Posted on 11/14/2007 12:47:17 PM PST by skeptoid
I knew you’d know. :o)
My pleasure.
http://brumac.8k.com/trent1.html
Read the report, it’s very interesting.
( BTW: Maccabee’s PhD is in optics. )
Thanks, Dave.
Interesting. From page 3 of your link above:
The implication of the brightness ratios for reasonable values of gamma is that the bottom of the UO was itself a source of light if it were nearby (e.g., within 20 feet under the wires). To be a source of light it would have to have (a) contained a source of light, or (b) been made of translucent materials so that light could filter from the sky above through the bottom surface. Requirement (a) is considered beyond the capabilities of the photographer because a very small illumination apparatus would have been required and because the illumination mechanism, a small light bulb, would have produced a very uneven distribution of light over the bottom surface in contradiction to the fact that there are no “hot spots” of brightness in the image of the bottom (see TrntDensUO1.gif and TrntDensUO2.gif). Requirement (b) above is considered a possibility if the upper body of the UO were a translucent material.(7) Any holes through the upper body would allow direct sunlight through, and these would cause brightness “hot spots” on the bottom surface. On the other hand, a translucent or transparent material such as glass would probably not “look” the same in a side view as the object appears in photo 2 (apparently shiny like the nearby tank, but not a mirror - like specular surface). Any hypothetical translucent UO must appear, in a side view, as bright and “shiny” as does the object in photo 2 (also, it must be shown that an appropriately translucent or transparent material in the proper shape was available to the photographers).
Independent tests of the density distributions·of the images of the object and its surround and of the density distributions of nearby objects in the photos have been made (8). Color contouring (using a computer to assign specific colors to specific density ranges) has shown that (a) the “back” end (left hand end in photo 1) of the object appears slightly non-circular (actually it comes to a slight or shallow “point”), and (b) the edges of the image are rough or jagged (the color contour boundaries are not smooth curves), whereas the edges of the images of nearby objects, and particularly of the wires “above” the UO, are relatively smooth. Observation (b) may be related to an atmospheric effect on images: the distortion of an image increases quite rapidly as the object distance increases up to about a kilometer, and then the distortion increases very slowly or not at all with further increases in range. The atmospheric conditions assumed for a hoax (morning, no wind) may have been conducive to the production of image distortion.(9) Thus, the jaggedness of the edge of the UO image may be an indication that it was more than several hundred meters away, thus contradicing the hoax hypothesis. (NOTE ADDED IN THE YEAR 2000: this was considered a theoretical possibility 25 years ago. Now I consider it unlikely that any edge fuzziness could be directly related to distance.)
Thanks LVD!
A pdf file on a June 1947 incident as observed by a missle expert.
http://foia.abovetopsecret.com/clifford_stone/NM_1947/NM_JUN_29_1947.pdf
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.