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.

[ATCNavyRetiree]

[Finny]

Kirkwood, the contrail of the shorter one is much, much longer than what we saw. There was NO contrail. You couldn't even tell it was forked into a V unless you looked through binocs.

[smonk]

---swamp gas---

reflecting the light from venus.

[Finny]

Where are you located?

[smonk]

LOL! exactly.

[null and void]

Isn't the U-2 single engine?

[Tunehead54]

POOF! I am now wearing your hat.

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Oops - sorry those are my skivvies - but don't worry - its the latest thing in Gitmo, or so I've read. ;-)

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Ahh - guilty pleasures - smoking on the porch with an adult beverage, Bose PC speakers lightly cranking out my MusicMatch Jukebox selections - and now I gotta go in and watch Season 1 Disk 4, #3 "24" with my son and then go to the beach tomorrow. Not a bad Father's Day! Nite Nite.

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Think I'll change my handle to "Lucky" ... ;-)

[Finny]

Hmmmm ... this thing was so high it was way, way past Edwards after five minutes. But an Aurora ... wonder if that's what it was?

[Finny]

See my post 103.

[null and void]

Besides, they add chlorofluorosulfonic acid to the fuel to suppress contrail formation.

[smonk]

---See my post 103.---

or any of the 12 subsequent posts directing you to post #103.

yeesh. complicated thread.

[Private_Sector_Does_It_Better]

Disneyland fireworks? :)

[Kirkwood]

An object reentering like a capsule will have a plasma ball around it in the extreme upper atmosphere due to the surrounding upper atmospheric atoms being ionized (getting electrons stripped off) plus ablated material getting ejected. When speed is cut as the object enters lower atmosphere, you will see a contrail formed by that object as the water condenses out of the air. The persistence of the contrail will vary with the humidity of the air. You may have seen jets with contrails that go on and off and that is due to passing through different altitudes with layers of air with different humidity or else passing through "rivers" of air at a given altitude that hold relatively more moisture, but not enough to condense out as a cloud.

[null and void]

That's what google says, so it must be true...

[steve86]

have you observed a shuttle reentry or a SR-71 return from max altitude/speed?

Nothing special from an observer's point of view about an SR-71 (or U2) descent.

OTOH, 50 years of R&D following the X-15 design program would probably result in a spectacular re-entry.

[eyespysomething]

[Allegra]

I just saw some black helicopters in the sky over where I am.

[Baraonda]

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

I don't and here are a few reasons:

1. she is knowledgable about this kind of phenomenom.

2. She has the vocabulary to explain this kind of phenomenon.

3. She know of sites (she mentioned what I think was an airforce base) and has knowledge of other similar phenomena.

4. She had binoculars handy to look at the phenomenom.

If you read all of her posts, I'm sure you will find other reasons as to why there is nothing to what she saw. Mind you, I'm saying that she may have actually seen something in the sky, but it's of no particular importance.