Can someone do the math?

Ok so there are multiple videos with ufos "detected by ISS cameras in low earth orbits"....many people say these are satellites.

There is some footage where you can see continents from above and you can see how fast the objects cross the continents. So given the altitude of the Iss and the movement of the objects-> can anyone here calculate how fast this objects move and if the speed correlates with the speed of satellites and other man made stuff in orbit?

I am not good in those things. So i would be happy if anyone could do that. (of course we would need the exact altitude of the object but given that many people say these are satellites you can determine that by using the normal "size" of a satellite to calculate how far it is away from the iss)


This thread has some good material and if we can say this is original nasa footage the next step would be to determine the speed of the objects.


Detected by ISS cameras: Multiple UFOs in Low Earth Orbit....

reply to post by kauskau


I imagine that a small object, very close to the camera, would give the impression of covering the length of an entire continent in a few seconds... even though it only actually has to move a few inches/feet in that time?

reply to post by kauskau


I'm an aero engineering student. There is not a chance that those objects are satellites, a satellite traveling at those kinds of speeds would put it in an orbit roughly the height of our skyscraper around the earth lol and materializing out of nothing is pretty cool, I don't think any of our satellites can do that yet



Just more evidence for aliens dude like there wasn't enough already

each sattelite will be at a specific distance from the earth and so will require a certain speed to maintain its altitude normally boosted by onboard stuff to ensure they stay at the correct distance and can be used to get out of the way if needed since generally space stuff costs alot of money and they bill payers like to see it used as long as possible

the problem with tracking it down to a specific object is that alot of the stuff up there is top secret so its not listed which means you will never get an answer if the object seen is just a military object or something much more

Originally posted by Maxatoria
each sattelite will be at a specific distance from the earth and so will require a certain speed to maintain its altitude normally boosted by onboard stuff to ensure they stay at the correct distance and can be used to get out of the way if needed since generally space stuff costs alot of money and they bill payers like to see it used as long as possible

the problem with tracking it down to a specific object is that alot of the stuff up there is top secret so its not listed which means you will never get an answer if the object seen is just a military object or something much more

Yeah the first bit is true, the faster the object in orbit, the closer it can get its orbit to the earth. remember the ISS is in orbit too traveling at x thousand miles an hour, just imagine how fast those objects are going.

No idea what they could be though

reply to post by kauskau


I like word problems...the problem with this one though...there is no equation!

So no...I can not "do the math"!

Now if someone comes up with some numbers...and some unknowns...I can build an equation that might solve the problem!

ISS orbits at 7,706.6 m/s
(27,743.8 km/h, 17,239.2 mph)

Taken from the ISS Wiki.


As for the other stuff, like was stated, different orbits require different speeds so who knows?

Ya, I saw UFO that I tough were UFOs but when I calculated their solar angle altitude then their speed it turned out they were traveling the Iridium sattelite's altitude at the Iridium sattelite's speed.
Of course this doesn't apply to UFOs seen very close to Earth's surface.

Just and FYI
ISS travels at:
Average speed 7,706.6 m/s
(27,743.8 km/h, 17,239.2 mph)

The problem with this problem suggested, however, is, some, if not many of these 'objects' are simple ice particles that give the appearance of being far away and larger due to camera perspective.

Thus, if an ice particle close to the ISS moves 1 meter, it could appear to be moving, relative to the ISS 2x or any other multiplier faster than the ISS, when in fact it's not.

reply to post by Druscilla


I have hear a couple of folks talk about ice droplets in the upper atmosphere or water droplets in lower atmospheres or satellites when the droplet story doesn't fit.
A couple of things struck me today about these relatively HQ images, us humans can mostly tell perspective roughly roughly that means we are not 100% wrong in all cases, infact most folks are more than 50% in most cases. (if we can't we're not very clever are we?)

The part 2 transit across Northern India in sub 8 sec is a bit of a wild claim due to the paralax view-the ball is nearer than the continent behind it which slows it down from an estimated 30,000mph to more like 5000, mph, however that still relative to the camera filming so that means that 5000 is its nominal rate plus whatever the camera speed is which still gets us back up to the 30,000mph mark, or around 3000mph if contra to the planet's rotation.

Secondly perspective is aided by the ability to actually see these things skipping into and out of the lower atmospheres-in many cases they leave a tiny wake, its difficult to tell why (eg low pressure vapour or shock wave) but its there if you look closely.

Because the air is dense enough to show this wake effect it is surprising if they are chunks of ice to see them rising and in some cases accelerating rather than getting smaller and falling the denser the atmosphere and the stronger the gravitational effect.

There is also the widespread reporting of precisely this type of tumbling disc (in much of the footage if you obsever it very closely they almost flash light and dark as they wobble and tumble) elsewhere-see "UFO/OVNI over Japan" or "UFO Sighting, Filmed from plane" there are many others but the tumbling nature is easier to spot here.

Finally another striking aspect of these is that about 50% of cases they do not come and go, they appear and disappear. e.g The third one in the formation at the end of Part 2 of the ISS Feed.

I know Shanon tracked on at 17,000 and tried to warn Ganda across the north atlantic that was Ireland to Huson bay in 4 minutes with a hard left turn north that was in September 2010 after is messed with birmingham Class A Airspace and Lakenheath routed a Scout from LFA7 to take a peek.

Also see here for historic references of identicle phenomena:


9-9-52 Portland, Oregon Two oval or disc-shaped UFOs hovering; one wobbled.


9-20-52 Topcliffe, England Silver disc rotated and wobbled. [Operation Mainbrace
Chronology, this section]


9-9-54 Nelson, New England Three discs hovered, wobbled, rose at high speed.
[Section VIII; Photographs]


3-2-55 Tucson, Arizona Elongated UFO passed overhead with "loping or rocking motion."


3-28-55 Joseph City, Arizona Large group of UFOs maneuvering like jets in a dogfight, split up,
began moving with "strange fluttering motion."


7-26-55 Washington, D.C. Round UFO approached airport, hovered, and oscillated before
speeding away.


3-20-56 Washington, D.C. Three discs, silvery-white; tilted in "wobbling" motion, moved up
and down.


7-56 Washington, D.C. Three discs, one with "a pronounced wobble," leaving visible trails
and flying "in definite formation."


7-14-56 Arlington, Virginia Amateur astronomers watched object larger than stars or planets
for four minutes; object had "wobbling motion."


8-20-56 Citrus Heights, California Large group of Saturn-shaped UFOs in rough semi-circle
formation, individually wobbling.


12-18-56 Barberton, Ohio UFOs arced across sky from east to west; when it slowed and
hovered "it wobbled and had erratic movement."

REF www.nicap.org...

Many identicle to these were also picked up by the STS missions but the camera quality back then was far poorer and Nasa also downplayed it so I won't bother referencing that most of you will have seen it though and heard the remarks which Fort Meade didn't bother to remove on the delay. With today's remote HD kit though its far harder to say "ah its nothing"

Basically they are not ice or water they are all over the place and have been for years, they look unstable but handle very precisely and move and vector rapidly.

I wish people would take the time to study these things, and understand that if you can't explain something it doesn't mean it was faked or created by god, it just means you can't explain it yet.

My guess is because there are so many of them and because everyone now has an HD camera we'll find out pretty soon what they are, I just hope we're nice when it happens.

reply to post by kauskau


That's hilarious! I was thinking the same thing when I watched that vid. Can you get the estimated height with knowing only the circumference of the earth, it's curvature and positioning of said object? I dunno I'm wondering why he didn't show his calculations

reply to post by jerryznv


He used the circumference of the earth 24,900 miles rounded up to 25,000 and some "calculations of the curvature of earth" and came up with a distance of ... oops forget.


1,000 miles

Originally posted by FlySolo
reply to post by jerryznv

 

He used the circumference of the earth 24,900 miles rounded up to 25,000 and some "calculations of the curvature of earth" and came up with a distance of ... oops forget.

edit on 24-4-2012 by FlySolo because: (no reason given)

I think you are going to have to take into account several other factors...but I can appreciate your humor!

I was thinking...size of the object...distance from the surface of the earth (or camera lens)...speed of the ISS...speed of the earths rotation...etc...you know...just some numbers to crunch!

You want to jump on gathering some of those?

reply to post by jerryznv


Ya sure. Getting right on it.

The whole thing he's talking about though, David Serena? is about a pretty interesting clip around the 43 min mark. But even though the vid is good, his math to get the distance will be his short coming. Plus, he's a little dry. I tried to watch the whole thing but ended taking a nap. Twice.

reply to post by kauskau


It looks like one went all the way across Australia in about 8 seconds. Australia is 2,547 miles wide at its widest point.

Mach 1 at sea level is 340.3 m/ps, 764.2 mph, 1225 kmph.

It would take the object 1 hour to cross Australia at the speed of 2,547 mph. That is 42 mps.

However, to cross in 8 seconds it would have to be going 18,427 mph or 307 mps or Mach 24.21. The US Air Force and NASA have an aircraft that flew at Mach 20 last year before crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

It would be more strange that in an almost infinite universe there are no ufo or flying saucers on earth don't you think so?

The universe is full of life exactly like it is here on earth.

The things you see are ufos, accept it.


* how could a satelite or other thing get out of earth at that speed, you are seeing here flying saucers.

reply to post by lke123

you are seeing here flying saucers.

How can you be so sure about it's shape?

Where do you see a saucer shape in the video?

reply to post by NoSoup4U


Its India BTW not Australia the Aus /tazzy gap is flat not pointed whereas the India Sri-Lanka gap is. but yes your maths are correct and the distance for northern india is roughly the same at around 2000 miles.15000 mph again be careful with that assumptoin though the low axis view means there is a lot of paralax going on which effectively halves the speed relative to the angle. put simply it is easy to accidentally measure an item far closer to you at a far greater speed if the object behing it is known to be vast but distant, (eg India) its a poor yardstick.

it is far easier to take account of the rate of verticle assent from lower orbit into deeper space the air wake mentioned earler occurs up to about 120,000 feet the ISS is in orbit 220 miles above the earth.
You can see one of these little balls followed by another on the same course transiting this space in 2 seconds
the maths with no background detail reference to throw us off are as follows:

12000/M=22miles
ISS Orbit=220miles
Orbit minus atmosphere=200mils
distance = 200 miles in 2/sec =
100m/sec or 6000 m/pm or 60,000mph

As far as I can determine.

Any answer you get will be driven by your assumptions of distance from the camera, which of course is also moving.

The math that has most impressed me is the angular rate of another orbiting object passing through the field of view of a shuttle or station camera or window or eyeball.

Most of the thousands of pieces of 'space debris' out there are small, centimeter sized. They might be eyeball/camera visible out to several hundred meters.

Orbital inclinations determine 'crossing angle' to the space station, and typically those angles range from several degrees [rarely so close] to tens of degrees [typical] to more than 100 degrees [not unusual].

Try the math on the angular rate of such an object at a distance of, say, 100 meters, or 1000 meters. The object can be going anywhere from 30,000 kph to 45,000 kph [if it's at perigee of a highly elliptical orbit].

The results may satisfy you, as they have me, that the odds of actually detecting such a zip-past mote are very very small.

And that's been the experience of astronauts. To the best of my knowledge, even when they have LOOKED for near-pass debris objects, they have never seen them.

Even brighter objects, observed out windows or on TV screens, that linger within view for minutes or more, just can't be in random crossing orbits. They stay too close for too long.

With great difficulty, Don Pettit on his first ISS mission in 2003, was able to observe distant Iridium flashes predicted by specially-tuned software, but they are bright and short lived.

This may help narrow down the range of potential prosaic explanations for strange dots.

So the OP's question showed an excellent instinct to see what math could do to help with this mystery. Kudos.