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Obviously, you need a better monitor, video card or simply need to pay closer attention to the clip. The video was taken from an airplane by a television crew.

The 3 main engines and black rudder markings of the broken-off tail are quite discernable in several of the frames. You just need to look.

The 3 main engines and black rudder markings of the broken-off tail are quite discernable in several of the frames. You just need to look.

Just get a grip, Justa. I reviewed the link that goes to a 9sec video capture from Foxnews at http://www.gibsonridgesoftware.com/shuttle/zoom.mpg. There ain't nothing there, no matter how fancy you think your hardware is.

Why don't you post the specific frame you're talking about as a still image so we can ridicule your astute observation more easily.

You are not thinking clearly about what you are observing. I am an engineer who have performed failure analysis, and would like to point out the following.

The video clips you see are taken at a time when the shuttle was at an altitude of 200,000+ feet - around 40 miles above ground level.

Furthermore, most of the videos shot from the Dallas area of the shuttle, show the shuttle at an angle above the horizon of about 40 degrees at the highest, and less as it departed, due to its groundpath being south of the Dallas area.

This means that the actual distance to the shuttle - straight line of sight - was no closer than 60 miles.

You CANNOT see the tail of the space shuttle at 60 miles in daylight. You can't even see the whole shuttle.

What you are seeing are plasma balls surrounding the various parts of the shuttle as they ionize the rarified air at that altitude, screaming through at 12,000 MPH.

To give an example - if one sees something which appears at arms length (36" in my case) to be 1/16" across - then at a distance of sixty miles, the actual object is 550 feet across.

You are seeing a flaming hot glowing ball of fire almost 600 feet across...

A contrail that appears 1/4" wide at arms length is actually 1/2 mile across at 60 miles - the point of closest approach.

And at 12000 MPH = 1200 Miles/6 minutes = 200 miles / minute = 20 miles / 6 seconds = 3.33 miles per second... it is very quickly more than 100 miles away.

Just think for a minute... do you REALLY think these video cameras are imaging the actual Tail of the shuttle at distances of 80 - 100 miles away?

The "markings" and structures you see are artifacts - a combination of brightness variations in the actual plasma ball, and the video imaging process.

The space shuttle is about 57 feet tall, so the tail is on the order of 25 - 30 feet tall itself... the whole tail and engine assy would be about 45 feet or so at its largest dimensions.

At sixty miles - this 45 foot assembly would appear the same size as .005" ( 1/200th of an inch) at three feet.

You didn't see what you thought you saw - sorry to disappoint.

Obviously, you need a better monitor, video card or simply need to pay closer attention to the clip. The video was taken from an airplane by a television crew. The 3 main engines and black rudder markings of the broken-off tail are quite discernable in several of the frames. You just need to look.

I've watched that video numerous times now - in slow motion, frame-by-frame, etc. I've also seen the photos of what a Sony CCD Aperture looks like. If you watch the entire portion of the video clip that includes the zoom-in, you can plainly see that you are looking at aperture reflection. Sure, a couple of frames may make you believe that you're looking at something vaguely the shape of the shuttle - and your mind picks up other details and fills in the blanks to make you see something you're not really seeing. Kind of like the evil-looking face in the smoke of the WTC tower before it collapsed.

Now I understand what you're talking about. However I don't believe the delta shape is the shuttle. It doesn't look substantial to me, it looks more like glare.