Posted on 11/10/2010 12:53:48 AM PST by roses of sharon
Video posted on the CBS Los Angeles website shows an object flying through the evening sky Monday that left a large contrail, or vapor trail. While cruising the skies Monday at sunset, Sky2 captured on video what appears to be a missile making its way up into the sky from over the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.
Pentagon officials were stumped by the event. “Nobody within the Department of Defense that we’ve reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said.
Pentagon Says No Missile Behind Contrail: KNX 1070′s Charles Feldman Reports
While the vapor cloud captured on video resembled that created by a rocket in flight, military officials said they didn’t know of any launches in the area.
Lapan said that “all indications” were that the Defense Department was not involved with the object.
One expert called it an optical illusion. “It’s an airplane that is heading toward the camera and the contrail is illuminated by the setting sun,” said John Pike, director of the U.S.-based security analyst group globalsecurity.org.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, issued a statement jointly with the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, saying that the contrail was not the result of a foreign military launching a missile. It provided no details.
“We can confirm that there is no threat to our nation,” the statement said. “We will provide more information as it becomes available.”
NORTHCOM is the U.S. defense command and NORAD is a U.S.-Canadian organization charged with protecting the U.S. from the threat of missiles or hostile aircraft.
Pike said the object could not have been a rocket because it appeared to alter its course.
“The local station chopped up the video and so it’s hard to watch it continuously,” Pike said. “But at one place you can see it has changed course — rockets don’t do that.”
Pike said he didn’t understand why the military had not recognized the contrail of an aircraft. “The Air Force must …understand how contrails are formed,” he said. “Why they can’t get some major out to belabor the obvious, I don’t know.”
Judge for yourself by watching this raw video from Sky2.
Or have a closer look at some of the screen shots we’ve taken.
>> It was launched in international waters
I haven’t been studying this to any great extent, but between the lighting and visually decreasing width of the ‘trail’, the trajectory appears somewhat perpendicular to both the surface of the Earth and the visible cloud cover.
>> and visually decreasing width of the ‘trail’,
Not to ignore the fact that contrails expand over time where width is not necessarily an adequate determinant of distance from the eye.
As in a vertical launch? If that’s what you mean I agree completely.
Of course they do, until they are powerless ballistic objects, they do lots of course corrections while powered. And unless the film was sped up greatly, no way an airliner would leave a trail in such a short time.
Yes, the lighting to me says vertical.
I think its a plane flying at altitude coming at the viewer and its contrail trailing off behind and away from the observer...and with the very shallow angles, the actual, relative, and perceived speeds and positions of all the objects involved (sun, earth, plane, observers).....the sun low on the horizon, the “exhaust plume” is actually the glint of the sun off the bottom of the plane, or the glint of the reflection of the sun off the surface of the ocean.
But I didnt see it.
I concur. The perspective on a plane would put it much further out than a vertically launched missile given the percentage of sky crossed by the contrail. That would mean the plane would have to travel a much further distance to fill the same percentage of sky. Both the distance that infers for a plane and the difference in perspective of a line parallel to the earth would call for a tremendously longer path. It should take a good deal longer to travel.
Definitely.
I’m sure there’s enough radar and satellite to know for sure. Intriguing photos nonetheless.
That is a rocket
That is a rocket
A shadow of the moons disk causes eclipses. Large areas of dark. The moon is very big. Are they insinuating it was the shadow of the moons disk way off in the distant earth orbital plane ? No way you could see it since it would be in the darkness of space with no sunlight behind it to illuminate. That shadow had to be in the Earths atmosphere. Only way you could see it. Perhaps they are claiming a reflected shadow from a large dark crater on the moon ? Thanks for that link.
Also forgot. It was a new moon on Saturday. No light from the moon at all. Could not have created a shadow on Monday.
It is clear that the dark line is not the same as the highly visible contrail. If it is part of the vehicle's path then it clearly isn't traveling east towards the observer.
Contrails can look like rocket trails. That has nothing to do with proving definitively that this specific event was not a rocket. The web cam shot has very poor quality and we cannot compare speeds. Get a video of this same plane tomorrow looking almost identical to the original video and you might have something. And I do not mean getting it to look like a contrail at a near vertical angle. There are lots of point of view tricks that can cause that. You need to get it to look exactly like the original contrail in motion. Should not be a problem since this is a daily flight, right ?
Went to the space shuttle page and noted he was saying the bright moon itself could cause a shadow in our atmosphere when the sun was setting and not as bright. Problem with that theory is we had a new moon Saturday. No moon light or almost no moon light on Monday.
No moon light at what altitude? He claims he figured in the position of the moon at the time. I see you took the discussion straight to him on the other thread. Good thinking. I hope he replies. If he does please ping me to it.
Figuring the position of the near Full Moon is only relevant in calculating the shadows angle with respect to viewing angle. And there wont be any visible moon shadows near a new moon.
Altitude does matter if the object is far enough above the surface of the earth to be exposed to the moon’s light. We’ll see what the original poster has to say about it.
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