I'll go with that, since the damn things are pulsing.
Also, since they're passing behind the 12 mile long tether, which is itself more than 80 nautical miles from the space vehicle, the estimated size must then be about 2-3 miles in diameter.
I'll go with that, since the damn things are pulsing.
Also, since they're passing behind the 12 mile long tether, which is itself more than 80 nautical miles from the space vehicle, the estimated size must then be about 2-3 miles in diameter.
I have spent the last 30 years observing first hand through telescopes, as well as manufacturing them... and I’ve seen artifacts like the ones observed in the video thousands of times. They’re out of focus points of light under very high magnification. The tether is also way out of focus, which is why things can appear to go behind it (point objects don’t cover up a wide out of focus beam). It’s a similar reason as to why stars twinkle and planets don’t.
There’s a central obstruction in the optical path, and since it’s on the shuttle then it’s probably a Schmidt Cassegrain or Maksutov Cassegrain optical assembly (because they’re much shorter than Newtonians). (I’ve made scopes that have flown on many NASA vehicles)
The “notch” at the bottom of each of the artifacts actually resembles a Newtonian style focuser intruding in the light path... and so it could be an extremely fast Newtonian... though the secondary obstruction looks too small for that. It could also be a heat source close to the mirror. My daily driver scope (14.5” F5.5 Newt) looks like that just from mounting a heavy weight behind the mirror off to one side. The tiny amount of heat given off by a simple piece of metal close to the back of a telescope mirror can make all kinds of screwy patterns show up in the diffraction pattern.
Say what you will... but I’ve seen this thousands of times. The artifacts behave exactly like I would expect illuminated dust to appear.