Man Captures Video Of Strange Explosion In The Sky

Originally posted by Phage
A meteor would also not last long enough for the photographer to shoot it. Make a phone call. And shoot it some more.

Wouldn't that depend on zoom, on the telescope and how far the object is, also velocity?

reply to post by BigfootNZ

Sooo where is the vid then? All we get is a single frame of the 'object' blowing up... which looking at it is exactly identical to a shooting star I saw break up in the night sky above a few years back. Err so he tried selling the footage on Craigslist a week before taking it to the media, and they (CBS) got a second opinion from a Vatican expert... oh kay.. and im assuming the reason the CBS site hasnt got any of the video on it is because Mr Prychodzko wanted to keep all rights to it which would mean he still wants to sell it. My verdict... guy was lucky enough to capture a meteor breaking up and threw a little glitter on the story, or someone did. Unless we get to see the entire vid thats all id say we can think it was... or any other simple explanation.

Umm WTH??? are you reading the same post as everyone else? There is video and he was trying to sell his telescope on Craigslist not the video.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


Meteors move ultra fast. That object was in our atmosphere. The total amount of time we are talking about here is minutes. Nah.

Originally posted by ModernAcademia

Originally posted by Phage
A meteor would also not last long enough for the photographer to shoot it. Make a phone call. And shoot it some more.

Wouldn't that depend on zoom, on the telescope and how far the object is, also velocity?

Not much. You're not likely to find a meteor that lasts more than a few seconds.

Phage, you nailed this one bang on.

For those that are wondering about the smaller "orbiting" object:

Keep in mind that weather balloons all have instruments (one, two, or more) attached by a long tether. Weather balloons can range from small to massive in size, so they can appear quite bright and large when viewed through the eyepiece of a telescope.

If you watch the original video closely, you can see that the smaller object is not "orbiting", but instead it's swinging back and forth behind/above and from side to side the descending weather balloon.

And this guy makes no mention of any astonomical unit distance he had his telescope sited for (what size eyepiece he was using, what part of the sky he was viewing, etc), thus we can't assume he's looking into deep space just because he's looking through a telescope... Hell, I can count the freckles on my neighbours arse with my telescope, as well as view a deep space messier object. It's all a matter of what you set up your scope for.

*cough*
... ignore that last part mentioning my neighbour's arse...
*cough*

Originally posted by ikonoklast
reply to post by skepticconwatcher

 

I thought it was weird they contacted the Vatican too. But Phage pointed out that the Vatican has an observatory (which is also perhaps a little strange).

The Vatican also has the largest library of supernatural material, the Observatory there was established in the 1700's as Astronomy was of interest then as it is now and was instrumental in the implementation of the current calender system.

What a priceless thread.

Thanks guys.


Taken down a peg or two.


Love it

Originally posted by Phage

Originally posted by ModernAcademia

Originally posted by Phage
A meteor would also not last long enough for the photographer to shoot it. Make a phone call. And shoot it some more.

Wouldn't that depend on zoom, on the telescope and how far the object is, also velocity?

Not much. You're not likely to find a meteor that lasts more than a few seconds.

That's right, didn't NASA et al design their re-entry vehicles to mimic how a meteor behaves entering the atmosphere. The fire from the sky is usually done and dusted in seconds because it is mostly the exterior surface that is ablated off, even if some of it did reach the ground it is more likely to be cold rather than hot.

"The concept of the ablative heat shield was described as early as 1920 by Robert Goddard: "In the case of meteors, which enter the atmosphere with speeds as high as 30 miles per second, the interior of the meteors remains cold, and the erosion is due, to a large extent, to chipping or cracking of the suddenly heated surface. For this reason, if the outer surface of the apparatus were to consist of layers of a very infusible hard substance with layers of a poor heat conductor between, the surface would not be eroded to any considerable extent, especially as the velocity of the apparatus would not be nearly so great as that of the average meteor."
That excerpt from Wiki. (no link)

To lend a bit more help to the weather balloon theory...
Most telescopes will refract the image upside down unless they are equipped with a "diagonal", which make the image upright.

If his telescope didn't have this piece of equipment then the image of the weather balloon looks as it does on the newscast...


Say, for instance, he did have the diagonal lens when filming it. Then it would have come out as it should, right side up... which now matches other videos of weather balloons exploding at high altitudes.



As always, speculation

Originally posted by Screwed
Douchy McDoucherton said they were unsure at this time what the object could be.