because I love a good mystery.....  "

[fansongecho]

The video shows a time lapse of 5 hours and 30'ish minutes, compressed to 44 seconds of images -

I cant tell the elevation angle, or the azimuth relative movement angle to the time lapse camera, of the "missile/helicopter w/ searchlight ON, and depressed vertically down, as reported other's, and picked up by Z'

I cant work out how long that streak of light (what ever it is) is in the time lapse frame, and I am not expert with video analysis tools  #NeedMoreData  -

A51 do you have the tools to look at the camera time lapse timings buddy?