Subj: rogues page
Date: 6/1/00 5:24:02 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: gurman@gsfc.nasa.gov (Joseph B. Gurman)
To: bardsquill@aol.com

Hi -

You certainly have an interesting collection of non-solar, non-cosmic ray features observed by the SOHO LASCO coronagraphs on your: www.cyberspaceorbit.com... page.

I believe the LASCO team all agree that they are foreground features (i.e., not solar in origin), though I don't recall hearing much serious speculation on their origin. The length of the various tracks is a reflection of the objects' apparent motion during the LASCO exposure times (typically 12 - 25 seconds). Some of those that appear clearly to be out of focus have been estimated to be only a few meters in front of the SOHO spacecraft, and are therefore probably debris from the spacecraft itself. The sharper-appearing features could, however, be much farther away.

I would object to the inclusion of the EIT image you title "strgte5sm.jpg" with the LASCO images, however, since the long, nearly horizontal feature in it is definitely of solar origin. Whenever we take time series of images in our 304 Angstrom bandpass, we observe these "bifurcated jets" (i.e., jets brighter along their edges than in the middle). There may be some streaking due to the even longer (generally ~ 32 s) exposure time for EIT 304 Å images, but their appearance on succeeding frames, and their origin in solar active regions makes it clear that they are solar in origin.

Best,

Joe Gurman
US project scientist for SOHO
Co-Investigator, SOHO-EIT

> Notice the much defined geometric shape of that object. It doesn’t seem to be of natural origin.

> The sun is not known to throw up huge pieces of debris from its surface.

> That object doesn’t conform to the characteristics of a comet.

> Notice the five circular objects in a near perfect semi circle around the triangular object. Can it be a natural configuration of space debris? I think not!

> The triangular object moves away leaving the spear shaped object at the same coordinates.

> This object emits a strange looking ‘beam’ in the subsequent image and remains in position.

To mikesingh: I've studied the picture, it sure looks triangular. However, one must consider a lot of factors first why it looks triangular or pyramidal.

Before studying the artifact on the picture, we need to consider the limitations or imperfections of telescopes no matter how sensitive and accurate the camera is.

Let us take this for example, the Double Helix Nebula:

This was taken from the Spitzer infrared telescope that is imaging the sky at unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, enabling it to see the double helix nebula clearly.

Though I'm quite fascinated at the interesting formation, however, even with a state of the art telescope, there's still many imperfections on the image.

Shifting to anomaly hunting mood, take a look what I've found:

The round spots surrounding the star are exactly 12. The star itself resembles the Star of David and the 12 round spots can be interpreted as the "12 Tribes of Israel". Very interestingly and conveniently formed.

What's more, The DNA Nebula is conveniently located near the anomaly. So, DNA Nebula+The Star of David+The 12 Tribes of Israel equals a direct communication from an unknown entity. I've checked other stars, everything is round, but this one, particularly, has 6 points. Very interesting.

So, in order to check for authenticity, we verify this from reputable websites:

What are those streaks I see in some images?

There are high-energy particles that fly though space called cosmic rays. When one of these particles hit the camera's sensor, it causes a bright spot. When one of the particles hit the camera's sensor edge-on, it can leave a trail across the image. Exposures shorter than a second will not have many of these spots or trails. However, long exposures, like those from a minute to 20 minutes will contain many of these trails.

What are those dark donut shapes?

Small donut-like dark spots in images are actually out of focus dust specks on the filter wheels, lenses or other parts of the optics of the cameras. Because there is no way to clean the cameras in space, more of these spots may appear as the Cassini mission progresses.

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...

"Raw images" are automatically posted on JPL's Cassini website very soon after the spacecraft captures them and returns them to Earth. They have been translated from the raw data stream into an image format. Their contrast is stretched to make them easier to see, and then they are converted to JPEG format. No further processing is performed on them, which means that they usually display a lot of "artifacts," including horizontal banding, donut-shaped spots, streaks from cosmic rays, and other imperfections that can be removed through further processing. Read the JPL raw image FAQ for more information about these artifacts. The artifacts as well as the JPEG format make these images of poor quality for scientific research but good enough for the public to enjoy.

www.planetary.org...

That aside, when one of these cosmic ray particles hit the camera's sensor, it causes a bright spot. When one of the particles hit the camera's sensor edge-on, it can leave a trail across the image. Agreed. So there are trails or 'streaks' we can see in most SOHO images. But I wonder what causes those anomalies that are NOT streaks?

And would a dust particle on the lens be in focus? If the focal length is infinity, then a dust particle on the lens would have shown up as a very large blurred spot. How come they are so fairly well defined?