MIT students photograph Earth from Space - object seen in one photo

reply to post by Arbitrageur


If we had their entire data set, we could find an image from it with Lense flare, to test against, for certain.

In Robert Harrison's set, there is a lot of lense flare for comparison...

Looks a bit different, but it's from a different balloon/camera. If we can get an image from their set with flaring, that would help more...

Perhaps they will respond to Amigo's request?

-WFA

Still no word back from the Project Icarus...I think I used the right email, or their Inbox is really flooded with emails and they just need more time.

I'd like to bring this up again as I do not see it mention in the conversations, but are we considering that whatever this could be might *not* be on the ground at all?

We keep looking at the coastal area for domes, lakes and what not but this object could be much closer to the camera, perhaps another weather balloon from a competing team?

[edit on 15-9-2009 by amigo]

reply to post by amigo


I don't have facebook, but they do have a page here, if any ATS member that uses facebook would like to try to contact them that way...

www.facebook.com...

-WFA

Originally posted by amigo
I'd like to bring this up again as I do not see it mention in the conversations, but are we considering that whatever this could be might *not* be on the ground at all?

We keep looking at the coastal area for domes, lakes and what not but this object could be much closer to the camera, perhaps another weather balloon from a competing team?

Hey it's a valid question and yes I considered it. In fact we have to consider the possibility of something airborne or else this thread is off-topic in the UFO section! I suppose some might think it's a flying disc or saucer. I would need more than the 20 pixels or so that I've got, to draw that conclusion personally.

As for the balloon, if it had more characteristics in common with a balloon, I'd weight that as a stronger possibility. (I recall the balloon in the Mantell incident was described as having an umbrella shape so a balloon may not look like a balloon). It's possible we could see the flare from the sun's reflection from a balloon at lower altitude, but in that case, I would expect the flare to have more of a spherical shape than this stretched ellipsoid. My expectation could be off though, especially if the shape of the top of the balloon is distorted for some reason and not as rounded as I expect.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


From the talk on their website, it appears that the raw files are quite large. He's having trouble uploading the slideshow...

I'll bet they've got a larger version of this image. The one on the website has likely been re-sized/formatted for print presentation.

-WFA

I got an email back from Justin Lee of the Project Icarus who says they have also noticed the glowing bit, but they are leaning towards the camera glitch or a dust speck possibility rather than anything else.

They did post the images now on their site, albeit in the lower resolution due to the size of the original data set. The image we have been looking at with the glowing blob is one IMG_5404.JPG.

Project Icarus time lapse image folder

Unfortunately, I had expectations that the situation would be such that we could see the same area in the before and after photos. It totally slipped my mind that the box attached to the balloon carrying their equipment might be spinning erratically. The glowing blob photo then appears to be a lucky shot.

The 5 sec. time lapse was too long of a pause as the lens was pointing in a totally different direction before and after. You can see that if you look at the photos 5403 and 5405. I even looked 15 photos back and ahead from the reference 5404 one without finding anything similar (landscape wise).

I guess we'll never know now...sigh.

reply to post by amigo


Amigo, it was a valid effort. And it goes to show that if you investigate all the way to the source, sometimes you can get a direct answer Even if it's not the data we hoped for, we were able to acquire a lot more data in this case, and that in my view is valid an honorable research. Your efforts are to be congratulated!

I hope that a mod sees your efforts here and applauds them

-WFA