October 19, 2014 Mars flies through comet tail.. Big explosion recorded ? Video

Not being in the states and not watching much television, I sometimes feel like I missed out on some of the scientific news blurbs..

The video is showing Mars about one hour after the October 19, 2014 comet passage where it's orbit takes the planet thru the tail of the comet... Huge flash like an atmospheric explosion is observed... I am just wondering if anyone else has seen this event reported ?



youtu.be...

a reply to: 727Sky

This is very interesting to me, however I would love to know what effects, if any, were recorded by Curiosity during this event. Even if the rover was clear the other side of the planet at the time, and I do not believe that it was, it would HAVE to have recorded something interesting. I doubt very much that those in control of the rover would have been unaware of the potential of this comet tail to cause some sort of reaction or scientifically interesting reaction, and I would hope that they would have had the rover point its cameras and assorted appendages toward the sky to record it from ground level.

Thanks for bringing this video to my attention 727Sky!

a reply to: 727Sky


Edit to add:

I get it. The contrast on dudes footage is turned up.

The footage is also a composite of time lapsed images and some continuos footage "strung together". If you look at Mars (the Big light) you see it 'jump' staccato like.

If clouds, fog or even contrails pass over in earths atmosphere that would give this effect.

You don't see 'clouds' in view by the way, thats out of the focal plane of the lens. just refraction of light through the moisture in the earths atmosphere manifesting as "glare" misunderstood as…

"Giant Explosions On Mars".

Further: Couldn't resist this one from YouTube comments section…

sorry folks, you got it all backwards. That isn't mars, it's earth being recorded FROM our base on mars. And it was recorded six months in the future. Enjoy your last few months folks. The Borg.

that's just mar's defense system going off
it may be old but it's still capable of shooting threatening objects out of it's sky.

a reply to: 727Sky

lens flare

originally posted by: eyeinoz
a reply to: 727Sky

lens flare

Could be or some kinda of pixilated pixilation.. Looking for conformation .... With all the interest in the comet passage of Mars there should be conformation from other views and cameras.. If it really did happen ?

a reply to: TrueBrit
The live show was a bit funny the way they changed the video feed.
First the feed showed this.

Then they changed the feed to this which still showed the light effect.

And then cut to this.

Iv no idea if its just a camera glitch/lens flare or something else tho.

Maybe knowing how the public tend to overreact to odd images
NASA thought it was best to switch to a less dramatic picture.

I was reading about all the good pictures taken by the satellites around Mars. None of them were in the articles though, instead they showed earth originated telescope images of the event. Why is it that NASA isn't just leaving these pictures out as they occur. Maybe they need to evaluate them first and take out any that they don't think we should see.

I'm going to try to go to the NASA site to see if any have been released today, I haven't checked since yesterday morning. Maybe they have released them now.

All discussed and debunked here yesterday www.abovetopsecret.com...

Incidentally, this was what the maker of the first video had to say and the screenshots from the Slooh webcast are also explained in the original thread (when you move a telescope and the exposure time is high, you're going to get this type of effect...):

originally posted by: wildespace

originally posted by: skyblueworld

originally posted by: wildespace
And here we have the explanation from the video author:

the burst is effected through some very fast moving clouds, which altered the exposure of some of the 75 shots. The "plasma burst" exists only in the insane brains of a certain kind of people, who wish to have some "events" and "proofs" for their "theories".

- www.facebook.com...

Sorry buddy but all I see is content not found.
Perhaps we've got to be friends to see his posts on Facebook?

Apologies, I forgot that that group has a "closed" status. Still, I quoted what he wrote, and I linked to his personal profile. He clearly has an idea about what we see in the video, and the reason for the "burst" is passing clouds.

Screenshot:

a reply to: skuly

Well, the events in the heavens are, for reasons of scale alone, always dramatic in some way, and this appears to have been no disappointment in that regard, although the coverage to which you allude seems to have been edited to lessen the impact of it.

However, I am still really interested to know if Curiosity caught anything interesting on its cameras.

originally posted by: skuly
NASA thought it was best to switch to a less dramatic picture.

Why is everyone on the Internet going on that this has ANYTHING to do with NASA?

NASA did not provide a webcast, what keeps getting thrown around and what those screenshots are from are from the SLOOH webcast which is a PRIVATE organisation that provides access to robotic telescopes for the public - as well as webcasts like this on interesting events.

NOTHING to do with NASA!

But don't worry you're not alone, yesterday I searched on Twitter for 'slooh cut feed' and there were ZERO results and 'NASA cut feed' brought back a dozen or so - all about the Slooh webcast!

NASA isn't the only organisation or even agency that has anything to do with space... Not sure why they get the credit (good or bad) for everything..

I'll let you off as I'm going to assume that you didn't watch it live and just watched one of the numerous YouTube videos with some wise guy prattling on about NASA - probably to give it more 'cred' for the non-existent conspiracy. But it's incredible to me that so many people WILL have watched it live, went to the a website called 'slooh.com' with their logo everywhere and watched a broadcast this the Slooh logo watermarked on it (you're screenshots have been cropped so it's missing) and STILL couldn't understand THEY WERE NOT WATCHING ANYTHING TO DO WITH NASA.

*breaths*

Just to be clear, not being funny with you because I get the impression you've just picked up on some douche's YouTube lies - but I can't believe that literally EVERYONE who thinks there is a conspiracy and has voiced it on YouTube/Twitter seems to have got confused about whose broadcast they chose to watch! Maybe that tells us something....

a reply to: skuly

They look like my screen images

I posted it yesterday, some good explanations in this THREAD.

I get that this isn't NASA's footage, but that to me is suspicious.
There has only ever been 1 other recorded impact with a planet, so why didn't NASA have every available asset filming this thing around the clock?

I was amazed today when i woke up that there were no movies or decent photography of this thing.

look at the views we had of ISON disintegrate?
Look at the Sat's and rovers we have on or around Mars?

A strong enough telescope could have recorded this..

yet.. we have nothing from anyone.

Something happened last night!

a reply to: Agit8dChop

Ask yourself these questions:

Satellites: they are designed to be looking "down" at Mars, not up and out from Mars. Where any of them in the proper position in their orbit to be able to try and image the comet as it passed by?

Rovers: Curiosity's Mast Cam took a lot of sky pictures on the 19th. Consider the specifications of the Rover's camera, and ask yourself: can it take decent pictures of a small comet, with very low magnitude that far away? They did take images and post them.

Other Resources: Did any other resources that could be used, were used? And if so, does not seeing images posted right away always have to mean "conspiracy"?

Or could it be they want to post the best images that they can for good PR?

originally posted by: Agit8dChop
A strong enough telescope could have recorded this..

yet.. we have nothing from anyone.

Something happened last night!

Yes we got to eat the Pork & Egg Pie I baked on Sunday, it was delicious! But if you mean the close pass of the comet the night before, there already are images coming out:

A summary article, contains images also below

Curiosity's attempts (Raw Images for Sol 783), can't spot it myself!

Opportunity's successful attempts (Raw images)

Damian Peach's amazing photograph

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE images

And information relevant to each orbiter with added emphasis by me:

NASA Mars Odyssey Orbiter:

"The telemetry received from Odyssey this afternoon confirms not only that the spacecraft is in fine health but also that it conducted the planned observations of comet Siding Spring within hours of the comet's closest approach to Mars," said Odyssey Mission Manager Chris Potts of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., speaking from mission operations center at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
Comet Siding Spring observations were made by the orbiter's Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS). Resulting images are expected in coming days after the data is downlinked to Earth and processed. THEMIS is also scheduled to record a combined image of the comet and a portion of Mars later this week. In addition, the Odyssey mission is using the spacecraft's Neutron Spectrometer and High Energy Neutron detector to assess possible effects on Mars' atmosphere of dust and gas from the comet.
www.nasa.gov...

NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:

Following the critical period of dust flux, the orbiter is communicating at 1.5 megabits per second with NASA's Deep Space Network. It remained on Side A of its two redundant computers, and all subsystems are working as expected.
Downlink of data has begun from today's comet observations by three instruments on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The full downlink may take days. These instruments -- the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), the Compact Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), and the Context Camera (CTX) -- also observed the comet for days before the flyby and will continue to make observations of it in the next few days. The orbiter's other three instruments are being used to study possible effects of gas and dust in the comet's tail interacting with the atmosphere of Mars. These are the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS), the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) and the Mars Shallow Radar (SHARAD).
www.nasa.gov...

NASA MAVEN Orbiter:

Downlink of data has begun from MAVEN observations of the comet and Mars' atmosphere. Some observations are designed to provide information about the composition of the gases and dust being released by the comet. Others are investigating possible interaction between material from the comet and the atmosphere of Mars.
www.nasa.gov...

ESA's Mars Express Orbiter:

The downlink of the science data has started. The observation programme focused on the atmosphere/ionosphere continues for another two days. The HRSC pictures from the encounter are due for downlnk on Thursday.
blogs.esa.int...

Do you see the pattern yet? It takes time..

All the information is out there, I can't stress enough how useful and educational it is to spend less time with 'like minded enlightened people' and just having a look at what actually is out there. It shouldn't take long to even find out how you can access and process the raw data from lots of missions. I have no idea where some people's flights of fancy that everything is hidden from them comes from sometimes, I can only assume they never have looked and are a little gullible maybe.

a reply to: AgentSmith

Thank you for taking the time to post the links

a reply to: AgentSmith

Fair call, that is, by far the first actual photo I've seen of this event, when did they come out? i see the comments are only 5hrs old.

thanks for the links,

but, no need to be a jerk about it!

Satellites: they are designed to be looking "down" at Mars, not up and out from Mars

There isn't really an up / down in space. Just turn the satellite.

Given the amount of time NASA is said to spend covering up it's work, I am surprised anything new can even happen. I figure they are still clearing the back log from 1995 to 2005.

a reply to: Agit8dChop

Sorry I was trying to be funny, if you see my other posts I was being really nice :-/
The last paragraph was general and not aimed at you really anyway, I'm not very good at being funny anyway these days and it's mixed with frustration.

originally posted by: Agit8dChop
I get that this isn't NASA's footage, but that to me is suspicious.
There has only ever been 1 other recorded impact with a planet, so why didn't NASA have every available asset filming this thing around the clock?

Because it would have been a waste of NASA's time and resources? (why do you mention an impact? the comet was nowhere near impacting Mars)
NASA leaves earth-based photography of Mars to amateur and professional astronomers around the world, and rightly so. NASA did, however, observe the comet using rovers on Mars and robotic spacecraft orbiting Mars. AgentSmith posted the relevant links earlier in this thread, check them out.

Stop getting hung up on NASA and realise that there's a whole astronomy community out there that do just as much science and valuable observations.