Jim Oberg's "99 FAQs About Space UFO Videos"

[JimO]

......
NASA has been telling us for 50 years that the Astronauts have a problem telling distance because of the lack of things to judge it by. Like no trees on the moon. Radar works better. Are there any radar tracks of the teather event? they must use this for closing in on it. Even the ground NASA guys knew exactly where it was. Is there any dandruf on those tapes?

Thanks for explaining your reasoning behind assumptions. It'll help me improve the contents of the 99 FAQs, and there should be a specific one on radar.

No, there no radar tracks on the tether or any dandruff, nor could there be. The passive ['skin track'] radar uses the steerable Ku-band antenna that is slung out over the right sill of the payload bay once the doors are opened. In the comm mode the dish is pointed at a relay satellite and allows uninterrupted TV downlink. In the radar mode, it is used to track reasonably-sized targets from a range of about 10-12 miles down to about 100-150 ft where it loses track and optical systems take over. It would be unable to detect objects on the inch-fraction scale that is typical of shuttle-shed debris.

The position and relative position of the tether during the video was already known from the four days of tracking of the satellite in the time it was flung into the higher, slower orbit. No navigation was needed from the shuttle, nor were any maneuvers required to make the fly-under after the shuttle 'lapped' the tether and approached it from below and behind, passing below it at a relative rate of about 250 mph.

The shuttle lapped the tether one more time in about 4 and a half days more, and made TV observations of that pass as well. But it was much farther away when the optimal sun illumination conditions happened to occur.

Aside from the images made immediately after the tether break, it is physically impossible for there to have been any other tether observations than around the two full-lap passes at four days four hours after break and then about four and a half days after that. Since every circuit of Earth moved the shuttle about 400 miles farther ahead of the tether, it's possible there were more than one sighting opportunities close to those points, but I don't recall what the documented 'scene list' recorded.

For most of the rest of the time the shuttle remained in orbit, the tether was too far away for it even to have been 'above the horizon' of the shuttle and its cameras. Seeing it ws blocked by the bulk of the planet.  I have no clue what Martyn could be referring to in his claim there were many other observations of the tether from the shuttle. 

The tether was only expected to be visible during daylight, and particularly the first few minutes of daylight before bright reflections off Earth's surface inundated the cameras and 'narrowed the iris' [technically, triggered the auto gain control circuits to lower sensitivity per pixel -- see the INCO console handbook I linked to earlier] which made dim small objects harder or impossible to detect.   

[JimO]

Dear Sir, can you please back this statement up with some medical facts. The distance you qoute is very short about 15 meters. If my eye sight was that bad I could never drive a car faster that 20 mph. This vision is the focal range of my eyes. with it I can judge distance and size. I know if you close one eye, you lose this type of vision and the brain has to guess but 15 meters? I did a quick check on this and it is not an easy find. I depends on your eyes and the distance between them......

Thanks for raising this issue, you're right, there is no standardized 'max range for accurate stereopsis' that pops up for Internet searches. I came across fig 10 in http://jp.physoc.org/content/211/3/599.full.pdf but even that depends on factors such as whether the object is viewed against a varying background where relative displacement is obvious,  to viewing against featureless background where raw eyeball muscular feedback deltas must be accurately sensed.

Since one-eyed people are allowed to drive cars and can learn to effectively estimate ranges in a familiar-object environment, your objection to a range of 15 meters is invalid. Zero stereopsis is still allowed.

For purely binocular range judgment, there is a hazy boundary of effectiveness and it would be nice to better document the medical consensus. Any help? 

I also think you are unjustified in referring to 'focus' as a criterion with which to assess range of objects on space videos. The process which I've seen often referred to as focusing/defocussing effects is much more likely to be simply AGC cycling, which is described in the TV HW description in the cited console handbooks, to which I refer you. 

[easynow]

Sorry Charlie but the "Nearby debri" theory is very unlikely 


STS 75 UFO Depth
Link -

[deuem]

Just for some reference, The You see print is about 1/2 way through the process so you can begin to see the gradients.







Visual reference material processed through "deuem mid-range process"

[deuem]

I would think with out something to judge againt, just looking out a window would be very difficult to determine how large something is in space. The simple example below covers 2 questions. How large is this ball? Is it the size of a dime one foot away or 1 mile in diameter 10 miles away. Or is it an atom under an electon microscope. 



The second part of this example is part of a Deuem test. See that nice print above, well within that print are 4 more circles that are almost impossible to see unless you do some fancy work or have cat eyes. The print below is the same print after being processed. Invisible light?



So what we seem to have here and also in reality is that what you see and what is really there is not always the same. Can you see the 4 extra dots in the black print? They are there. For SURE!

[JimO]

Sorry Charlie but the "Nearby debri" theory is very unlikely 

Sorry, East, but any correspondence between David Sereda's ravings and reality is HIGHLY unlikely. What happened to BASIC validation techniques such as asking people if they REALLY said what Sereda CLAIMS they said?

See http://www.jamesoberg.com/2000-nuth-denounces-sereda.PDF

There's no 'zooming' going on -- no focus manual adjustment -- in this video, the effects seem related to cycling of the optical system's Auto Gain Control, which is explained in the INCO MCC Console Handbook  which I placed on my website, which you have not apparently read. Several experienced INCO controllers, with whom I flew shuttle missions, were interested enough in the claims of anomalies, that I asked their opinions of, and that's what their technical expertise advised, as well -- Chris Counts, Joe Fanelli, Harry Black, those guys.

Nuth was a physicist at Goddard who Sereda somehow decided was the expert in systems and procedures that were always the specialty of men at the Johnson Space Center more than a thousand miles away. He told me he kept telling Sereda he needed to talk with the real experts. Like I did. And I have shown you the documents that prove it.

But Sereda kept claiming Nuth had told him stuff Nuth tells me he doesn't even know, much less stuff he actually said.

And YOU believe Sereda. Carelessly so, I suggest. Badly played. Easily debunked.

Blush.

[JimO]

Just for some reference, The You see print is about 1/2 way through the process so you can begin to see the gradients......
Visual reference material processed through "deuem mid-range process"

Since the TSS-1R payload was of known physical size and range at the moment of the video, you can computer its angular size. There was galactic darkness behind it.

How does your process add in the gradient spread? What is the angular size of the blob?

How real is it?

When have you tested it against an image of a space object of similar angular size, say the Hubble Telescope or Mir observed from the ground, and can your process produce REAL images of that object?

Have you ever tested it in that manner?

[JimO]

I haven't played a VHS tape in my home for years, all the VCRs were off-line and most were broken anyway. I've just hooked up my last working one to review some 1992-era STS-48 lectures by Jack Kasher to verify some quotations I plan to use. I'll keep my eye out for my STS-75 tape, I've forgotten what it was supposed to prove or not, can somebody remind me of the issue related to it?

[deuem]

Since the TSS-1R payload was of known physical size and range at the moment of the video, you can computer its angular size. There was galactic darkness behind it. Are you saying something like it would be nice to see the sat overlayed on the object in real size? I need is one object in the original photo that I can use a scale then I can scale the print and overlay the sat into the photo. Easy to do with one standard. Will look into it to see if 1 object is measurable.

How does your process add in the gradient spread? My program does not add in the gradient spread. It just uses the spread in the picture and alters the gradients to show them better. What you see is more what the camera saw. The colors are mine and mean nothing exciting.

What is the angular size of the blob? Don't know unless I do the first part of this reply!
How real is it? Good question. Based on thousands of prints done including many Earth bound standards. I would guess that it is pretty close to right on. Maybe 90% or more. A temperture test would need to be done in a lab with a calibrated camera and the exact same setting on the program every time to get a scientific answer for you. Meaning turn on a light bulb and move a sensor in towards the bulb until it changes from room temp, then move it in again in incraments that might equal a distance or temp change. Continue till you hit the bulb and compare it against the results.
I have to see if the heat changes result in gragient changes. It would need to be very sensitive equipment.

When have you tested it against an image of a space object of similar angular size, say the Hubble Telescope or Mir observed from the ground, That I can remember I have never done either from the ground, I have done many of the ISS in space, Hubble never. Most of my work has been Earth bound with some ISS, Debri and moon work mixed in. Oh and a lot of work on NASA photos that one of our members Will Ease had posted on another site.   and can your process produce REAL images of that object? No!, for that you would need to work with Sanders. His method might be able to clear up a photo. My method is to look for patterns in energy caught by the camera that we can't see on the photo. These patterns are hidden within the gradients of the original.

Have you ever tested it in that manner? No, never had the reason too. Plus it was not designed to do that. From my point of view it pushes the photo in the opposite direction.

Jim, just to let you know, I had stopped after I fished the 4 programs. A lot of work was done to attempt to measure things and get Math numbers out of the product. Then the variables crept in. Thousands of consumer cameras and videos all at different setting, film speed, atmospheric conditions, shaking and the list goes on. And worst of all, I could never get this info from anyone. But we are working on trying to measure standards and use the Inverse Square laws.

[easynow]

There's no 'zooming' going on

HaHA! lol ... with that statement, you just debunked yourself and proves you have no clue what your talking about.

I'll keep my eye out for my STS-75 tape

We already know you have no intention of ever posting it. 

[ArMaP]

If I am out in a snowstorm I focus right past the flakes and see the road as far as they will let me. Everything closer to my eyes gets out of focus and blured out to nothing. Same with a camera. With a photo camera you can hold the frame on long exposure and grab a lot more light but with video going at speed the camera focus range is subject to a setting for the frame length.

I agree with everything you said except the above, as there's one difference between our vision and a camera's "vision", our brains remove from the "scene" things that it considers not relevant to what we are doing at the time, so not only are the snowflakes out of focus, out brains ignore them, so although they are still there and out of focus we treat them as invisible.

That's what happens with people that use glasses, we get used to seeing the glasses' structure as if it wasn't there. That's also why there are so many cases of photos with things people didn't see at the time the photo was taken.

[JimO]

HaHA! lol ... with that statement, you just debunked yourself and proves you have no clue what your talking about.

You got me -- seems there is some remote-control zooming, but no manual focus adjustment. My bad.

The brain f4rt is worse since I had recently used the zoom/unzoom actions to try to make a point about the distortion of the tether image.  Even as the length of the screen image expands or contracts due to the zooming, note that the image's WIDTH remains constant. This indicates that the screen image involves considerable bleed-over of bright pixels to neighboring pixels. And that the size/shape of the images may be significantly based on this camera artifact and not on actual size/shape. Ditto the notches -- Zorgon may bluster, but it remains observable and repeatable to see how the clocking of the notches is a direct function of where on the field-of-view the circle is located. As it moves, the clocking changes, and as new circles move into the old one's positions, they ape the same clocking. Seems a pretty clear-cut indicator of a camera-related artifact.

We already know you have no intention of ever posting it. 

Since I've never posted any videos anywhere, my good intentions need me to purchase conversion software -- the first set I actually did buy, I couldn't get to work, and it dropped on my priority list.

What is it that 'my' video is supposed to reveal and why would I decide NOT to post it? Please fill me on on my supposed secret inner motivations.

[JimO]

Here are a few more messages I exchanged with Sereda about fifteen years ago. He was clueless then and has remained so.

Example: the idea that Franklin Chang used the 'plasma phenomenon' that he supposed observed on STS-75 as inspiration for his own plasma-drive space engine is idiotic and merely reflects Sereda's ignorance-based reality-defiant fantasies. Proof? Chang developed his theories twenty years earlier, was well known for his engineering research when selected as an  astronaut in 1980, and I wrote about his plasma drive design in a 1982 book, 'UFOs and Outer Space mysteries'. No precognition here -- just Sereda's sillinesses..

[JimO]

...Jim, just to let you know, I had stopped after I fished the 4 programs. A lot of work was done to attempt to measure things and get Math numbers out of the product. Then the variables crept in. Thousands of consumer cameras and videos all at different setting, film speed, atmospheric conditions, shaking and the list goes on. And worst of all, I could never get this info from anyone. But we are working on trying to measure standards and use the Inverse Square laws.

It's going to take me some time to respond because I really don't at first have a clue what you're talking about. Let me ponder it. Tell me again what results would impact the assessment of what we are really seeing in the STS-75 video, please.

[easynow]

You got me -- seems there is some remote-control zooming, but no manual focus adjustment. My bad.

The brain f4rt is worse since I had recently used the zoom/unzoom actions to try to make a point about the distortion of the tether image.  Even as the length of the screen image expands or contracts due to the zooming, note that the image's WIDTH remains constant. This indicates that the screen image involves considerable bleed-over of bright pixels to neighboring pixels. And that the size/shape of the images may be significantly based on this camera artifact and not on actual size/shape. Ditto the notches -- Zorgon may bluster, but it remains observable and repeatable to see how the clocking of the notches is a direct function of where on the field-of-view the circle is located. As it moves, the clocking changes, and as new circles move into the old one's positions, they ape the same clocking. Seems a pretty clear-cut indicator of a camera-related artifact.

No ... you got yourself, I just pointed out the obvious.

I'm undecided on the reason for the notches but I think it may be important to point out that the notch effect can also be created when filming objects that are far away ... so using that to claim the objects are close-by is an argument that's invalid.

just saying.

Since I've never posted any videos anywhere, my good intentions need me to purchase conversion software -- the first set I actually did buy, I couldn't get to work, and it dropped on my priority list.

What is it that 'my' video is supposed to reveal and why would I decide NOT to post it? Please fill me on on my supposed secret inner motivations.

Well obviously your the famous MSNBC "space expert" seen in all the made-for-Tv-ufo-programs so we want to see the copy you have for scientific comparisons.

Why wouldn't you want to share it with everyone ?



But really lets cut the crap already, there's a few folks here on this forum that are upset because this topic has taken over and everything posted in this thread has already been discussed over at ATS , so basically we're just covering the same old ground again and learning nothing new.

I propose you upload your copy and also help in some way to provide the video time-stamps so we can get the original NASA data like Zorgon has suggested multiple times.

Time stamps? You know we don't have accurate info on that because Martyn's intercepted copy does not have them. You keep claiming NASA has the original with that information, but neither you or NASA has ever released it so it is likely they lost it along with all the other stuff they loose like the Apollo 11 tapes and the Lunar Orbiter tapes (which fortunately Mark Nelson(Dr X) had saved in his garage rather than destroy them)

Until we see the original NASA data and also pin-point where the objects really originated from, your attempts to explain away or debunk this video will continue to fail.



The question is,

Do you think the original data is needed to move this old-discussion forward and that should be the focus of the conversation ?

Or ...

Would you rather continue bumping this thread with talking-points already covered ?