STS-75 Tether Encounter -- Unpublished crew photography now available

Are we waiting for a photograph or something?!?

a reply to: MysterX

Wow...18 years to release a single image that purports to prove the swarm was just an optical illusion created by video cameras.

So something done to satisfy those that wouldn't or couldn't accept the answer get given proof and because its so many years after such cynicism need to be expressed.

How cynical will you be after 70 odd years of having JFK assassination information locked up comes to light?

originally posted by: ATSZOMBIE
Are we waiting for a photograph or something?!?

Yes, the full set of hi-res images were due for delivery today, and i'm rattling the cage right now.

Maybe you should have waited until you actually had the photos in hand before making the thread?

You were a little too quick to go shouting that you'll have these and the time comes and you have zero. Not very professional and makes the thread useless until you show something. Not saying you're lying, you just shouldn't have been soo fast to make this thread until you had everything together. You care soo much more about debunking and trying to prove others wrong, you couldn't help yourself.

originally posted by: nightmare_david
Maybe you should have waited until you actually had the photos in hand before making the thread?

You were a little too quick to go shouting that you'll have these and the time comes and you have zero. Not very professional and makes the thread useless until you show something. Not saying you're lying, you just shouldn't have been soo fast to make this thread until you had everything together. You care soo much more about debunking and trying to prove others wrong, you couldn't help yourself.

I inspected them in the photo lab and described them here [showing one of them] along with original materials such as the six hours of NEW downlink video and transcripts, the NEW relative motion plots, the scene lists of those four observation opportunities during the fly-under four days after the break, and other hitherto unavailable raw source documents. The pictures will be worth the wait, and meanwhile, am I to presume you've watched all the new videos and verified the transcripted comments, and have studied and understood the significance of the viewing and illumination angles.

If all you want to do is jump to the pictures without bothering with an understanding of the context, that's a recipe for repeated misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

Be that as it may, I accept the direct rebuke and apologize for the unexpected delay. What do you propose for my atonement?

originally posted by: PhoenixOD
I think one of the most telling things about the tether incident is the notches in the circular disks are all in the same place..either roughly at 6 o'clock or 12 o'clock. Is would point to it being a camera anomaly like the video above states.

Its just highly unlikely to be disks with notches in the same place floating round in space with the same rotation all exactly facing the camera. In fact highly unlikely is an understatement..its practically impossible.

Exactly. As a Newtonian telescope owner, the appearance of the discs is quite common. The obstruction for the 2nd mirror and spider vanes, create similar patterns when the object is inside or outside of focus. In fact, one can tell quite a bit about how well aligned the optics are from these patterns in these images, aka the star test method. The Hubble problems were diagnosed by this method. What is viewed here is an object inside or outside the focal plane of the lens, and there is a small obstruction near the lens.

The best part is, don't take my word for it. Look up your local astronomy club. Find a public viewing night, and find someone with a Dobsonian scope. Politely ask if they would let you view a planet, and you want to see what the obstruction looks like in and out of focus. It won't take a moment, and most love curiosity about the optics. Be warned, you might get a long winded explanation of focal lengths and deeper esoteria of optics. The important thing is to see the effect with your own eyes, and then go back and look at the STS-75 images.

Sooooooo, still waiting? Are they doctoring these photos or what?

a reply to: Ogassab

No comment, just a downvote, I gotta star this because nothing needs to be said otherwise

The disk was mailed to my old address, I had to drive over to the center to retrieve it after the PO returned it to them.

There are a lot of images, scanned to 3000 x 2400 pixels, about 20 meg per image.

We need to find some way to get ALL the images on line for anyone to access and use.

I'm going to post some lo-res versions for general display.

These are originally 35-mm and 70-mm hand-held film taken through Orbiter windows.

Good view of tether


Tether with nearby streaks

Full view


Blow-up of orb


With circle to show squashed shape


Another view of same sequence, moving orb

originally posted by: JimOberg


Full view

Blow-up of orb

With circle to show squashed shape

Another view of same sequence, moving orb

That's a sure sign on an out of focus highlight in the first photo, the slightly squashed shape is due to something called optical vignetting. If the out of focus highlight was in the dead center of the image it would be perfectly circular but as it gets further away from the center it will take on a gradually more pronounced "cat's eye" shape caused by the interaction between the angle of light rays, the lens barrel itself, the size of the front and rear elements in the lens as well as the aperture of the lens.

I have hundreds of personal photos that have this kind of thing and if you look at camera lens reviews on a site like photozone.de they often have a section covering the quality at which a lens renders out of focus portions and will often mention to what degree the out of focus disks (also known as "bokeh") deviate from being perfectly circular away from the center of the frame.

So is that the orb dealt with? Or am I just being overly optimistic?

And edit to add: The second image is a lot brighter which probably means a longer exposure time which lead to the "orb" being blurred as it moved slightly in relation to the camera during the exposure which wasn't fast enough to freeze it's motion.

a reply to: fatdeeman

Thanks for the expert analysis, I wasn't aware of those issues.

Certainly I would PREFER the images show they are of nearby out-of-focus small objects, but I don't think I've satisfied the burden of proof to establish this.

Once I get 'contact sheets' of all the images prepared and posted, and we plot the movement of the brighter blips past the tether, we can see if there are similar brightest blips on the video. And if we can identify the same blip in both images, we have the chance to estimate range via binocular vision. If the blips are big and far away, it should be easy to show it, once the same ones are identified from both instruments [exterior TV camera and inside handheld film camera]. If there is NO apparent dual views, the objects might just be too close and only be in one FOV. If we get overlap but it's significantly displaced, that's the sweet spot, it could allow determination of range close to the shuttle.

I don't know where this is going to go, except that only the scatter of skills and energies possessed by this hive brain called ATS has the combo of talents to reach an answer.

originally posted by: JimOberg
a reply to: fatdeeman

Thanks for the expert analysis, I wasn't aware of those issues.

Certainly I would PREFER the images show they are of nearby out-of-focus small objects, but I don't think I've satisfied the burden of proof to establish this.

Once I get 'contact sheets' of all the images prepared and posted, and we plot the movement of the brighter blips past the tether, we can see if there are similar brightest blips on the video. And if we can identify the same blip in both images, we have the chance to estimate range via binocular vision. If the blips are big and far away, it should be easy to show it, once the same ones are identified from both instruments [exterior TV camera and inside handheld film camera]. If there is NO apparent dual views, the objects might just be too close and only be in one FOV. If we get overlap but it's significantly displaced, that's the sweet spot, it could allow determination of range close to the shuttle.

I don't know where this is going to go, except that only the scatter of skills and energies possessed by this hive brain called ATS has the combo of talents to reach an answer.

The one potential issue here is the difference between the cameras and the effect it has on depth of field. Generally speaking all other things being the same the largest film surface area/sensor size will give the shallowest depth of field. I don't know what the sensor size is in the video camera but I'm willing to bet it is significantly smaller than the 70mm film in the handheld camera and so something that is out of focus on the 70mm camera might not be visible on the video camera because it will be inside the depth of field.

It's a bit hard (for me) to explain it quickly something that is out of focus on the 70mm or 35mm camera might be in focus on the video camera because it falls within it's greater depth of field.

But the other variables are the focal lengths of the lenses used (wider angle lens has greater depth of field vs shallower depth of field with a longer focal length) and the aperture the lens is set to (the more the iris in the lens is closed the greater the depth of field)

So you have at least three things effecting out of focus highlights, the sensor or film size of the camera, the lens focal length and the aperture used and they probably vary across each camera considerably. Something that might be an out of focus disc to the video camera might be so out of focus to the 70mm camera by comparison that it won't show up at all. The more out of focus something gets the more of the frame it takes up until it expands beyond the frame completely and you are looking right through it. There's a hell of a lot of variables at work.

The first part of this video gives a good example of how the light discs become cat eye shaped away from the center of the image:

Here are the contact sheets of all the handheld images from STS-75, whoo needs to see them in full res, and what can be learned from them?









more

[concluded]

Overbright the images to bring out details.

Hmmm it's awful quiet isn't it? Considering this case was considered the "smoking gun" by many.

So far the most starred post is from someone who never bothered to obtain these images remarking about how long it took for someone else to obtain these images which is basically just side stepping the evidence at hand.

I'm still not getting access to the console logs that could document an ice-shedding event near the time of the notorious swarm video, that's frustrating me.