Collection of Footage From Space of U.F.O's

Here are some helpful links to figure out the STS-48 mystery video, and a note of interest demolishing all five of Jack Kasher's "five proofs" the dots could NOT have been ice.

03/31/1999 - Purdue University (speech): The STS-48 "Zig Zag UFO" -- A Prosaic Explanation
www.jamesoberg.com...

MSNBC // June 13, 2008 // Why NASA watches out for true UFOs
today.msnbc.msn.com...

Apollo-era NASA Study of Anomalous External Objects
www.jamesoberg.com...

Station Crew Watches Space Debris Go By (2004)
www.msnbc.msn.com...

07/23/1993 - Oberg NASA briefing: Mitigation of Hazards of Spacecraft-Generated Debris
www.jamesoberg.com...

Note of Interest
James Oberg
Debunking Dr. Kasher’s So-called “Proofs” The STS-48 Objects Cannot be Nearby Ice

Reference:
“A Scientific Analysis of the Videotape Taken by Space Shuttle Discovery on Shuttle Flight STS-48 Showing Sharply Accelerating Objects”. Jack Kasher, PhD, U of Nebraska at Omaha, June 30, 1994 (supported in part by a grant from the Fund for UFO Research).
MUFON 1994 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, pages 108-136
www.nicap.org...


Kasher: “I realize that I have spent a great deal of time proving that the main object in the videotape was not a ice particle (perhaps some would think an excessive amount of time). But I think that it is absolutely necessary that I do so. As I showed above, there are only two possible explanations--that the objects were ice particles near the Shuttle, or that they were spacecraft maneuvering out in space away from the Shuttle. The ice particle theory must be shown to be completely and thoroughly out of the question, because the ramifications are truly extraordinary if the objects really were spacecraft.”

Oberg: In my own analysis, first presented at Purdue University in 1999, I describe how every one of the proposed “five proofs” fail, and therefore why the observed objects could indeed be small nearby particles, likely ice flakes.



Proof 1: Kasher plotted the motion of the main zig-zag object, and observed: “During the approximately one second interval when the object’s horizontal motion is changing from leftwards to rightwards, it stops for a few tenths of a second before resuming the change in motion. It is 2 or 3 pixels off from where a smooth curve would have moved it. This must be deliberate and cannot be natural.”

Disproof 1A: By “horizontal” motion Kasher means movement along the horizontal axis of the TV monitor. To go ‘flat’ in this brief interval would require the object’s controller to know WHICH of the six external shuttle cameras was being used by the crew and what the pan/tilt setting of that camera was at that moment, while also knowing that nobody inside the cabin was recording with a handheld camera that would have a different ‘horizontal’ orientation. The amount of ad hoc assumptions required to make this ‘flat’ interval deliberate is daunting.

Disproof 1B: The actual plot of screen position (horizontal/vertical coordinates shows some ‘jitter’ (or ‘noise’) in position consistent with variation of the angular position of the brightest point on a rotating ice flake and with simple measurement scatter. This ‘noise’ requires that the positions be plotted with an ERROR BAR of a few pixels, with the presumed trajectory passing through all the bars but not necessarily through the center of each bar. Kasher did not use error bars, and as far as the report indicates, used only his own estimates of position, not another person’s estimates. Once a proper error bar is added, the trajectory is entirely consistent with a drifting object that undergoes an acceleration and smooth curve during and only during the recorded interval of the thruster firing.

Disproof 1C: “It is 2 or 3 pixels off from where a smooth curve would have moved it. This must be deliberate and cannot be natural.” In real life, smooth curves only exist through error bars on real observations, and when proper data reduction is performed, the motion does not diverge from such a smooth curve. The proof fails.

Proof 2: “The two fast-moving particles must have been traveling directly away from the RCS thruster. Appendix J proves that only the aft left-firing vernier (L5L) could possibly affect the motion of the particles above the shuttle (“This is crucial when we examine the trajectories of the objects more carefully”). Their motion is linear (“If a rocket did the firing, the lines MUST meet”). Since the lines and the line of the main object do not trace back to a single point, they cannot be ice particles accelerated by a thruster.”

Disproof 2A: The “must have been traveling directly away” is an oversimplification of vector motion. Particles whose motion is changed by an outside force will enter a new path determined both by that force’s direction AND by the direction they had originally been moving prior to being affected, a factor that Kasher overlooks. Since some of the particles which are observed prior to the thrusting interval clearly have significant original velocity, their post-impulse reversed motions would NOT converge. This is basic dynamics.

Disproof 2B: “Only the aft left-firing vernier (L5L) could possibly affect the motion of the particles above the shuttle”. Factually false. The interplay of thruster plumes and shuttle structure can be complex, and in this case, the majority of plume flow above the shuttle left wing would consist of bounce-back of the L5D thruster, the down-firing thruster whose plume significantly impinges on shuttle structure such as the inboard elevon and aft-mounted body flap. The existence of this bounce-back is demonstrated by RCS thruster data tables showing that aft downfiring jets are significantly less effective per second of firing time than side-firing or up-firing jets (which do not have structural impingement issues) in inducing rotation of the shuttle. This source of the plume flow passing through the region of the particles also thus is diffuse and not point source. Further proof of this bounce-back pluming is that it actually appears on the TV image as a ‘flash’ which has been widely misinterpreted as the light of the thruster when it actually is the glowing thruster plume gas itself. Since the events are occurring in a vacuum, there is no other medium in the camera view to become illuminated by any off-screen light flash.

Disproof 2C: “Since the lines and the line of the main object do not trace back to a single point, they cannot be ice particles accelerated by a thruster”. The conclusion is invalid based on Kasher’s misunderstanding of vector sum motion and on his inadequate technical knowledge of the shuttle thruster plume flow realities. This proof fails.

Proof 3: “Any particle in the thruster plume would be accelerated nearly to plume velocity…. The acceleration is independent of the mass or drag coefficient of the particle. The main object clearly wasn’t accelerated to this speed by the thruster firing, which lasted 0.4 seconds (as measured by the duration of the pulse). So it couldn’t have been a particle.”

Disproof 3A: “The thruster firing… lasted 0.4 seconds as measured by the duration of the pulse.” This is false due to Kasher’s lack of technical familiarity with the appearance of thruster firings in space. The visible ‘pulse’ is NOT a reliable indicator of thruster firing, and plumes with these propellant mixes are often in large part invisible. The thruster fired for an interval of 1 full second as measured by telemetry, far more reliable than naïve eyeballing.

Disproof 3B: “The acceleration is independent of the mass or drag coefficient of the particle”. This is a mind-boggling statement that ought to have flashed warning bells in the mind of anybody who was really knowledgeable of physics. Kasher means that ANY object of any mass ANYWHERE near a thruster plume will immediately accelerate directly away from the thruster at nearly the plume velocity (about 10,000 ft/sec). While the source of the error appears to be a simple algebraic flub, the fact that a professional professor of physics could actually believe it was even theoretically reasonable is dismaying. Acceleration of any object in a flow field is indisputably a function of flow field relative velocity and density, and of the object’s mass and drag characteristics (i.e., ‘streamlining’). Not to realize this leads to erroneous conclusions. Not even to recognize this leads to grave suspicions of basic understanding of physics.

Disproof 3C: “The main object clearly wasn’t accelerated to this speed by the thruster firing… so it couldn’t have been a particle.” Shuttle thrusters have fired hundreds of thousands of times in space, with objects ranging in size from ice flakes to space stations in the plume fields. Never once has any of these objects been observed to accelerate nearly to plume velocity. They behave just like the SEVERAL objects observed on this video – they change motion during and ONLY during the interval of a thruster firing, with magnitude of the change consistent with reasonable assumptions of mass and position in the plume field relative to its centerline. This proof fails.

Proof 4: “The main object remained at rest for about half a second during the period of the main flash (following a shorter pre-flash earlier), and then accelerated sharply. Presumably this was the time the rocket exhaust was moving through vacuum up to the “ice particle”. If it were ice, it would have been about 4200 ft away from the thruster. That half second delay is too long for the fast-moving exhaust, so it couldn’t have been ice.”

Disproof 4A: The existence of ANY lag rests on Kasher’s uninformed misinterpretation of the visual flash as comprising the entirety of the thrusting interval. Even here, he must conjure up a new concept, a ‘pre-flash’ which unlike the imaginary thrust-inducing flash does NOT itself induce thrust. As close as can be measured on the time tag of the video, and as confirmed in Kasher’s OWN chart of the time history of the course change, it occurs during and ONLY during the full thruster firing documented in telemetry records.

Disproof 4B: “That half second delay is too long for the fast-moving exhaust, so it couldn’t have been ice.” Since there is no half-second delay, as Kasher mistakenly assumes, this proof fails.

Proof 5: “Since any particle hit by a thruster exhaust would have to reach a speed of 8300 ft/sec, it would be too far away at the end of the thruster firing to be visible.”

Disproof 5: This “since” is based on the original misunderstanding in ‘Proof 3’ that anything hit by a thruster plume instantaneously assumes approx the velocity of that plume, an amazing physical impossibility. Several objects are observed to change velocity during (and only during) the thruster firing, and none of them winds up thousands of feet away in half a second. They behave exactly as small nearby sunlit particles have been observed to behave throughout the fifty year history of human space flight. The proof fails. Further, the motions of the various particles provide convincing proof they are small nearby objects. First, they become visible exactly when the shuttle exits earth’s shadow and moves into sunlight – exactly as nearby (but NOT distant) objects would. Others become visible as the drift out of the shuttle’s shadow, into sunlight – further proof they are NEAR the shuttle. And ONLY during the thruster firing, some of such particles change direction, ALL of them consistent with a force emanating from the region of the ‘flash’ [which is actually the plume that is pushing them].

Further discussion of the criticality of knowing the sunlight illumination conditions:

Just looking at the image tells us nothing trustworthy about the range.

However, illumination changes can give hints.

First, when sunrise occurs in this scene, the shuttle gets illuminated (seen by a slight light smudge in the upper left corner of the FOV) and the nearby particles appear. Since both the particles and the shuttle get illuminated simo, a reasonable conclusion is they are nearby each other.

Second, the shuttle is casting a shadow 'down sun', towards the receding horizon -- it tapers and ends a few hundred feet away -- do the math. You can't see it because there's no 'stuff' to illuminate in it. But it has to be there based on the geometry of the scene, the position of the shuttle, and the pointing angle of the camera.

Particles closer to the shuttle, as they drift out into sunlight, suddenly 'appear' (you couldn't see them before because they were not in sunlight). This effect is seen on many shuttle videos, particularly water dumps. A dot that 'appears' in mid screen therefore can be explained by just another nearby particle drifting into sunlight.

Since the scene was originally set up to view lightning phenomena off at Earth's horizon, the camera is pointing in that direction. Anything that 'appears' is quite by coincidence going to be in that direction (the direction the shadow is extending), near the horizon.

Of course, if the illumination conditions are not specified -- if the video is shown without identifying the date and time -- you can't easily determine these conditions. To me that explains why this datum is generally withheld by the posters of the 'space UFO videos'. They want to leave viewers in the dark about the illumination context of the scenes – preventing development of any prosaic explanation.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by BIGPoJo
Notice how a skeptic will point out one video but keep mute about everything else. I would like to hear some good debunking on those other videos as well.

Well, not exactly. Your attitude seems to be, "Don't look TOO closely at ANY of these videos", sort of,
"Pay no attention to the green men behind the curtain" or something.

It's a typical response of an evidence-fearful wanna-believer, that whenever a particular case he loves is threatened, he runs away pointing somewhere else...

Actually, that tends to be the pattern in many topics of discussion: accusation; accusation rebutted; but then, no contrition, no admission, just follow with another accusation-- leaving the accused constantly on the defensive attempting to prove a negative against an already unsupportable claim.

And as you wrote, Jim, this is important because of the young minds.

I often wonder if my suspicion could be tested... that the wild opinions supported only by demonizing anyone who dares disagree is almost entirely from persons who have never been responsible for another-- never been a parent, never taught, never known any situation other than self-indulgence.

I note, also, when I have discussions with friends about such things, not one of them responds to me with vitriolic accusations such as that I am some pawn of the government and a liar; instead it is usually "Well, that makes more sense." Yeah. It does.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by BIGPoJo
Notice how a skeptic will point out one video but keep mute about everything else. I would like to hear some good debunking on those other videos as well.

Well, not exactly. Your attitude seems to be, "Don't look TOO closely at ANY of these videos", sort of,
"Pay no attention to the green men behind the curtain" or something.

It's a typical response of an evidence-fearful wanna-believer, that whenever a particular case he loves is threatened, he runs away pointing somewhere else.

To truly understand what might be happening in these videos you have to know the illumination conditions and what was going on aboard the shuttle at that time. To prevent this understanding, most youtube posters OMIT this critical information, and then brag that the case "has never been explained".

The most notorious video is the STS-48 zig-zagger, and it took a lot of research to determine the context -- from which a prosaic explanation emerged. If anybody really wanted to understand these videos they would need to examine that detailed research, and then explain why it was not persuasive in that case -- before running off and demanding a skeptical investigator (that is, an honest one) do the same 'heavy lifting' for every OTHER video, to produce explanations that the eager-believer will then run away from, as well.

STS-48 case, the most famous. Jack Kasher's "five proofs". Delayed broadcast. All the big angles to this phenomenon of 'space UFOs'. You up to that?

No, I am pretty sure that everything in these videos is just space junk or ice. Just pointing out that debunkers always get the low hanging fruit and focus on that while dismissing good evidence. The main problem however is the hoaxers, they just feed the habitual debunkers.


EDIT - Check out this vid at about the 2:30 mark. Someone did some interesting work on the STS-48 video.