Okay, I finally put my thoughts into picture form, and I think I can finally explain coherently what I think we're seeing in the BOLA Picture...
Here is my newly created image:
EDIT: As always, please click on the above image to get the full size in a new window. You can save this image and open it in an picture viewer if
you prefer. END EDIT
This image was made using the above image in the comparisons, where the Contrast on the original LA Times Photo was turned up to (+)100.
I'll start with what we still don't know, outlined above in blue. These are the distances from the photographer to each searchlight. The math that
Extralien referenced above is getting closer to possible, but we need to find out these values. Doing so will require getting the searchlight
positions correct, and knowing the photographer's (approximate) location.
I'm planning on taking my data in print form to this year's re-enactment. Hopefully I can locate someone there who knows for certain the
searchlight locations, and can verify them for us. From what I understand there are a lot of history buffs in attendance...
Okay, now onto my analysis. Daniel, your above post mentioned that you couldn't see why there has to be an object in the photo. Hopefully this will
explain why I think there is one.
The Red lines in the above enhancement (and the red ellipses at their terminus) represent the full power of the searchlight beams. I did this
visually, by placing each terminus point at the brightest part of the beam. After this point in each beam, the power (brightness) of the beam
decreases expectedly.
I intentionally used the image with the Contrast tweaked up, in order to be generous on the distances that the searchlights can shine. We can note in
comparison to the original image that there it's a generous estimate.
After the Red ellipse, I've continued to trace out the diminishing searchlight beams in Green, and their terminus in a Green ellipse. Some of these
terminus points are obvious, as in searchlights 4,5,6 & 8. These lights don't even reach the target, although it is clear that their operators are
pointing them in the right direction. (This is a clear indication of the distance of these lights from the photographer, much greater than lights 1
and 9).
Some of the terminus points are theoretical, these are lights 2,3 & 7.
For the sake of argument that the merging beams did cause the 'object', I plotted these points at the merge point. Determining the searchlight's
power and distance from the merge point will give us exact locations for these terminus points, BUT
Here's what stands out to me as striking, in searchlights 1 &9, those clearly closer to the photographer, the beams never begin to diminish. The
brightest point (outlined in Red) for these beams is ON the target, or the merge point.
Now, if the source of these beams was directly in front of the photographer, and the beams made a line straight from the photographer to the merge
point, we could not clearly analyze their brightest points, as the whole of the beam would be in the photographer's path.
As it is, these two searchlights are coming from wide angles on either side of the photographer. This tells us that if there were nothing at the
merge point to stop the searchlight beam, we should expect to see the overflow light from each beam extending out away from the merge point on either
side.
These overflow beams are missing. (NOTE, I made up the term 'overflow' here, it's not a real term, just what makes sense to me as a good
descriptive term for the searchlight beam after the point of maximum brightness.
In fact, since the terminus points for searchlights 2,3 & 7 are theoretical at best, it's highly likely that the overflow light from these
searchlight beams is also being stopped by a physical object at the merge point.
This suggests to me that there is a physical object blocking these beams at the merge point.
I honestly looked long and hard at this image, to see if there was some way that the Artillery Shell Smoke and/or cloud cover at the merge point could
be blocking the searchlight beams, but as noted in the above photo, this smoke and cloud cover exists throughout the photo, not just at the merge
point. In fact, much of the smoke lies in the path of the searchlights, and they seem to shine right through it to the merge point.
Additionally the bulk of the exploding shells seem to occur above and around the merge point.
Further, the smoke apparent in the lower left portion of the photo indicates a strong wind is blowing. We do not see the effects of a 'tail' of the
theoretical smoke cloud reflecting the searchlights. We do see a 'tail' in the smoke in the lower left portion of the image.
If each searchlight in the picture is the same make/model (which would make a lot of sense to the military) then we should see the overflow light from
these beams (at the very least those for searchlights 1 & 9) on the far side of the merge point, with the merge point only appearing brighter than the
beams individually due to overlap.
Okay, to be perfectly honest, I think there is a lot more that I've learned from the above experiment, LOL, but this is as much as I've been able to
format for presentation so far.
Anyway Daniel, I hope that answers your question about why I think there is an object at the merge point (It also appears visually that there is an
object in the LA Times Image, under several enhancements, where comparitively the SkyTracker image does not appear to show an object).
I welcome your thoughts on this, and the thoughts of any other ATS member on my conclusions outlined in this post.
Thanks to everyone for their time and patience, this thread has been a labor of love from all involved, and the fact that brilliant minds keep
returning to this issue is quite motivating.
I feel there are many more aspects to this case to be investigated, and I'll present more data when I have it
-WFA
[edit on 7-2-2008 by WitnessFromAfar]