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

[Flux]

Icebergs Elvis!

[deuem]

That explains Hoffman's comments of which windows they were filming through when.

Can you please clear up a question for me. In the above it says inside. The swarm video was done from what camera. Inside or out? And if inside are they not also filming through 6 panes of glass that are treated? This is getting more complicated by the second, but you have not lost me yet. And I do wish I had a model in hand. It would help. I will print out a top and bottom view and glue it on a cardboard cutout so I can also write on it. A good project with the kid later

You also recently posted a 92 minute orbit for the shuttle where as before it was 90 minutes. Is that like telling some one it is 3pm when it is 2:57 or 3:02. Just a general statement to relate too? It might me in reality 92.15.36 minutes for all I know and people would just say 90 minutes. Yes?

[deuem]

The tether was 12 miles long and the objects clearly move behind it in parts of the film.. those must be bloody big bits of ice!

Hi Elvis. Yea they say 12 miles got broken off but we first see it all coiled up. We are thinking wire memory.  I ran some math and if it coiled up with memory then it would be a lot shorter. Only a couple of hundred meters. I'm thinking about a meter and 1/2 coil. 3 meter glow on either side would give me a 7-1/2 meter wide stick by several hundred meters and match the photos better.

Saying that I did find/read somewhere that they could tell how long the wire was. And they all said the 12 miles but they never really came out and said it was a stretched 12 miles.

Maybe Jim can tell us about the straight or curled question. After I have his answer I can run math on it and see how large the glow would be either way. At the moment in my opinion the coil has more of a chance to produce what we see and rather drag would overcome memory I don't know. I also don't know if the release machine has coil straighteners on it or not or just like a fishing pole let the wire out off a spool.

And Elvis, don't eat the Yellow Ice. Thinking of that I wonder if they really go yellow in space?

[JimO]

The tether was 12 miles long and the objects clearly move behind it in parts of the film.. those must be bloody big bits of ice!

The television image sure looks like that. And what can be seen on television is always real, right?

Seriously -- please review the charts at http://www.thelivingmoon.com/forum/index.php?topic=6642.msg94422#msg94422 and view the designated scenes on youtube.

They will demonstrate a feature of this camera in low light with high gain, that creates a grayed-out mask over too-bright regions. Users saw this all the time with night scenes or even daylight scenes with sunlight glares -- they called it 'blooming'.

Once a starkly-bright region has exceeded this threshold, adding ANOTHER bright object to the pixel does NOT make it get brighter or turn pure white. The grayed out areas REMAIN grayed out.

This feature creates the easily-misinterpreted appearance of physical masking.

But if you think about it, you realize it can't be real because the tether is only as thick as a telephone cord [remember them?]. At a range of tens of miles, something that un-thick could only  'eclipse' dust motes.

Make a model, observe it under stark lighting at home. Experiment.

[JimO]

.....Saying that I did find/read somewhere that they could tell how long the wire was. And they all said the 12 miles but they never really came out and said it was a stretched 12 miles.

Maybe Jim can tell us about the straight or curled question. .....

This is another significant question. It reflects a real worry -- would a tether that snapped at the FAR end rebound and wrap itself around the shuttle or snag the hinges of the payload bay doors?

A quick-release guillotine was fabricated for just such an emergency. But it was never needed -- the break was within the deployer tower.

As it turned out, both dynamics theory and ultimately experience showed that a miles-long tether would be held taut and vertical by 'gravity gradient' force, caused by differential strength of gravity.

The bottom tenth of the tether tended to be pushed slightly backwards by air drag, giving it the appearance of a slight bow curve. But it was fully extended.

We know that from eyeball observations from Earth, see the March 1996 log entries on the www.satobs.org website of world-wide visual satellite trackers. I saw it too, from my rural site in Galveston County -- a white line moving sideways across the pre-dawn sky. Knowing its distance and angular size it was easy to personally confirm it was fully extended.

Thanks for asking and allowing the clarification.

[deuem]

Seriously -- please review the charts at http://www.thelivingmoon.com/forum/index.php?topic=6642.msg94422#msg94422 and view the designated scenes on youtube.

They will demonstrate a feature of this camera in low light with high gain, that creates a grayed-out mask over too-bright regions. Users saw this all the time with night scenes or even daylight scenes with sunlight glares -- they called it 'blooming'.

Jim, It did not turn it all one color of gray, so it bothered my work only a little to see within the gray. It just brought what ever values were there into the gray scale. For Sander and I that is easy to work around.

All the patterns are still there!, Just gray. And since I change all or most of the gray to another color it has almost ZERO effect on me.  Do you have a cross over chart that lists what whites go to what grays and we can put it back to normal except for 255

[ArMaP]

The tether was 12 miles long and the objects clearly move behind it in parts of the film.. those must be bloody big bits of ice!

I ask this to all people that say that: what makes you think that the objects move behind the tether?

Usually, I don't get straight answers.

[ArMaP]

And I do wish I had a model in hand. It would help.

You can try this.

[JimO]

Can you please clear up a question for me. In the above it says inside. The swarm video was done from what camera. Inside or out? And if inside are they not also filming through 6 panes of glass that are treated? This is getting more complicated by the second, but you have not lost me yet. And I do wish I had a model in hand. It would help. I will print out a top and bottom view and glue it on a cardboard cutout so I can also write on it. A good project with the kid later......

I use models too, had some on console. And held my right hand up, thumb and forefinger extended and ring finger extended 90 degrees, a lot.

The cameras are identified on the Scene List, the one that took the famous 'swarm' sequence was camera 'C' on the payload bay aft bulkhead.

[deuem]

I ask this to all people that say that: what makes you think that the objects move behind the tether?

Usually, I don't get straight answers.

Because that's the way it looks like on film! A lot depends on if it is curled up or straight at the time. I am not biting on it being a perfect 1 inch cable stretched out 12 miles. Not yet. Math to do. If it was 12 miles stretched out and even glowing then either object could be on top maybe at any moment depending on which one was brighter at the time. I got some number crunching to do in CAD to size this thing as best as I can. It seems we have it on film looking like several different thicknesses. But I want to talk numbers first, get hem in the picture.  Sorry, not a straight answer.

Thanks for the model, We will do it on the week end together.

I also need to understand what shape the crystals are. Flat like snow flakes or balls. The reference I read so far says they ball up. So far I am finding at least 3 distinctive patterns. One of them matches balls with very concentric ring as I would expect but the other 2 do not. Still need other cases to build up a standards base to judge against.

ArMaP, while were here, What is your take. Front or behind?

[Elvis Hendrix]

I ask this to all people that say that: what makes you think that the objects move behind the tether?

Usually, I don't get straight answers.

Clearly Behind..



And again.. Behind.





Oh.. and Again.. Behind.

[JimO]

Jim, It did not turn it all one color of gray, so it bothered my work only a little to see within the gray. It just brought what ever values were there into the gray scale. For Sander and I that is easy to work around.

All the patterns are still there!, Just gray. And since I change all or most of the gray to another color it has almost ZERO effect on me.  Do you have a cross over chart that lists what whites go to what grays and we can put it back to normal except for 255

I just don't see how. What indicates that you're processing anything but enhanced noise? If such a process works, why isn't the whole world using it instead of just you guys?

[JimO]

Because that's the way it looks like on film! A lot depends on if it is curled up or straight at the time. I am not biting on it being a perfect 1 inch cable stretched out 12 miles. ....

Do you concede that ground observers saw it fully extended? We know how to measure angular size. And gravity gradient exerts a powerful tension on a line that size. What was observed was consistent with what was predicted. By all means, argue a different interpretation, but do so with real math.

[JimO]

...

You also recently posted a 92 minute orbit for the shuttle where as before it was 90 minutes. Is that like telling some one it is 3pm when it is 2:57 or 3:02. Just a general statement to relate too? It might me in reality 92.15.36 minutes for all I know and people would just say 90 minutes. Yes?

"90 minutes" is just a round number, the period depends on altitude, and for shuttles could be as high as 93 minutes.

The tether sat was slung into a higher, slower orbit, its why the shuttle's lower orbit made it overtake the tether from behind after four days.  And then do again ANOTHER four days more.

[JimO]

Hi Elvis. Yea they say 12 miles got broken off but we first see it all coiled up. We are thinking wire memory.  I ran some math and if it coiled up with memory then it would be a lot shorter. Only a couple of hundred meters.....

What math? Is it a reality-based model that's been verified in the real world?

And you don't see it 'all coiled up'. The bottom hundred meters or so is all that's visible and it went slack at the break. Four days later, it's mostly pulled taut, listen to what the crew describes.

Actually, it would be helpful to write down a time-tagged transcript of all tether-related comments on the three tapes. This could be a collaborative effort, post partial drafts here for editing.