STS-75 Tether Incident - Mystery solved! Breaking News!

reply to post by nablator


Balez beat me to it Oh well. I was just going to source your earlier post anyway Balez

Nablator, other 'objects' also make similar strange turns, the trick is to isolate each object and only watch that one object the whole way through the clip as long as it's visible. You'll notice some really wierd things.

About your comment on Ice Particles or Urine, etc. It could well be, and in my mind they are still valid theories. What would really help in asking these questions would be if we knew where the camera is on the shuttle (inside or outside, facing fore, aft?) and if we could essemble some sort of image depicting the location of the shuttle, the location of the tether, and the location of the Earth, with distances marked.

Unfortunately, Balez and I can't seem to find this data from NASA, and it should damned well be there somewhere, right?

I just want to be clear, I'm down to 3 theories that could be true, in my own scouring of this case. It could be:
1) Tether Particles from the snap, behaving in currently unexplainable ways.
2) Other debris, as you pointed out, behaving in currently unexplainable ways.
3) Spaceships, behaving in logical, but currently unexplainable ways.

All 3 theories at this point remain possible in my view, and I apologize if it seems at times I am 'leaning' toward one of them being correct. I just want to point out that all 3, including the 3rd one are possible solutions here, at this point in our investigations.

-WFA

reply to post by Balez


Thanks Balez, I missed that one. Interesting. It looks like all UFOs are slightly pushed downward, but the path of the slowest is more obviously deflected. Could this force be the radiation pressure? It is constant, and would move them in a parabolic path. This path doesn't look very parabolic, but the camera zooms in and out and doesn't go back to the same setting during the descending part of the path. And there's perspective too, that may skew things a bit. So, well, I'm not sure.

reply to post by WitnessFromAfar

About your comment on Ice Particles or Urine, etc. It could well be, and in my mind they are still valid theories. What would really help in asking these questions would be if we knew where the camera is on the shuttle (inside or outside, facing fore, aft?) and if we could essemble some sort of image depicting the location of the shuttle, the location of the tether, and the location of the Earth, with distances marked.

Unfortunately, Balez and I can't seem to find this data from NASA, and it should damned well be there somewhere, right?

Everything is not available from NASA... and why do these informations matter anyway? The only relevant information is the direction of sunlight. If you're thinking about big debris (those tracked by NASA), or debris from the snap (why would this create so many particles?), there is no reason why they should stay in the field of view. They are not orbiting the tether either, most of them are moving in a straight path. In my opinion, the only possible debris are very small and close to the camera.

Thanks for taking my suggestion seriously, many people dismiss theories that don't conform to their expectations. I'm not a rabid debunker, really, but in this case, I believe we are seeing known, reproductible phenomena, nothing mysterious.

[edit on 2008-3-23 by nablator]

Originally posted by nablator
You are mixing up two different things. You don't see Airy disks when you are out of focus. Is there a series of concentric rings around the disks? No. What we are seeing is focal blur, perfectly explained by geometric optics. It produces an area of confusion with sharp boundaries, the same shape as the aperture. As you can see from the images that you posted yourself, the boundary of an Airy disks is completely different.
Before you lecture people on how light bends around objects try to educate yourself a bit, and understand why the result of your 2 experiences have nothing to do with diffraction.
Read this for example: focus and Airy disk.

Why would I need to read wikipedia articles when I have my physics books with me? In fact, the ones that needs some extra education is yourself:

www.cambridgeincolour.com...
That site contains two pretty darn good simulation that I suggest you play with a bit. The second simulation shows a piece of cloth that has some patterns that cannot be resolved after playing with the controls, and the explanation they give is the following:

Note how most of the lines in the fabric are still resolved at f/11, but they are shown with slightly lower small-scale contrast or acutance (particularly where the fabric lines are very close). This is because the airy disks are only partially overlapping, similar to the effect on adjacent rows of alternating black and white airy disks (as shown on the right). By f/22, almost all fine lines have been smoothed out because the airy disks are larger than this detail.

From my physics book:

Physics for scientists and engineers, 3rd edition, Giancoli. pg. 896
Two principal factors limit the resolution of a lens. The first is lens aberrations. ...
Careful design of compound lenses can reduce aberrations significantly, but they cannot be eliminated entirely. The second factor that limits resolution is diffraction, which cannot be corrected for because it is a natural result of the wave nature of light

I think this is where you are confusing things:



True, if out of focus, the rays of light will not converge on the screen, thus making a blurry image. However note that being out of focus does not make an image appear larger, ever. The aperture size does. The following depth of field test was taken with the same focus distance and a 200 mm lens (320 mm field of view on a 35 mm camera), but with various apertures:


image credit: www.cambridgeincolour.com...

Note the point near the head of the arrow, it looks blurry from the beggining, but it starts looking like a large disk after the aperture size is modified.

An out of focus point will be a blurry point, not a disk. The disk is the sole effect of diffraction.

[edit on 23-3-2008 by daniel_g]

[edit on 23-3-2008 by daniel_g]

Just some things before I am going to sleep.

1. I said in a previous post that I had the idea that the satellite and the tether fell to Earth. Maybe they did, but they were deployed from the shuttle out to space, not in the direction of the Earth, so the filming of the broken tether is pointing to space.

2. They may have photos of the tether, one of the experiments was the photographing of the satellite and tether with a image intensifier, with the idea of examining the high-voltage plasma sheath surrounding the satellite, among other things.

3. There were observed some "space plasma phenomena and processes of interest".

4. It was mission control that said to the astronauts to film the tether after it had broken (source)

5. The tether experiment was mostly an Italian Space Agency experiment, maybe looking for information on related Italian sources can give some results.

6. The payload specialist for the experiment was Umberto Guidoni, a former researcher of the Istituto di Fisica dello
spazio Interplanetario

7. I have found this PDF file that has many informations about the experiment. This page has more files that may be of interest.

reply to post by daniel_g

Please don't lecture again about diffraction. You know what it is, I know what it is, we agree. I studied optics too, 20 years ago.

I claim the effects of diffraction are irrelevant to this discussion. I agree diffraction exists and contributes to the circle of confusion but it is a small part of the large notched disk effect.

True, if out of focus, the rays of light will not converge on the screen, thus making a blurry image. However note that being out of focus does not make an image appear larger, ever. The aperture size does.

Wrong. You have brilliantly demonstrated your inability to understand basic geometry. Don't you see on the diagram both distance from the CCD to the focal plane and aperture matter? The image is blurry because it is a superposition of disks.

An out of focus point will be a blurry point, not a disk. The disk is the sole effect of diffraction.

No it's the other way around. Think about it. Diffraction defines the size of the circle of least confusion. A bright point, out of focus, projects a disk of light on the CCD, as large as you want. This is obvious from basic geometry in the diagram above.

OK, since you don't understand the diagrams and images you posted, here is a better one, that shows an out of focus star seen through a refractor telescope. Note the large disk and the hint of diffraction rings.


With a reflecting telescope you get the disk, the internal darker disk, and the notch:

Quoted from The Focusing Process:

reply to post by nablator


Thank you for making me see my mistakes. Guess 3 days can't really compete with 20 years ...

False advertisment that should be modded.

Breaking news..get real(

reply to post by nablator


Background radiation could be the cause....
But still it does not explain why certain objects go in different directions, or why some certain objects do not seem to be affected.

If these things are close objects to the camera, space radiation would not explain their movements, since the shuttle is travelling atleast at 17000mph.

Still, as i said earlier, the complete specs of the camera would be usefull, first so we can say for certain what close camera objects will look like, or what happens with objects far away with infinity zoom or view.
We can argue the points of this for a long time... Unless we have some hardware to work with, it will only be theories and asumptions not a solution to this.



EDIT: to add;
The camera is not a pure CCD, only converted to work as one.

[edit on 24-3-2008 by Balez]

Since the minutiae of the event seem important, why has no-one yet examined the motion parallax of the tether versus the floaters? The camera jitters sideways at several points, causing the images to shift. From my broader reading on this, the shift of the floaters will be found to be greater than the shift of the tether. Ergo, the floaters are much closer to the camera. Surely someone with video skills should be able to tell us about the parallaxes?

WG3

Originally posted by Balez
Still, as i said earlier, the complete specs of the camera would be usefull, first so we can say for certain what close camera objects will look like, or what happens with objects far away with infinity zoom or view.
We can argue the points of this for a long time... Unless we have some hardware to work with, it will only be theories and asumptions not a solution to this.

There's a lot of camera data given in the following video discussion. MoronAntidote seems to have intimate knowledge of NASA's systems and puts up some strong arguments for a mundane explanation.
Camera artefacts of the type found in the STS-75 tether footage

Expand the 'About this Video' section for camera references.

WG3

Originally posted by waveguide3

Originally posted by Balez
Still, as i said earlier, the complete specs of the camera would be usefull, first so we can say for certain what close camera objects will look like, or what happens with objects far away with infinity zoom or view.
We can argue the points of this for a long time... Unless we have some hardware to work with, it will only be theories and asumptions not a solution to this.

There's a lot of camera data given in the following video discussion. MoronAntidote seems to have intimate knowledge of NASA's systems and puts up some strong arguments for a mundane explanation.
Camera artefacts of the type found in the STS-75 tether footage

Expand the 'About this Video' section for camera references.

WG3

Yes i know that he claims this.
But i wont take anyones claims as it being from the actual specs of the camera until NASA puts them out, if he is correct i'll concede....
But Untill that time, he is just as reliable as Dan Burisch, Billy Meier....

I'm not totally refuting his statements, i still would like the specs to be out there, because, then we would have, not ONE person saying this is so, but then we would have hundreds of experts saying this is SO.

Originally posted by Balez

Background radiation could be the cause....

Radiation pressure from plain sunlight is weak, but the downward acceleration seems pretty weak too.

But still it does not explain why certain objects go in different directions,

Water in space boils and freezes at the same time. Tiny particles will be ejected in every direction from blocks of ice exposed to the sun, previoulsy formed in the shadow of the shuttle.

or why some certain objects do not seem to be affected.

Show me a fast moving UFO that stops or changes direction. Only very slow UFOs are visibly affected, because the force moving them is very weak. Just like the effect of gravity is not obvious on a bullet moving nearly at the speed of sound - almost in a straight path.

Also, small particles get more accelerated than big ones: acceleration = force/mass = radiation_pressure x surface/(density x volume) = constant / radius_of_the_particle.

If these things are close objects to the camera, space radiation would not explain their movements, since the shuttle is travelling at least at 17000mph.

The speed of the shuttle is irrelevant, only the speed relative to the shuttle is visible (a few cm/s I guess).

[edit on 2008-3-24 by nablator]

Originally posted by waveguide3
From my broader reading on this, the shift of the floaters will be found to be greater than the shift of the tether. Ergo, the floaters are much closer to the camera. Surely someone with video skills should be able to tell us about the parallaxes?

Good thinking! I extracted a few frames at 3 min 40 s from the 06 min 27 s YouTube video with VLC player. The floater is moving horizontally at this point, while the jittering is vertical.



The shift of the floater towards the top of the frame is slightly greater than the shift of the tether. Due to the high level of magnification, the large jittering movements we are seeing are probably very small. I am surprised there is any measurable parallax. The floaters must be very close, but since we don't know the field of view, nor the amount of jittering, there is no way to know exactly.

[edit on 2008-3-24 by nablator]

Originally posted by nablator
...but since we don't know the field of view, nor the amount of jittering, there is no way to know exactly.

Perhaps now you understand why I'm looking for data on this case that may seem 'irrelevent' on first glance.

It's frustrating that this sort of information isn't available. When examining a case that I'm confused about, it helps me tremendously to be able to draw an overall picture of what I know. Distance values, relationships to other objects, etc. It may not be directly relevent, but any piece of data can help. For example, the amount of jittering should be measurable, if we had a full mission report detailing the position of the shuttle proximate to the tether by timestamp, and had the specs on the camera. Heck, if we had the specs on the camera, we could even discuss the levels of 'zoom' at different points in the footage. At this point we don't even know the orientation of the camera on the shuttle (which would certainly tell us if these 'objects' are being affected by a shuttle thruster, etc.)

But it's a brick wall that I can't climb without this information.
Not only is it not findable at NASA, it's supposed to be there.

There are two reasons that we have dozens of operators at mission control monitoring every aspect of every shuttle mission.

Reason 1 is obviously the safety of the astronauts and equipment, but Reason 2 is just as important, in my view, to document what happened for historical archiving. We know that there is a guy/gal in mission control monitoring the shuttle's altitude at all times. We pay that person's salary out of our tax dollars, and we pay for the acquisition of the information gathered during his/her shift. Where the heck is our data? Altitude isn't the only missing field here, I was just using it as an example.

Sorry that I'm frustrated Nablator, it certainly isn't directed at you, it's directed at NASA, and it's a build-up of frustration that's been inside of me since we stopped sending humans to explore, and started using machines. Many of NASAs decisions have been just plain incomprehensible, including the fact that we spend millions doing research, only to shelve the data into some classified closet where the public that paid for it doesn't have access to explore even second hand through their computer screens.

On another note, thanks for taking up WaveGuide3's parralax experiment. The results are very telling, even though we can't be certain without further data.

reply to post by nablator

Radiation pression from plain sunlight is weak, but the downward acceleration seems pretty weak too.

Yes, it is a very weak force to be counted into this.
If the shuttle was at a standstill, yes that would be a possibility, but since the shuttle is moving, what ever is moving this dust/debris/ice particles would have to be travelling in an almost same speed.
If the shuttle was going into something like a cloud that is not travelling as fast or faster than the shuttle itself we would see alot more erratic movements from these particles.

If these particles are from the shuttle, like ice (pee) and other such things The shuttle would in all probability travel away from it when it is released, since the 'whatever' is released from the shuttle.

Since the shuttle is a constant for these particles when released, that means that the particles have no way of getting speed, only speed they have are from the preasure when they are released, which gives it a thrust (air i guess).
And if the NASA people are logical in any way, the thrust should be directed away so these particles would not interefere with the shuttle and it's mission while doing experiements.

Originally posted by BalezSince the shuttle is a constant for these particles when released, that means that the particles have no way of getting speed, only speed they have are from the preasure when they are released, which gives it a thrust (air i guess).

There is another vector with a much greater effect than solar radiation, gravity, electrostatics, etc. These floaters probably consist mainly (but not exclusively) of water ice. Ice in a vacuum sublimes. That is it evaporates from the solid phase into gas (water vapour), without melting. Solar radiation on the sunward side of an ice particle will cause a thrust in the same direction as the ice evaporates. This evaporation creates thrust. Any initial tumbling will no doubt become exaggerated until the particle is effectively spinning. That's what many of these floaters are doing, they're spinning. Their out of focus images translate this rotation into Sereda's UFOs, with their so-called pulsed plasma/quantum drive waves (can't remember the gobbledegook terms he uses).

WG3

[edit on 24-3-2008 by waveguide3]

[edit on 24-3-2008 by waveguide3]

reply to post by waveguide3


I agree with you that could be it...

However as i have said earlier, that do not explain the objects trajectory.
If they were going in the same direction, yes it would be very plausible.
If we see one object going to left (keeping it simple here) and at the same time we see another object going to the right, also another object goes up, another goes downwards direction.

Then we would have something that must affect these particles from every direction, wether it be gravity, the sun or the shuttle.
Also this force that affects these particles must be affecting the particles singulary.
If one particle is affected, the rest should show the same effect from this force.

And the space shuttle's gravity is minimal since it's mass is lesser than it's size , and still these particles would have to travell in almost the same speed as the shuttle, if the shuttle is the origin for these particles, we would not be seeing them.

If you see the shuttle as a 'constant' and the crew members inside did not see earth from any view (or any other source as navigational point) they would not know they were travelling at all.
The same goes for the particles from the shuttle, they have no momentum untill they are released into the space, or rather they get ejected out into space, now they have momentum.

And when they get ejected from the shuttle, they have a trajectory that is not consistent with the shuttles trajectory.

And if the NASA people are logical they would not make the particles, ice or what ever it is they eject, capable of going with the shuttle during it's journey, since that could affect experiements.

uh, i'll stop rambling my stupidity now....

reply to post by nablator

Good thinking! I extracted a few frames at 3 min 40 s from the 06 min 27 s YouTube video with VLC player. The floater is moving horizontally at this point, while the jittering is vertical.

Could that not happen if you zoom (infinity) in on a bright light very far away and you have camera shakes?

Think i have seen this, but i can't remember from where though.
Me and cameras... That's like serving beef to a vegetarian

reply to post by Balez


I selected this part where the two movement are at right angles to be able to measure parallax easily (see my yellow lines) over several frames while the UFO was moving horizontally.

The fact that there is any parallax proves that the UFO is very close, certainly not circling the tether 70+ miles away. The fact that all slow UFOs are visibly pushed towards the bottom of the window is not proof of intelligent movement.

So much for David Serada's nonsense. He's a fraud/kook/idiot, choose the appropriate denomination.