Post by swamprat on Sept 13, 2016 19:15:14 GMT -6
There are theories bouncing all over the place about a UFO being detected just before SpaceX's rocket exploded on the launch pad. Here is some analysis.
An Analysis of the SpaceX Rocket Explosion
by Marc D'Antonio
With the SpaceX failure last week, a massive outpouring of conspiracy was triggered that has yet to die down... Right up front I will say I examined the high res 60 frame per second footage and in MY opinion the 'object' that the conspiracy folks are claiming is the cause is in the foreground and is probably a bug or more likely a bird at some distance. It is NOT the only object flying through the frame at any one time. There are many such objects.
I can forgive people for not understanding how telephotos work nor understanding how far away the cameras are that shoot these videos of launches. Regarding the distance, the sound from the explosion reaches the camera 11 seconds after detonation. That puts the distance of the camera at 2.26 miles. A lot can interfere with a shot over a 2.26 mile distance! Soon after the explosion you see birds lazily flying around and soaring right next to this ball of fire. But they WERENT right next to the fireball but were significantly closer to the camera. The fireball itself was a relatively small disturbance in the distance to anyone watching with the naked eye.
Those lazy birds provide give us more information about the telephoto view of the launch pad. If the lazily flying birds were right near this searing fireball they would be in a bit more of an excited panic. In fact they dont even notice it. They continue to fly along on the wind joying their day. Several in fact fly THROUGH what should be the fireball and emerge unscathed coming back into the view. Alien superbirds? [grin]
That is because high power telephotos like the one used to shoot this video footage compress distance scales tremendously by the nature of how they work . The remove depth perception and flatten the image. This is important and I will reference it again shortly.
That second set of birds at the end is also pretty important. The conspiracy people emphatically state that the object that buzzes through the shot (and supposedly detonates the rocket so Africa cant have Facebook) is at the distance of the launch pad... But the second set of lazy birds isnt? And all the other objects that look identical to the so-called mysterious object arent? If the lazy birds flying around at the end of the video were near the pad then they would have be approximately 35 feet across. But no one argues that 35 foot birds were hovering around the explosion...
Why?
The lazy birds at the end are KNOWN OBJECTS of KNOWN size and can be identified easily as sea birds. Their wingspan is known to be between 24 and 36 inches. The object that flew threw the view was not in focus and in the foreground so it went through at an apparent high speed. This is how telephotos work. The lazy birds WERE in focus. So this means and stick with me now, the lazy birds were much farther away than the object in the foreground that buzzes through the few frames that it appears within.
Keep in mind that EVERY object between some near distance point and the launch pad will show up in the telephoto view. Objects that are closer to the camera will appear to zip through the telephoto view faster than objects at long distance.VERY close objects would not be visible as anything other than a dark shadow. Beyond a certain distance they will appear like out of focus blobs and farther objects will be in more focus. That "near distance" I mention will depend on the telephoto focal length.
According to one "calculation" by a conspiracy guy, the object moving through the view must have been traveling at many times the speed of sound... No sonic boom, no vapor trail in the thick atmosphere, no nothing. This all serves to make this less and less likely to put it kindly.
His "observation" of this fanciful speed also serves to point out how LITTLE people know in general about how cameras work especially telephotos. Telephoto lenses compress distance and remove depth of field when viewing long distance like this. Beyond a certain range everything will tend toward being in focus and will be seen in the video. That is what we are seeing here. The lazy birds are perhaps a mile away, the pad an additional 1.5 miles past that. But by then most everything is in focus on this particular telephoto. Most importantly though as I said, they will be VISIBLE in the view.
And visible they are! At 1:09 in the video an object goes through the frame from right to left and is identical in speed and nature to the questionable object. Then shortly after that several more small objects also not entirely focused go zipping through the field, some to the left some to the right. But the rocket didnt blow up yet. So these other identically moving, identically shaped, and identically out of focus objects were NOT considered. Do you smell shoddy science? Me too.. Actually I smell "science-free" rearing its igannant head.
Another tenet of their argument about the 'dot' being the attacker is that it blows up the rocket as it passes right by the rocket. This as it turns out is completely false. The object enters the field from the right and is near the right most of the three towers when the rocket starts to explode. It passes the rocket already in the process of exploding. Meanwhile other objects had been flitting around the field in a variety of directions, all ignored by the conspiracy folks even though they demonstrated equal qualities as the so-called "UFO".
Yet another tenet of their argument is that the object goes behind the third tower. This is again a problem in my view with the lack of understanding that these armchair gurus have about cameras. First of all HAD a frame been caught where it was actually in front or behind the tower then this might have been useful. But in fact NO frame exists with the object "behind" the tower.
As I noticed in several instances on the video, other objects including birds passed in front of the towers and were not visually visible against the towers. This created the illusion that they are going behind the towers. Again, very large birds with pterodactyl wingspans would be otherwise believable. The illusion that they pass behind the towers by the way is created by objects of similar tonality on the video passing by each other.
The camera dutifully records the scene but where a bird passes a tower, its reflectivity and its gray tone is nearly the same as the tower so upon a VISUAL inspection it cannot be seen. With a more rigorous mathematical approach the pixels representing the bird are clearly visible. Add an out of focus object passing in front of a sharply focused tower and the illusion is further enhanced. So when conspiracy folks state that the object went behind the third tower, they are simply saying they do not understand how camera CMOS sensors work and are proudly putting it on display.
Oddly however you can see quite a number of birds fly through the view before the moment of the explosion and after and when you examine the footage frame by frame at the 60 frames per second that I did you can clearly see a large number of insects and birds traverse the frame. I counted 8-9 in the very few second preceding the explosion and a significant number afterward.The fast moving objects were out of focus as expected. So why werent these discussed and pointed to as a UFO 'fleet' that was perhaps plaguing Elon Musk and his venture?
So telephotos compress distance and remove depth of field by their nature as I said... But I dont have to just say it. Look at this photo below I took last night... I waited outside as the sun was setting to get this shot JUST for this post that I knew I was going to write.Here we see an object (airplane) that if it was a nondescript roundish shape could be confused for the same type of round out of focus dot in the SpaceX footage. There might not be any way to determine its distance if that were the case.
In this case there are atmospheric effects causing the moon to appear blueish since the Sun has not set yet. The plane is slightly (and intentionally) out of focus while the Moon is in focus (like the launch pad). The plane was at 28000 feet and 13 miles away though. The moon was approximately 240,000 miles farther away...
Here is the link to an HD uncorrupted raw view of the launch failure... It is 1080p 60 frames per second. See for yourself all the many insects that can be seen flying through the frames of the video.And hey, dont shoot the messenger...
(Marc D'Antonio is the chief photo and video analyst for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) )
An Analysis of the SpaceX Rocket Explosion
by Marc D'Antonio
With the SpaceX failure last week, a massive outpouring of conspiracy was triggered that has yet to die down... Right up front I will say I examined the high res 60 frame per second footage and in MY opinion the 'object' that the conspiracy folks are claiming is the cause is in the foreground and is probably a bug or more likely a bird at some distance. It is NOT the only object flying through the frame at any one time. There are many such objects.
I can forgive people for not understanding how telephotos work nor understanding how far away the cameras are that shoot these videos of launches. Regarding the distance, the sound from the explosion reaches the camera 11 seconds after detonation. That puts the distance of the camera at 2.26 miles. A lot can interfere with a shot over a 2.26 mile distance! Soon after the explosion you see birds lazily flying around and soaring right next to this ball of fire. But they WERENT right next to the fireball but were significantly closer to the camera. The fireball itself was a relatively small disturbance in the distance to anyone watching with the naked eye.
Those lazy birds provide give us more information about the telephoto view of the launch pad. If the lazily flying birds were right near this searing fireball they would be in a bit more of an excited panic. In fact they dont even notice it. They continue to fly along on the wind joying their day. Several in fact fly THROUGH what should be the fireball and emerge unscathed coming back into the view. Alien superbirds? [grin]
That is because high power telephotos like the one used to shoot this video footage compress distance scales tremendously by the nature of how they work . The remove depth perception and flatten the image. This is important and I will reference it again shortly.
That second set of birds at the end is also pretty important. The conspiracy people emphatically state that the object that buzzes through the shot (and supposedly detonates the rocket so Africa cant have Facebook) is at the distance of the launch pad... But the second set of lazy birds isnt? And all the other objects that look identical to the so-called mysterious object arent? If the lazy birds flying around at the end of the video were near the pad then they would have be approximately 35 feet across. But no one argues that 35 foot birds were hovering around the explosion...
Why?
The lazy birds at the end are KNOWN OBJECTS of KNOWN size and can be identified easily as sea birds. Their wingspan is known to be between 24 and 36 inches. The object that flew threw the view was not in focus and in the foreground so it went through at an apparent high speed. This is how telephotos work. The lazy birds WERE in focus. So this means and stick with me now, the lazy birds were much farther away than the object in the foreground that buzzes through the few frames that it appears within.
Keep in mind that EVERY object between some near distance point and the launch pad will show up in the telephoto view. Objects that are closer to the camera will appear to zip through the telephoto view faster than objects at long distance.VERY close objects would not be visible as anything other than a dark shadow. Beyond a certain distance they will appear like out of focus blobs and farther objects will be in more focus. That "near distance" I mention will depend on the telephoto focal length.
According to one "calculation" by a conspiracy guy, the object moving through the view must have been traveling at many times the speed of sound... No sonic boom, no vapor trail in the thick atmosphere, no nothing. This all serves to make this less and less likely to put it kindly.
His "observation" of this fanciful speed also serves to point out how LITTLE people know in general about how cameras work especially telephotos. Telephoto lenses compress distance and remove depth of field when viewing long distance like this. Beyond a certain range everything will tend toward being in focus and will be seen in the video. That is what we are seeing here. The lazy birds are perhaps a mile away, the pad an additional 1.5 miles past that. But by then most everything is in focus on this particular telephoto. Most importantly though as I said, they will be VISIBLE in the view.
And visible they are! At 1:09 in the video an object goes through the frame from right to left and is identical in speed and nature to the questionable object. Then shortly after that several more small objects also not entirely focused go zipping through the field, some to the left some to the right. But the rocket didnt blow up yet. So these other identically moving, identically shaped, and identically out of focus objects were NOT considered. Do you smell shoddy science? Me too.. Actually I smell "science-free" rearing its igannant head.
Another tenet of their argument about the 'dot' being the attacker is that it blows up the rocket as it passes right by the rocket. This as it turns out is completely false. The object enters the field from the right and is near the right most of the three towers when the rocket starts to explode. It passes the rocket already in the process of exploding. Meanwhile other objects had been flitting around the field in a variety of directions, all ignored by the conspiracy folks even though they demonstrated equal qualities as the so-called "UFO".
Yet another tenet of their argument is that the object goes behind the third tower. This is again a problem in my view with the lack of understanding that these armchair gurus have about cameras. First of all HAD a frame been caught where it was actually in front or behind the tower then this might have been useful. But in fact NO frame exists with the object "behind" the tower.
As I noticed in several instances on the video, other objects including birds passed in front of the towers and were not visually visible against the towers. This created the illusion that they are going behind the towers. Again, very large birds with pterodactyl wingspans would be otherwise believable. The illusion that they pass behind the towers by the way is created by objects of similar tonality on the video passing by each other.
The camera dutifully records the scene but where a bird passes a tower, its reflectivity and its gray tone is nearly the same as the tower so upon a VISUAL inspection it cannot be seen. With a more rigorous mathematical approach the pixels representing the bird are clearly visible. Add an out of focus object passing in front of a sharply focused tower and the illusion is further enhanced. So when conspiracy folks state that the object went behind the third tower, they are simply saying they do not understand how camera CMOS sensors work and are proudly putting it on display.
Oddly however you can see quite a number of birds fly through the view before the moment of the explosion and after and when you examine the footage frame by frame at the 60 frames per second that I did you can clearly see a large number of insects and birds traverse the frame. I counted 8-9 in the very few second preceding the explosion and a significant number afterward.The fast moving objects were out of focus as expected. So why werent these discussed and pointed to as a UFO 'fleet' that was perhaps plaguing Elon Musk and his venture?
So telephotos compress distance and remove depth of field by their nature as I said... But I dont have to just say it. Look at this photo below I took last night... I waited outside as the sun was setting to get this shot JUST for this post that I knew I was going to write.Here we see an object (airplane) that if it was a nondescript roundish shape could be confused for the same type of round out of focus dot in the SpaceX footage. There might not be any way to determine its distance if that were the case.
In this case there are atmospheric effects causing the moon to appear blueish since the Sun has not set yet. The plane is slightly (and intentionally) out of focus while the Moon is in focus (like the launch pad). The plane was at 28000 feet and 13 miles away though. The moon was approximately 240,000 miles farther away...
Here is the link to an HD uncorrupted raw view of the launch failure... It is 1080p 60 frames per second. See for yourself all the many insects that can be seen flying through the frames of the video.And hey, dont shoot the messenger...
(Marc D'Antonio is the chief photo and video analyst for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) )