What just happened in sky over Los Angeles?

finny

[Finny]

About ten minutes ago, Husband in hills behind Brea, between Brea and Chino Hills, spotted in the northwest what looked like something entering the atmosphere. We grabbed binoculars, and it was extremely high altitude, coming in, not going out. Anybody see it? Can probably still spot it further north, as in Pasadena, etc. Grab binocs and look.

[Kirkwood]

At low sun altitudes, contrails look like they are burning because they are highly reflective at that angle. Here we see persistent contrails, but highly reflective. Short contrail plus high altitude plane plus low sun would give you exactly what you saw.

[Finny]

No, not a meteor, because it didn't burn out, and because it was very controlled and changed course, from north-west to north. What do you think of Kirkwood's suggestion that dry air at high altitudes could create appearance of burn because dry air wouldn't enable contrails to linger at all? In any case, whatever this was was very large and going very fast.

[streetpreacher]

Did it resemble a classy green-eyed host around the sun?

 

I CAN FLY...

[Finny]

Wow...all he did was snap his fingers? Got ya trained it would seem ...

He is indeed my most kind and worthy master. Although tonight I will probably have to sleep in the shed because I burned his dinner, as I was too busy trying to post this stuff on FR. Fortunately for me it was only the vegetables I had burned ... had I burned the meat, he would have beaten me before making me sleep in the shed.

[null and void]

Re that picture and your tag line.

You can count today as a success...

;^P

[Finny]

I'll buy that theory!!! ;^)

[smonk]

---He is indeed my most kind and worthy master. Although tonight I will probably have to sleep in the shed because I burned his dinner, as I was too busy trying to post this stuff on FR. Fortunately for me it was only the vegetables I had burned ... had I burned the meat, he would have beaten me before making me sleep in the shed.---

thank goodness you didn't burn the meat.

[pfflier]

They usually launch to the south, towards the south pacific. The oberver here apparently saw it heading north west, from his position which is south Vandenberg.

Polar orbits are South-North axis oriented. Minuteman and Peacekeeper are West oriented. ICBM interceptors are now based at Vandenberg and Fort Greely AK.

If it was westward bound consider that.

[Finny]

Repeat: Not a launch. Am very familiar with VAFB launches, have seen dozens of them, this was not outgoing, but incoming, and it was not in the vicinity of VAFB launch trajectories.

[Baraonda]

"Even now, entirely possible that this is a covert thing that we spotted."

Can this be it? Eurofighter a shooting star in clash with US jets

[Kirkwood]

I just like this picture so I'm posting it. It does show however that contrails are not straight when they exit the engines, but are splayed out by the displacement of air around the plane. So under certain angles they can look v-shaped, especially when they are short due to dry air.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Report it here.

[Finny]

Have had that tagline for a very, very long time.

[KneelBeforeZod]

swamp gas

[null and void]

Me too, except I'm given to understand that the Aurora has a "string-of-pearls" contrail due to it's pulse jet propulsion.

Of course, that could be total disinformation...

[TXnMA]

I've read through the whole thread, and am inclied to take your observation seriously.

As a trained and experienced observer, I realize the impossibility of accurately estimating size, and speed when you know neither altitude nor horizontal distance, Having said that, do you have any feel for how far north it had traveled before it started its ?eastward? turn?

FWIW, have you observed a shuttle reentry or a SR-71 return from max altitude/speed? If so, how did it compare?

I know there are -- supposedly --no more SR-71s flying, but I seriously doubt that we haven't replaced the Blackbird and its capabilities with something with better performance...

Please keep us informed if you learn more about this phenomenon!

[Finny]

Thank you, Lachlan! :^)