Flashing UFO passing the ISS

it's billy bob Thornton

Three times I've posted on the youtube link a request for the date/time of the original.

This is what happens:

Comment removed

Author withheld

What can that mean?

reply to post by JimOberg


That is strange indeed. Do you know if it's the video uploader or YouTube doing that?

Got to admit it's good to see Jim honestly trying to work out what's happening here instead of saying it's debris, ice particles, etc.

Strange that the uploader won't respond though...

edit : will send a message too and see what happens.

Originally posted by robhines
Got to admit it's good to see Jim honestly trying to work out what's happening here instead of saying it's debris, ice particles, etc.

I'm sorry you're surprised by that, since in my "99 FAQs about 'Space UFOs'" and many earlier posts I've tried to make clear that in space, at least, unusual sightings really have on rare [but non-zero] occasions been indicators of genuine vehicle malfunctions and threats to the mission and crew that need to be QUICKLY detected, diagnosed, and responded to. Which makes distractions over 'noise' actually dangerous.

But it's also why ALL reports/videos do need to be posted and looked at quickly, and I've tried to provide positive feedback to anybody who does that on youtube, even if I also follow up with the prosaic explanation that makes sense to me. But don't STOP putting strange stuff on space videos out for inspection quickly.

This video is different in several key ways. Which ways -- remain to be determined.

Originally posted by JimOberg
I'm sorry you're surprised by that, since in my "99 FAQs about 'Space UFOs'" and many earlier posts I've tried to make clear that in space, at least, unusual sightings really have on rare [but non-zero] occasions been indicators of genuine vehicle malfunctions and threats to the mission and crew that need to be QUICKLY detected, diagnosed, and responded to. Which makes distractions over 'noise' actually dangerous.

Yeah I just get used to seeing people having a go at you I think, and you're usually saying it's something normal. (which it probably is, I try to stay as neutral as possible with this stuff, although I have gone overboard thinking it was Aliens/UFO's in the past, admitted.)

I think this looks pretty amazing but I'm not saying what I think it is, because when it comes down to it I honestly have no idea.

Since it's traveling from North to South, it's likely to be a satellite in polar orbit. The flashes suggest it is one of the Iridium constellation. If we knew the date and exact time, that could be confirmed.

Originally posted by DJW001
Since it's traveling from North to South, it's likely to be a satellite in polar orbit. The flashes suggest it is one of the Iridium constellation. If we knew the date and exact time, that could be confirmed.

Just to be clear, you're NASA too, right? Think I remember you saying that in the past. Am just wondering as I'd guess you and Jim have maybe seen things similar to this before?

edit : response from the comments section of the video page :

This is the qualifier, as written by aliennewz, "This video was sent to us from an anonymous person who was recording the ISS live feed.". Meaning, I don't think the entity operating as alienewz is going to be able to provide specific information.on the video. We are working to identify landmarks in the video, to determine the orbital position of the ISS. We will be able to derive a time at that point. We can then check daily video for that time of day. It's time consuming, but all we have.

reply to post by robhines

Just to be clear, you're NASA too, right? Think I remember you saying that in the past. Am just wondering as I'd guess you and Jim have maybe seen things similar to this before?

No, I'm not NASA, although people frequently accuse me of being a "NASA shill." In fact, I'm just a space hobbyist. I have seen "blinkers" many times: the blinking is caused by a satellite (or sometimes, discarded booster) tumbling in orbit. The Iridium satellites are quite large and shiny, and are known for suddenly "flashing" as they catch the Sun.

reply to post by DJW001


Haha, ok thanks.

Wasn't thinking you were a shill, was just wondering if you worked there. Must've got something mixed up.

Also : those flashes seem to be occuring at regular intervals, is that normal for a satellite? Part of me is thinking CGI now, but who knows.

Originally posted by DJW001
Since it's traveling from North to South, it's likely to be a satellite in polar orbit. The flashes suggest it is one of the Iridium constellation. If we knew the date and exact time, that could be confirmed.

I used to think so too, regarding other satellites in criss-crossing orbits. But the more I actually 'ran the numbers' on the expected angular rate of such fly-by paths, the more I couldn't believe it. They would flash past much too quickly. Since this flasher's angular rate is so slow, to be another satellite in crossing orbit -- polar or otherwise -- it would have to be FAR away. And hence very BIG to be visible from the ISS [unless it were a specular reflection off a tumbling solar array or antenna array]. And hence visible from the ground as well.

Now, when you mention Iridium sats, they do flash very brightly along a very narrow beam, and if it's an abandoned Iridium -- there are some, and they DO tumble -- it could be visible at such a range. That's extremely rare, but could happen -- as amateur skywatchers know.

So the date/time becomes even more critical to know.

I want to calculate how fast it might be going but I'm not sure if this video is in real time (I don't think so) or if it's some type of time lapse. If so can some one tell me by what degree the speed has been increased.

reply to post by dejarmaX


Agent K : A thousand years ago, we knew the world was flat. 500 years ago, we knew the Sun revolved around the Earth. Imagine what we know today?

I believe this quote fits in this topic somewhere...

Well if this video on the same channel is anything to go by, then i think maybe it might be a hoax?

It's amazing how a thread like this gets this many S&F's. A gray object that's blinking. Jesus I couldn't even imagine the technology going in to faking this, it must be real.

If this is found to be from Thurs/Fri morning I saw it too (approx 02.30am GMT Fri) I was setting up my camera for some astro photography.
At first I thought it was a plane but there was only 1 bright light flashing. As I watched for about 10/15 seconds it just disappeared.

To add was coming from South West direction. Roughly 30 upto 60 degrees.

I just spent a bit of time trying to figure out how fast the UFO is likely to being. Since the uploader claims the video is from a live feed then I'll assume it isn't a time lapse. If this turns out to be a hoax then I just wasted 2 hours of my life. It was a fun little problem solving task in any case.

First I took a snapshot from the video and tried to fit the picture onto a full picture of Earth so that I could get an idea of the size we were dealing with. The part we see in the video is actually fairly small. The following GIF image shows you how I managed to fit it onto the Earth (pay attention to the top part). I removed the ISS so that it would look more natural. And I'm not sure if I actually placed it over the correct part of Earth but it looks pretty good to me.



Next I basically drew some more lines so that I had something useful to work with. My aim at this point was to calculate the circumference of the arc which we see in the video.



In order to work out the circumference of the arc I needed to know the angle in between the green lines. In these lines is hidden a right angle triangle which will help me.



To simplify, the picture is rotated 90 degrees clockwise and shows us only the triangle I am interested in. Side lengths are measured in pixels. Some simple calculations give me the angle.



As it turns out the angle indicated by the question mark is 11.768 degrees. If you look back at the Earth picture you'll see we need to double that number to get the full angle between the green lines.

So our angle is 23.536 degrees. Now we can use a simple formula to get the circumference of our arc. That formula is s = θ x (π/180) x r where r is the radius, and the radius of Earth is 6378.1 km.

So our answer will look something like this:

s = 23.536 * (pi/180) * 6378.1
= 2620

Thus it appears that the circumference of the Earth arc shown in the video is roughly 2620 km. Next I just measured the position of the UFO at 1 second intervals for 20 seconds.



The UFO seems to follow the curvature of Earth, so if the circumference that we are dealing with is 2620 km, and we use 100 units to measure across the image, each unit should represent roughly 26.2 km.

Once I measured the position of the UFO at 1 seconds intervals I was able to calculate the distance travelled in those 1 second periods, giving me the speed in km per seconds.

Then it was simply a case of converting km/s into km/h and graphing the result. The following graph shows the final result of all this work. It appears to be accelerating at a fairly constant rate.



The measurements start at 0:20 when the speed is around 37,728 km/h. The measurements end at 0:40 (20 seconds later) when the speed is around 292,392 km/h.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Damn dude, thats some calculations. Whats your day job, MIT professor?

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by dejarmaX

 

Agent K : A thousand years ago, we knew the world was flat. 500 years ago, we knew the Sun revolved around the Earth. Imagine what we know today?

I believe this quote fits in this topic somewhere...

Except it's Hollywood entertainment, not real history.

Two thousand years ago, scholars knew the world was round and they had a good idea about its dimensions. They even made good guesses at the scale of the Solar System.

Columbus and the 'flat-earthers' is a grade-school fairy tale. Isabella's council was correct -- it was Columbus who was wrong about the shape of the Earth. Then he got lucky.

Myths only misinform and allow bad future decisions. Fight ignorance and move towards accurate history.

After reading some of the comments on this thread and watching the video about 5 times I am convinced it is not a satellite. Here is my reason why:
1) When it first appears, it does seem like it emerges from the "clouds / earth's atmosphere" but it could also be that it was coming from the side of the earth we don't see due to the curvature of it.

2) If it is a satellite coming from the horizon (curvature) of the earth, why does it look like it changes direction?
a) When you first spot it, it is coming STRAIGHT at you
b) Then it somehow the "satellite" detects collision and changes direction? (I DON'T THINK SO)

3) You can clearly see that after coming in one direction (towards the ISS's Camera) it takes a left turn (right to you the viewer)

4) If it was a satellite, wouldn't its trajectory be the same as it appeared over the horizon, I mean we should have seen it drifting right, right from the get go instead of coming towards us and deciding that it had the wrong coordinates?

Just my opinion!