Were ETs watching our STS-128 astronauts last week?

Originally posted by Nicolas Flamel
reply to post by antithesis.

 

Don't forget the space station and astronauts are moving too. So the relative speed to each other may appear motionless, like the car ahead of you on the highway. An object 19 meters square 3km away might look like the images seen...

Good point, it's an important factor. Fortunately, we know the French rocket was in a highly elongated orbit that dipped down to shuttle altitude briefly -- and was moving about 5000 mph faster than the shuttle as it zoomed through the shuttle's altitude. MOST local space debris is in much more circular orbits, with much more similar velocities to the shuttle, so your point is valid in general. Just not this specific time. Attaboy.

Originally posted by soul of integrity
well, how much was john q. public permitted to watch???

NASA has several live video feeds from the space station, and usually one from the shuttle. Check out www.nasa.gov...
for streaming video. I've found that the processing seems to take forever -- usually a two minute delay or so. On the TV broadcasts via comsats and many cable channels, the delay is only seconds at most.

I believe of life in our universe but I also believe it's a better chance that that image shows our debris rather than a UFO.

Just because we have life on our planet doesn't mean we're the center of universal attention to the rest of advanced life. A mentality like that doesn't help the cause.

reply to post by JimOberg

Originally posted by JimOberg
It's a useful skill to know how to manipulate heavens-above.com and see what the sky looked like from that point. You do need some position data but you can get that from the daily 'Execute Package' sent up to the shuttle crew. All this stuff is available -- not spoon fed, but findable and usable by grownups. This could be a teachable moment!

Here’s the page you want to start from:
www.nasa.gov...

and here’s that particular day
www.nasa.gov...

Are there any clues in the video sound track about where over the Earth they are passing?

Thanks for the clues Jim, I didn't know where to start until you made this post, but I already suspected the moon based on the Earth's curvature in the video.

As for the location, no I didn't hear any clues in the video in the OP so I searched for another video and found this one:



A little after 8.5 minutes in the video (which is shortly after the "orb" is seen) they report being 222 miles over the South Pacific Ocean.

So that gave me an altitude of 357,200 meters high.
Heavens-above gave this data on ISS elevation:
Apogee height 353 km
Perigee Height 341 km
So there's a slight discrepancy there but I used the 357,200 meters altitude.

I have never used heavens-above.com for anything but looking up iridium flashes before, but I'm finding it rather difficult to navigate, so I admit I'm lacking in skills on using that site. I did find the following:
In Heavens-above.com, in current observing site, I clicked "edit manually"

I entered the altitude 357,200 meters.
I saw broken ice in the background and guessed at the latitude at -51 degrees and longitude at -170 degrees, just below New Zealand in the South Pacific. I also used the New Zealand time zone GMT-12
I guessed this part of the mission was around 3:15 am on 9/4 GMT from the data in the Execute package, but I'm not really sure of the exact time in the video.
Converting that to local South Pacific Time gave me 15:15 New Zealand Time on 9/3.

I then looked up the star map using that input here:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6ab73870e934.png[/atsimg]
It shows the moon as a gray dot just below the "E" symbol on the left, but you can only see the "M" as "Jupiter" is written over the top of "moon"

About 180 degrees on the opposite side I can see the Sun (Just above the W on the right side)

That seems to line up with the photograph showing the sun directly behind and the moon directly ahead in this view:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7e5eb5d6389b.jpg[/atsimg]

Also, heavens-above says the moon was full on 9/4 which corresponds with the round orb shape.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/314e447ca5de.png[/atsimg]
And the color is about right for the moon.

But I was never able to find the specific positional data you mentioned in the Execute package, though using the EVA schedule there helped me with times. Any hint on what page I'd look at to see the positional data you mentioned?

And I was able to find orbits for the ISS for the next 10 days but I never figured out how to get the orbits for previous days, it seems really difficult to navigate that, if it's in there.

I don't know if I did this right but I tried and it was fun trying, so thanks for the tips and any additional pointers would be appreciated.

[edit on 12-9-2009 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I can provide a little more accurate timing information. The sequence occurs at 3 hours 45 minutes into EVA #2. The EVA started at 22:12UTC (SR#13) so we want to know where the ISS was at 03:57 on 9/4 UTC. With what you've showed us, the Moon was in more or less the right location but I'm not sure the altitude setting really works properly.

While Heavens-Above does provide the current location of the ISS, I haven't found any way to make it "rewind" to a location at a given date and time. I'm sure there is software available to do this but I haven't been able to locate it.

BTW, you can download the entire EVA here:
EVA2
The sequence in question is near the end of Part 3. This is where I found the time.

[edit on 9/12/2009 by Phage]

reply to post by Phage

Thank you Phage!

My location guess could still be off so I'm not sure how helpful this is, but I left everything else the same and plugged in the time you provided, and got this:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/2246023bf7ef.jpg[/atsimg]

It's similar except the sun is a little lower and the moon is a little higher versus the horizon.

The reason I guessed the location I did, is because very much West of that and it's no longer the Pacific Ocean, and very much Northeast of that and I suspect we would no longer see the ice that we see, so it may be in the right ballpark though not as accurate as someone more experienced than me could come up with. Too bad the "South Pacific" is such a big place, that description makes it a little hard to pin down. But maybe this is close enough to confirm it's really the moon.

Good work.

Now you see why when Martyn posts his 'shuttle UFO videos', he generally refuses to specify the date and time of them.

Too risky!!

Thanks Jim. Yes, I can see now why they try to avoid providing the date and time when they promote their videos!

Originally posted by Nicolas Flamel
Hi Phage. To me it looked like rotation because it changed shaped and reflected the light differently over time. Some stills of it are below. They may be video compression errors, but then again the entire video would be blurry.

Nicolas, you are in good company thinking it's rotation. I used to watch a TV series called "UFO hunters". The science guy on the show was a PhD named Dr. Ted Acworth. He's a smart guy, but I only saw him make one mistake during the series and I e-mailed him about it, and it's the same mistake you made, thinking an object is rotating as a result of atmospheric distortion. This effect is well known to astronomers but of course he wasn't an astronomer.

The photos Acworth looked at were completely within the atmosphere and he mistook the distortion for rotation just as you have. I think the moon is close enough to the atmosphere that it is being distorted by the atmosphere, and this can create an appearance of rotation.

Shortly after I sent my e-mail to Dr. Acworth, he quit the show and they got another science guy, I hope that was just coincidence, it probably was.

starting at 06:43. Someone else on youtube said it was space junk that missed them by less than a mile!! which I'm more inclined to believe. But still, if it was ET, of course they would say it's a bird or thermal inversion etc etc.

I am not surprised some space junk missed the ISS by less than a mile, I suspect that's true. However, I don't think the orb in the video is that particular piece of space junk, it's the right size and location to be the moon, so it probably is the moon.

With all these NASA groupies here patting each other on the back and sending traffic to NASA there is only one POSSIBLE answer to this object...






[edit on 13-9-2009 by zorgon]

[edit on 13-9-2009 by zorgon]

Originally posted by JimOberg
Now you see why when Martyn posts his 'shuttle UFO videos', he generally refuses to specify the date and time of them.

...And yet not once has Mr Stubbs ever refused to provide me with the pertinent data when I have asked him.

Not once.

*But then again, I don't follow him around issuing insults and provocations.


[edit on 13-9-2009 by Exuberant1]

Originally posted by Exuberant1

Originally posted by JimOberg
Now you see why when Martyn posts his 'shuttle UFO videos', he generally refuses to specify the date and time of them.

...And yet not once has Mr Stubbs ever refused to provide me with the pertinent data when I have asked him.

Not once.

*But then again, I don't follow him around issuing insults and provocations.

[edit on 13-9-2009 by Exuberant1]

Well, I hope you then shared that data with the world.

Uh, not to be too inquisitive, but exactly HOW often did you ask him for that data?

Zero times?

That would make your statement true, fer shoor. And meaningless.

More than zero?

Then please, pretty please, don't keep it to yourself -- unless maybe Martyn asked you to?

Why would you ask for that information at all? Can you provide an example or two where you actually made use of it in a serious investigation?

If i was Stubbs, and objective, i would posted the time marks of the videos (ex: this sequece was from STS-xx from 30 nov 1985 starting at 16:15 gmt), IF I HAD THEM. If i didn't have them, simply because i just recorded but didn't note the times, then, surrelly, i can't provide them.
Also, Exuberant1, if you are in touch with Stubbs, maybe you should said to him that his youtube "NASA's UFO which are not sun, stars, moon" (www.youtube.com...) shows indeed STARS (Sirius), (www.abovetopsecret.com...) in order to maybe correctly inform the future viewers.





[edit on 13/9/09 by depthoffield]

[edit on 13/9/09 by depthoffield]

Originally posted by JimOberg

Well, I hope you then shared that data with the world.

I often do.

But even when the information is clearly displayed, you often miss it...

For example:


Even after all the pertinent data were screencaptured and posted in the OP of my 'Giant UFOs' thread - you still ignored it..
The screencapture being posted was done specifically for those who don't watch videos before saying they don't contain the mission data )

I posted the mission Data in the OP - which the membership was able to use to account for the 'UFOs' in a prosaic manner:


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e853b208fe05.jpg[/atsimg]


But even though the image data was clearly posted in the Opening Post and was accurate enough to allow us to account for the objects - You still said the following (which indicated that you hadn't read the OP or watched the video upon which the thread was based):

Originally posted by JimOberg

Of course, Martyn still won't TELL us which mission, or the date/time of the event -- can't provide the critical context data that would allow simple investigation to locate prosaic explanations, oh no, no WAY we can let THAT happen.....

*Are you sure you are the real Jim Oberg?





[edit on 13-9-2009 by Exuberant1]

Originally posted by zorgon

With all these NASA groupies here patting each other on the back and sending traffic to NASA there is only one POSSIBLE answer to this object...

Actually you probably have drawn a box around Nibiru!

en.wikipedia.org...

Nibiru (mythology): a celestial object in the Babylonian poem Enuma Elish, associated with the god Marduk, generally accepted to be the planet Jupiter.

If you look at the star map, you'll see Jupiter (aka Nibiru) and the moon are practically in the same location, making it likely that your box encompasses both. So while I agree with you that's the location of Nibiru, that's not the object we see due to the wide angle lens used which makes distant objects so small.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

With what you've showed us, the Moon was in more or less the right location but I'm
not sure the altitude setting really works properly.


[edit on 9/12/2009 by Phage]

That was not the Moon. THIS is the Moon! Just check the speed it moves and make
your comparison.

Originally posted by free_spirit

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

With what you've showed us, the Moon was in more or less the right location but I'm
not sure the altitude setting really works properly.

That was not the Moon. THIS is the Moon! Just check the speed it moves and make your comparison.

I did a comparison, I think they are both the moon. I think I can see why you have doubts about the video in the OP, let's see if I can help you with that.

First, note that the lens being used on the video in the OP has a wider angle. That means we see more curvature of the earth, and objects such as the moon will look relatively smaller.

Because the objects are smaller, their movements are not as apparent. But the orb is moving as this analysis shows:
(Scroll the image right to see the time index)


The top image is 2 seconds in which shows maybe 7 radii of the object above the earth, and the bottom image is 46 seconds in which shows significantly more than that.

Furthermore, there is another thing you need to consider which is a special problem with wide angle photography, it's called "distortion".

Note how 2 seconds into the video (look at the original video, not my screenshot which is cropped), the moon is relatively centered. Now look at how much closer to the edge the moon is at 46 seconds. The edge area of the lens is subject to much different distortion characteristics than the center of the lens, meaning the moon has likely risen higher above the horizon than this oversimplified analysis would indicate. See this:

Lens Distortion in Wide Angle Photography

Lens distortion, barrel distortion, or a keystone effect is inherent in all wide angle photography - film and digital, especially with lower-quality wide angle lenses in the 35mm and under category. Lens distortion is especially noticeable in architectural photography, where you have a lot of parallel and perpendicular lines.

Generally, the wider the field of view, the more the lens distortion. Wide-angle zoom lenses will generally suffer more from this phenomenon than a prime lens would, and only super-expensive ultra-wide-angle zoom lenses such as the new Nikon 14-24mm f 2.8G, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8G, or Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM will reduce the amount of distortion to acceptable levels. Nikon makes a 35mm f/2.8 PC or "Perspective Control" lens, but this lens is VERY limited in the amount of correction it can achieve.

Each wide-angle prime lens or wide-angle zoom lens has its own unique distortion signature that requires varying types of correction and repair.

That article goes on to explain how Photoshop can be used to compensate for some of these distortion effects if you wanted to take it that far and try to more accurately measure how many diameters the orb REALLY moved in 45 seconds. I think you would find the answer is consistent with the video of the much larger image of the moon you posted which is not using such a wide angle lens.

Originally posted by depthoffield if you are in touch with Stubbs,

Not hard to do he is a member here

shows indeed STARS (Sirius),

So now suddenly we see stars all over space in poor quality cameras and you are able to identify which star without reference points... yet high quality Hasselblads can't see stars on the moon

You guys are really something...

May you get an alien 'probe' sometime soon so you can join the real world

Originally posted by zorgon

shows indeed STARS (Sirius),

So now suddenly we see stars all over space in poor quality cameras and you are able to identify which star without reference points... yet high quality Hasselblads can't see stars on the moon

You guys are really something...

read that topic before you make a comics show here. It was Sirius, even Exuberant1 agreed with that.

And that was a low light filming, that's why the stars are seen. Don't ignore dinamic range and exposure latitude if you heard about those terms.