Bolide Footage From Melbourne

Looks like an amazing shot of a bolide flying accross the Melbourne rooftops... Many people mistake these for UFO's - of course they are not.

youtube.com...

J.

[edit on 24-8-2007 by jimbo999]

Ok, I'll bite, what is a bolomide??
It is pretty cool looking footage, I used to live in Melbourne and aside from some awesome lightening shows, I never saw anything like this.

Originally posted by earthchild
Ok, I'll bite, what is a bolomide??
It is pretty cool looking footage, I used to live in Melbourne and aside from some awesome lightening shows, I never saw anything like this.

A bolide (sorry, typo there - not a 'bolomide') is, too use common parlance, a fireball. Basically a very large, low-flying meteor...

J.

[edit on 24-8-2007 by jimbo999]

ohh, thanks, see you do learn something every day.
That thing looks huge!!
Would there be some residue that would make it to the earths surface?

that's a sweet video though

This vid not only looks fake, it is fake.

Look at the smoke ripples............they follow the fake meteor.

(N.B. It's a Meteorite only if it hits the ground).

If you want to see what a real daylight meteor looks like then see this:
fireball.meteorite.free.fr...

(It takes a while to download/watch the higher res vid so best right-click and save-as-target).

Nice video, fake or not.

It reminds me of a night I sat on a village green, some years ago, with an ex-girlfriend, after spouting lyrical about such astronomical wonders. She was somewhat skeptical about my claims, and told me so as we munched contentedly on a chinese take out.

Sitting back to back, filling our faces, we scoured the night sky over north London...

Then she said, very slowly:

"Err, what's that?"

Turning around, I saw what she was pointing at. It was something not too dissimilar to Jimbo999's vidoe, streaking across a clear, starry sky. It skipped swiftly over the atmosphere, burning spectacularly as it did.

And I doubt if it was CGI...

Theres something odd looking about that, Im calling it 'fake' (for what reason I dont know) -the orange flame looks too flat..hmm not enough intensity for an object thats burning so hot? If its real then hey..

[edit on 24-8-2007 by wildone106]

Originally posted by st1234
This vid not only looks fake, it is fake.

Don't you mean it looks fake to you? I think it looks real enough.

Look at the smoke ripples............they follow the fake meteor.

Right--just what I'd expect them to do. I've got an open mind. Rather than simply declare it fake, why don't you elaborate a little. Do you have any CGI expertise that could shed some light on the subject?

Don't you mean it looks fake to you? I think it looks real enough.

O.K. I will elaborate:
If you look at the top of the telephone pole in the video as a reference to the meteor vapour/smoke trail you will see that the individual ripples in the trail carry on moving with some speed after they are produced.
When a trail is produced like that the particulates in the trail as they come off the meteor will very rapidly come to a near halt with respect to the surrounding air. They will not stay in ripple form and travel to a stop in the way shown. They will also billow outwards and dissipate. They won't hold the form shown.

Also the head of the (fake) meteor is red. In reality it's far more likely to be white as the ionized air due to friction will produce a wide spectrum of different light frequencies as the electrons re-combine with the ions. A wide spectrum of many frequencies looks white.

Also, doesn't it seem rather strange that the camera is 'waiting' to film the object coming into the gap shown?

Here's another one: The meteor (fake) goes across on a completely flat line and never starts to dip downwards as a real one would.

To me (yes it's my opinion) it's exactly how someone would do a fake cgi of what they 'think' a burning meteor would look like but in reality has subtle differences.

Thanks for elaborating st.

Originally posted by st1234
When a trail is produced like that the particulates in the trail as they come off the meteor will very rapidly come to a near halt with respect to the surrounding air. They will not stay in ripple form and travel to a stop in the way shown. They will also billow outwards and dissipate. They won't hold the form shown.

But how are they to billow outwards and dissipate in 4 seconds? I'll be happy to agree as soon as I see an example that illustrates what you describe.

Also the head of the (fake) meteor is red. In reality it's far more likely to be white

Better look again. The head is white.

Also, doesn't it seem rather strange that the camera is 'waiting' to film the object coming into the gap shown?

Definitely. It's the first thing I noticed.

Here's another one: The meteor (fake) goes across on a completely flat line and never starts to dip downwards as a real one would.

What about the fireball video you, yourself, posted?! Its trajectory is horizontal until it approaches the horizon, and even then one can't tell if it's descending or if the degree of angle to the horizon is reduced because of increasing distance.

I agree it could be fake alright, but your points aren't that convincing other than the cameraman waiting. There's even a possible explanation for that as well--he may have seen it approaching on his right, and estimated that by aiming his camera in the first opening between buildings, he'd be able to catch it.

I think the best way to debunk this one would be through a deeper photo-analysis, if anyone thought it was worth spending the time on. On the surface, it looks pretty realistic to me.

[edit on 8/24/2007 by yuefo]

Originally posted by jimbo999
Looks like an amazing shot of a bolide flying accross the Melbourne rooftops... Many people mistake these for UFO's - of course they are not.

youtube.com...

J.

[edit on 24-8-2007 by jimbo999]

OK, interesting, is it in Melbourne Australia or is it in Melbourne Florida, if it's in Melbourne AUS, then when did this happen, WHY?,, because i live in a suburb that overlooks the entire City of Melbourne and most of the surrounding suburbs spanning North, South, and East and do not remember ever hearing or seeing anything of this nature.

Originally posted by yuefo
But how are they to billow outwards and dissipate in 4 seconds? I'll be happy to agree as soon as I see an example that illustrates what you describe.

Even though it's only a 4 second vid, if you look at the rear end of the trail it has the same width as the front part. It just gets 'dragged' along quite un-naturally.

Better look again. The head is white.

Ok, fair enough.....I was more precisely referring to the immediate red part directly behind the head. I still say this should (most likely) be white.

What about the fireball video you, yourself, posted?! Its trajectory is horizontal until it approaches the horizon, and even then one can't tell if it's descending or if the degree of angle to the horizon is reduced because of increasing distance.

The link I posted shows a meteor that is grazing the high upper atmosphere and most likely continued on it's journey through the solar system. Hence it seemed like a flat trajectory.
Now, in this post with the meteor (fake) that is travelling not far from ground level, the atmosphere (air) is much more dense and any meteor this low would be slowing down very fast and losing it's relative kinetic energy and would rapidly curve it's trajectory towards the ground.

Just think of how this (fake) meteor would have got through so much atmosphere to still be this low and still be travelling on a flat path.......it can't........ unless it had wings or was internally powered!

B.t.w. the guy who posted/made the youtube vid doesn't allow any text comments to the vid without being vetted first.
What's he scared of? If he claims it's genuine, why won't he let people make valid comments about the vid?

st1234 is correct - this is a fake, and he stated many good reasons why this is the case. However, he is wrong about one thing - a real meteor would not deviate significantly from a flat trajectory while it was still luminous and retaining part of it's cosmic velocity. A large meteor would start off with a velocity of at least 11 km/s, and shear momentum would keep it from slowing down rapidly, even lower down where the atmosphere is thick.

A smaller meteor would slow down rapidly in comparison though, but it would only show deviation from it's flat (for all intents and purposes) trajectory once it entered the "dark flight" phase where air resistance would significantly affect it.

even if it is as fake, it is cool nonetheless.

I saw one of these a couple of years ago streaking across the Adelaide skies. Pretty cool, just had no idea of WTF it was at the time.

Cheers.

st, thanks for bringing out the specifics of your critique. I'm leaning a little more on the fake side than I was before. In all fairness though, if fake I think it's a pretty good job. There is one other strike against it I think--no audio. This object would have been audible, wouldn't it? That would have been a nice addition if it were real.

tell the guy on youtube that it is a bolide

Originally posted by st1234
If he claims it's genuine, why won't he let people make valid comments about the vid?

True I guess, but since 99% of the comments on YouTube are so banal, I'd be tempted to leave it off too.