Space Shuttle Over Kansas: A Discussion

[DaveC426913]

btw, I was thinking of an E-3 from approximately a 1:00 or 2:00 view.

This was what I saw at first too. But now that it's been Neckerized*, it only makes sense from a 4-5 o'clock position. It just doesn't work from a 1 o'clock position. 1] The wings don't match up tip-to-tip and, 2] what do you think the sun is glinting off on the nose?

* see what I did there?

 

[russ_watters]

But we certainly have advanced aircraft designs not yet intended for public knowledge.

Yes, certainly.

Note also that wiki is no more a definitive source than is a game.

I disagree - wiki, at least, is a source and/or has sources. A game isn't a source and doesn't have sources - at least no sources that are publicly available. In this case, the manual doesn't even tell us what is intended by the Aurora plane in the game - so we don't even know if some random programmer who doesn't necessarily know anything we don't believes it to exists or not. The fact that it is in the game doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it exists.

Also, as do most people in this forum, I chose the wiki source because it is easy. However, it does include as a source, a book I have, "Skunk Works", which is a primary source by someone "in the know" at Lockheed (the director of Skunk Works) at the time the code name was accidentally released. If you like, I can type in the quote, but what I said in the first quote is a paraphrase of it. There is actually some interesting discussion of the issue - including a statement that the gov't did solicit Lockheed's help in developing such a plane and that Lockheed declined because they knew it wasn't possible.

 

[Orion1]

Russ, what is the maximum altitude and velocity of the Aurora in X-Plane?

The research and development of a SR-91 Aurora to replace the SR-71 Blackbird is plausible.

Does X-Plane have a SR-71 Blackbird?

 

[nottheone]

Since my original posts I got the photographers email and asked him some questions. Here is his reply. He also sent me a 3meg original jpg. His words in underline, he used my email and pasted his answers in.

Hi, interesting pic. Some of my friends and I have been arguing about this and I was wondering if you could clarify a couple of things.

Is it going left to right? Object was traveling from left to right.

Did you use film or digital? I used a digital Canon 40D Camera with a portrait lens

Could you explain a little clearer why you only got off one picture? None of us can understand why you had only time for one shot. I have seen fighters take off at full afterburner and it takes a couple of minutes to get out of sight on a clear day. Mostly because of the surprise of the moment, not being ready to take a photo. Also the area was lower and surrounded by trees so it moved out of view very fast.



Any chance of getting an original digital image so I can see if there are any details I can enhance? I have attached to photo, good luck. This has caused me nothing but grief and, if I had it to do again, I would just delete to photo and move on.



Looks like I wasn't too far off. He was using a good camera with a removable lens and the slow lens thing wasn't really the reason he got only one shot. His story is a little different than what was posted in the other sites. If anyone wants the original jpg leave me a note with an email and make sure you don't have an attachment limit.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yes, certainly. I disagree - wiki, at least, is a source and/or has sources. A game isn't a source and doesn't have sources - at least no sources that are publicly available. In this case, the manual doesn't even tell us what is intended by the Aurora plane in the game - so we don't even know if some random programmer who doesn't necessarily know anything we don't believes it to exists or not. The fact that it is in the game doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it exists.

Also, as do most people in this forum, I chose the wiki source because it is easy. However, it does include as a source, a book I have, "Skunk Works", which is a primary source by someone "in the know" at Lockheed (the director of Skunk Works) at the time the code name was accidentally released. If you like, I can type in the quote, but what I said in the first quote is a paraphrase of it. There is actually some interesting discussion of the issue - including a statement that the gov't did solicit Lockheed's help in developing such a plane and that Lockheed declined because they knew it wasn't possible.

By definition there is no such thing as a qualified source for projects that are still classified. Therefore there is no way to discuss the subject.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Russ, what is the maximum altitude and velocity of the Aurora in X-Plane?

The research and development of a SR-91 Aurora to replace the SR-71 Blackbird is plausible.

Does X-Plane have a SR-71 Blackbird?

This subject [Aurora] is closed.

 

[DaveC426913]

A quick dialing up of the saturation reveals a couple of things:

1] There's a distinct colour difference between the "engine nacelle" and the rest of the craft. I don't what what that might mean, but what I do interpolate from it is that the sillouette is divided at that point between major surface planes: the "engine nacelle" is behind, the wing is in front - as we've been assuming.

But I'm not sure what to conclude from the fact that the upper tail tip is the same colour as the fuselage/wing. If the colour can be interpreted as major surface planes, that tail tip should be the same colour as the (vertical) engine nacelle, not the (horizontal) wing/fuselage.


2] The part we've been assuming is a cockpit canopy (dome, far right) indeed looks even more like a cockpit canopy.

 

[DaveC426913]

I'm trying to break away from my/our preconceptions of how we're interpreting what we're seeing. Our brains are telling us this is a cigar-shaped-winged craft with a tail engine seen from about 4-5 o'clock position. As long as we keep seeing that we'll stay stuck in a rut. So I'm trying to right-brain this: lose the symbols.


1] The glints off the craft don't make sense. There are between 5 and 7 major glints, depending how you count them. These glints will be from highly oblique angles where there's almost total reflectdion of sunlight off large, rounded surfaces.

I can see why there'd be a glint off the backbone and off the canopy. I can even see a glint off the wing leading edge.

But why would there be a glint off the tail tip? It's too high to be off the nacelle, so why would there be a large, round shape for sunlight to reflect off at the tip of the tail? Are we possibly misinterpreting?

2] Why does the right wing tip bend downward yet the left wingtip does not? Is that downward dip actually the wingtip? Or is it somethjing hanging down from the nose of the craft?


Is it possible we are seeing what we expect to see, not what is really there?

 

[DaveC426913]

Hi, interesting pic. Some of my friends and I have been arguing about this and I was wondering if you could clarify a couple of things.

Hey, why don't we simply ask him what he saw? Did he see wings? Wing-mounted engine nacelles? Tail-mounted nacelle? Whatever he saw, he knew it was weird enough to be worth a pic.

notthteone? Do you think he'd be amenable?
If so, don't send right away. Let's compose a list of questions we can ask him and send them in one swoop. He sounds unhappy about this experience; we may scare him off.

 

[nottheone]

I sent him a followup with those questions right after I got his first answer, he hasn't answered it yet. Since I got his email from a ufo site I have a feeling he may be getting a lot of unwanted attention. I was surprised he answered the first one and actually sent me the picture. If you come up with some more I will try again.

I think it looks more like it's heading away from him to the right at about 1:30. It looked to me like it was toward him at 4:00 at first. The thing sticking down on the right does look more like it's on the nose. Almost like a IR/laser pod/dome. The bright spots look like lights. The pixel pattern around the edges of the object seems to be uninterupted so it doesn't look like a quick paste job. There appears to be a large lens flare to the right which he may have mistaken for the glow when he was looking through the viewfinder, I think that camera has a through-the-lens type viewfinder so he would have seen what was in the picture.

All I can say is I wish I had seen this.

 

[russ_watters]

By definition there is no such thing as a qualified source for projects that are still classified. Therefore there is no way to discuss the subject.

Now I'm confused - what forum are we in here and what are we discussing? Since when is a "qualified source" relevant at all in this forum? We're discussing a newspaper article about an eyewitness account by an amateur of an unknown object here, not a peer reviewed paper or Lockheed press release! If a "qualified source" is a requirement, most of the threads in this forum should be closed!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

We discuss claims of and evidence for unexplained phenomena, not conspiracy theories. We try to find prosaic explanations for specific claims, but we don't play guessing games about classified technology.

No specific prosaic explanation can itself lack any credible references. So we might guess that the craft was part of a black project, but there is nothing more can be said on that point because by definition we can have no credible references. The entire point is that the explanations offered can be verfied as credible and do not amount to just more internet noise.

 

[wolram]

If i tilt my laptop away from me until a distinct outline appears, it looks nothing like any aircraft i can imagine.

 

[nottheone]

... The entire point is that the explanations offered can be verfied as credible and do not amount to just more internet noise.

Which was my point about the slow lens, it wasn't a credible excuse GIVEN THE FULL CONTEXT OF WHAT HE WAS CREDITED WITH SAYING which implied to me he had a good camera and he did in fact. As it turns out his actual comments to me made a completely different excuse which IS credible (assuming there actually ARE depressions and trees in Kansas, it looked pretty damn flat and treeless to me when I drove through it :)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think the real point here is that whatever it is, beyond a complete hoax, there is no reason to think it is anything but a military or test aircraft.

I'll leave the thread open for those who wish identify what specific craft may have been photographed, but I think we all agree that this UFO is for all practical purposes, an IFO. At the least it did not reportedly exhibit any capabilities beyond those of earthly aircrafts.

As for the afterglow reported, I tend to assume that this was simply the evening sun reflecting from the vapor trail.

 

[nottheone]

I agree, this doesn't have anything ET about it. As unidentifiable as it is, it looks pretty terrestrial to me.

_______________________________

In my experience 50/50 odds have a 90% chance of being wrong 100% of the time, and so do statistics like this.

 

[dlgoff]

Well, I'm glad I started this thread. Thanks all for a very good discussion. "...I think we all agree that this UFO is for all practical purposes, an IFO..."

 

[russ_watters]

I agree with Ivan's last post - and if nothing else, this has been a good exercise in photo interpretation.

Btw, I played with some models of an E-3 in flight simulator - if I can find one with a better paint scheme for this, I'll post it, but I found a few interesting things:

-It is possible for under-wing engine nacelles to disappear given the correct viewing aspect (1:00, low).
-Wintip mounted antennas (static dissipators?) can appear like downard curved wintips from some angles.
-This isn't an E-3 - the configuration of the tail and "dish" are not right. They are too close and the dish is too low. Could be a different, similar configuration awacs, though.

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, I'm glad I started this thread. Thanks all for a very good discussion. "...I think we all agree that this UFO is for all practical purposes, an IFO..."

Well, it's still a UFO, it's just of terrestrial origin.

 

[nottheone]

If this enhanced image gets approved it's darker but the contrast is clearer and the flares are clearer making them look like lights. Not sure what is going on but I read the file as just over a meg but when I upload it it says 36.5k so it may not pass.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Well, it's still a UFO, it's just of terrestrial origin.

Yes, an UFOOTO.

 

[Orion1]

nottheone, that image appears excellent!

how did you enhanced the image?

 

[nottheone]

nottheone, that image appears excellent!

how did you enhanced the image?

Corel Photo-Paint, one of the contrast lenses. I only spent a few minutes with it. Later I spent more time trying to get something out of the black area but there isn't much there that I could find. It seemed to have a little smooth gradiation towards the center.

 

[junglebeast]

Here's what I interpret in nottheone's touch up...

 

[DaveC426913]

Here's what I interpret in nottheone's touch up...

well, it's certainly a fresh perspective, I would not have considered that upper tail-and-pod to be a horizontal wing-and-pod.

But your extrapolated interpretation doesn'r hold water if you now compare it back to the original image (instead of nottheone's touched up version).

 

[junglebeast]

well, it's certainly a fresh perspective, I would not have considered that upper tail-and-pod to be a horizontal wing-and-pod.

But your extrapolated interpretation doesn'r hold water if you now compare it back to the original image (instead of nottheone's touched up version).

It seems that the original image link is broken, but I think it is the same as this image I found on Google: http://kwch.images.worldnow.com/images/incoming/images/misc/ufo_original.jpg

Why do you think it does not "hold water" compare to the original image?

 

[DaveC426913]

Why do you think it does not "hold water" compare to the original image?

Because your interpretation is taking advantage of "enhancement artifacts" introduced by nottheone's processing. If you take your new interpretation image and place it next to the original, you'll find a lot more tweaking will be necessary to reconcile the two.

notheone's image blurs many edges, making it easier to interpolate straightish lines where there were none (eg. 1] port wing, trailing edge and 2] nose taper). If you now put your interprertation next to the original, you'll see that the trailing wing edge is not continuous and the nose taper is completely different. Those are just a few examples.

 

[Mzachman]

2 ideas...

Flying mole cricket with a jet strapped to it's back... Coming at us and to the right... lol
http://paynomind.com/media/1/20090201-mole cricket.jpg

Or going away from us and to the right a B2 with a jet strapped to it's back. Kinda like this, only the nose angled up a little more, and pointed away from us a little more: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/bomber/b2bombs.jpg

As the first flyby happens watch the angle of it... http://www.metacafe.com/watch/775852/b2_spirit_fly_by_at_airshow/

Not saying it was a B2, but maybe something similarly shaped with a jet of some sort on the back.

 

[junglebeast]

I'm not quite following the points you raised, however, the fact that it is missing a vertical tail fin seems to definitively rule out the perspective I suggested.

After taking another look at the original image, I realized that it's absolutely impossible for this to be a plane of any kind at all. Based on the focus of the tree in comparison to the object it's clear that the object is significantly nearer to the camera than the tree, and that it's size is therefore quite small.

Then taking another look at the image, I'm almost positive that this is a picture of a bird. There is a downward curve in the front characteristic of a beak, and a flat tail in the back with no vertical fin indicative of a bird's tail feathers, and the odd structure over the torso is easily explained by motion blur between the flapping wings.

The bright spots aren't lights, they are reflections. Bird feathers can be quite reflective, especially when wet.

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/3016/crowp.jpg

 

[DaveC426913]

After taking another look at the original image, I realized that it's absolutely impossible for this to be a plane of any kind at all.

Hang on. Your conclusion is non sequitur. While it is notable that the tree and object seem to be differently in focus, there are myriad reasons for this that do not result in a complete dismissal of the eyewitness account - which utterly contradicts your interpretation.

 

[junglebeast]

Hang on. Your conclusion is non sequitur. While it is notable that the tree and object seem to be differently in focus, there are myriad reasons for this that do not result in a complete dismissal of the eyewitness account - which utterly contradicts your interpretation.

Eyewitness accounts can't really be trusted given the number of proven hoaxes (eg, loch ness, crop circles, flare-balloons...) that pervade this type of thing. Especially not when the eyewitness account is the only piece of evidence that doesn't have a direct explanation. In this case, an anonymous report of "I heard something...I took a picture...I think it was a plane" is not exactly convincing to me.

The circle of confusion in the image for the tree branches is ~4.5 pixels, and for the object it is ~10.5 pixels. The fact that these two numbers are different means that the objects are at different distances. If this were an airplane, one would assume that the distance of the object was greater than the tree.

However, that's not optically possible. As the distance of an object approaches infinity the change in size of the focus of confusion approaches zero, as illustrated by this animation:

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptable_circle_of_confusion" , we can write the circle of confusion radius c as

c = A*abs(S2 - S1)/S2*f/(S1-f)

But in the same image, all of these are constants except for S2 (distance of the object), so for the purposes of the discussion it can be simplified to

c = k abs(S2-S1)/S2

where S2 is the distance of the object being imaged. The thing about this function is that c asymptotically converges quite rapidly to S1 as a function of S2. In other words, objects more distant than S1 have a very limited effect on increasing the size of confusion. That is why, for example, other very distant objects like the con trails still appear in focus in this image. If S2 is closer than S1, the size of circle of confusion increases very rapidly. This is the only way to explain the very large factor of 2.33 in the relative size of focus of confusion, and is conclusive proof that it is not an aircraft, but rather a small object in the foreground of the tree.

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/4353/cocobi.jpg

Most people should not need to resort to math to come to this conclusion, though, because our brains are naturally capable of interpreting this type of information. This is why when you look at the whole image (not just the cropped part around the bird) it is quite obvious that the fuzzy object is close to the view, and a rough estimate of scale can even be perceived...

 

[DaveC426913]

Having gone to college for photography I am aware of depth of field geometry. But you are too sure of yourself (especially ironic as you flip-flop your sureness from post-to-post).

1] If you dismiss the observer's account you might as well dismiss everything. A picture means virtually nothing without the details of the account. In this case, we are actually lucky to have a witness account. One thing the witness account does is rule out that the object is small and nearby. Without the account we would have to consider that as a possibility.

2] As mentioned before, there are other reasons than differing distance why the two objects are not necessarily blurred the same way. Interestingly, you have already explicitly mentioned one of them in your own 'bird' account. Suddenly, now that you're sure it's a bird and not a plane, you seem to give it no consideration at all.

While you raise good points worth addressing, don't shoot yourself in the foot by making any claim "absolutely". Discussing anything with someone who is convinced of their rightness is a futile exercise.

 

[DaveC426913]

Awesome.

The original link seems to have rotted but I've found an image of it that's 3Megs.

And if that ones rots, I've saved it to my HD.

http://kwch.images.worldnow.com/images/incoming/images/misc/ufo_original.jpg"

 

[junglebeast]

2] As mentioned before, there are other reasons than differing distance why the two objects are not necessarily blurred the same way. Interestingly, you have already explicitly mentioned one of them in your own 'bird' account. Suddenly, now that you're sure it's a bird and not a plane, you seem to give it no consideration at all.

What factors could cause it to be blurry? The most common...

A) The object could be in the distance, greater than S1. I mentioned this possibility (that it is further away from the tree) only in order to disprove and rule out that possibility. If it were true, the con-trails in the far distant background show us the asymptotic limit of the radius of confusion on the far end, which is lower than the radius of confusion of the object. If the blurring is due to being out of focus, then this proves that the object is closer than the tree...and that's just based on the mathematics of it...

B) A fast moving distant object that is motion-blurred? There are a number of reasons why this explanation is not realistic. First, even a fast moving distant plane is not likely to cause motion blur because it's apparent speed on the image plane is divided by distance. If the shutter were open long enough to cause motion blur, the tree would likely have even more motion blur due to being shot from a hand-held camera. Second, the blurring on the tail is isotropic, indicating that it is due to being out of focus rather than motion blur.

C) The object could be in the foreground. This coincides with all visual evidence. There does appear to be some motion blur, and this is in support of it being closer, because a bird in the foreground is going to have dramatically more apparent movement in the image plane due to being so much closer (and having fast flapping wings).

On top of all this, if it were a distant UFO, just look at how big it would have to be...a lot bigger than any plane by my reckoning.

 

[Mzachman]

It could be a kite (or glider) of some kind. If were seeing the belly of it from it's right side the little thing going down in front could be where the string attaches, and the string would be very hard to see with that much blurring. What you're saying about focus length does make sense, so that's why I ask. I could also see that easily being some kind of kite if you imagine it that way. At that angle the wings would be just about parellel to the ground and everything. Just an idea. I really have no idea.