Mysterious planet-sized object spotted near mercury (Mercury)

The Sideshow ^ | December 7, 2011 | Eric Pfeiffer

[decimon]

Is a giant, cloaked spaceship orbiting around Mercury?

That's been the speculation from some corners aftera camera onboard NASA's STEREO spacecraft caught a wave of electronically charged material shooting out from the sun and hitting Mercury.

Theorists have seized on the images captured from the "coronal mass ejection" (CME) last week as suggestive of alien life hanging out in our own cosmic backyard. Specifically, the solar flare washing over Mercury appears to hit another object of comparable size. "It's cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very obviously, it's cloaked," YouTube-user siniXster said in his video commentary on the footage, which has generated hundreds of thousands of views this week. Now, how this user was able to determine that the object was "obviously" a cloaked spaceship with no other natural explanation remains as much a mystery as the object itself.

[decimon]

Seeing is believing ping.

[Venturer]

Geez. Everybody wants to copy the History Channel.

[USNBandit]

That's no moon.....

[Retired Greyhound]

that’s one HUGE UFO

[RitchieAprile]

Romulan warbird on main viewer...

[no-to-illegals]

hummm... crispy baked alpha centurions

[LaybackLenny]

[KarlInOhio]

It's the Debt Star.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Is that Planet X?

[ThomasThomas]

They said Pluto is not a planet because of it’s size. Mercury is a small planet. Compared to Mercury the object is much smaller. So that small object isn’t anywhere near the size of Pluto.

[freedumb2003]

Dyson Sphere?

[MichaelP]

It is interesting!

[Empireoftheatom48]

Attention, Mr. Fwank white phone Uranus is calling! I know that this has nothing to do with the post, but just had to get the U word out there!

[no-to-illegals]

Have to admit the sideshow link to yahoo left me fascinated.

[musicman]

[Jeff Head]

Explanation from the Naval Research Lab:

Head NRL group scientist Russ Howard and lead ground systems engineer Nathan Rich say the mysterious object is in fact Mercury itself. And what we're seeing in the footage is the equivalent of Mercury's wake, "where the planet was on the previous day," as it travels through the solar system on its natural gravitational path:

To make the relatively faint glow of a coronal mass ejection stand out against the bright glare of space—caused by interplanetary dust and the stellar/galactic background—the NRL scientists must remove as much background light as possible. They explained that they determine what light is background light, and thus can be subtracted out, by calculating the average amount of light that entered each camera pixel on the day of the CME event and on the previous day. Light appearing in the pixels on both days is considered to be background light and is removed from the footage of the CME. The remaining light is then enhanced.

The analysts say the practice works even better when applied to far-off objects such as stars, which don't move much relative to the sun. But for moving objects, especially planets, the process is a little more complicated. And making matters even trickier is Mercury's staus as the closest planet to the sun.

"When [this averaging process] is done between the previous day and the current day and there is a feature like a planet, this introduces dark (negative) artifacts in the background where the planet was on the previous day, which then show up as bright areas in the enhanced image," Rich explained in an email.

[Jewbacca]

Dammnit. The Death Star of David has been located. Our secret Zionist base must move!

[Las Vegas Dave]

FWIW pings..

[TribalPrincess2U]

Please come and take your pre-sent resident back to wherever he came from.

[aruanan]

Dyson Sphere?

A Dyson sphere completely encloses a star. As envisioned by Dyson, it was a network of satellites surrounding the sun.

[no-to-illegals]

A space eddy? Suppose it is possible.

[muawiyah]

It has headlights.

[Dallas59]

[molson209]

A space eddy?

The distance between dog(named Eddy) droppings in the backyard

[Felis demulcta mitis]

i think it might be

http://image.internetautoguide.com/f/celebrities/spaceballs-the-movie-1973-winnebago-eagle-v-spaceship/23181444+w527+st0/spaceballs-the-movie-1973-winnebago-eagle-v-spaceship.jpg

[Yehuda]

All I know is it feels like Øbama is on oURanus.

[AndrewB]

Nothing to worry about until it starts circling Uranus.

[NormsRevenge]

Cool!

They are out there.
well, something is..

[Lady Lucky]

I’d blame it on optics. Note the dark space between it and Mercury. Anyway, if it were an object the size of Mercury, and near it, wouldn’t that cause perturbation of Mercury’s orbit?
Or hey, it could be Vulcan! Mercury’s legendary fellow traveler. :)

[no-to-illegals]

or a warp in the gravitational field where the mass detected the warp? Not related to the distance between droppings and Mercury ... LOL

[bgill]

Someone needs to reposition the telescope.

[Yehuda]

00:01:10 .....

[dragonblustar]

[Blado]

[Blado]

[decimon]

Spoil sport. ;-)

[Never on my watch]

The ships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet were described as "impossibly huge yellow somethings" that "hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't"

[mnehring]

I have a completely wacked out theory. The better our telescopes and imaging, the more things we’ll see that we didn’t see before.

I know, I’m crazy.

[no-to-illegals]

No you aren’t crazy, and if you are? I’m right there with you!

[mnehring]

Oy Vey Alert
Oy Vey Alert

Set battle condition to Verklempt.

[fanfan]

It's the Debt Star.

LOL!

[irishtenor]

Due to all of the U jokes, scientists have changed the name from Uranus to Urectum.

[decimon]

I know, I’m crazy.

That's the first step to recovery. Very good.

[Oatka]

Too late. It has been seen over L.A.

[mowowie]

Obviously it is a Dyson Sphere.

[mikrofon]

Dyson Sphere

[Ditter]

No, they are copying the Weather Channel. We are doomed, I tell you, DOOMED!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

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