NASA probes 'electric zap' mystery photo:Former astronaut wowed by photo

World Net Daily ^ | February 5, 2003 | Joe Kovacs

[gitmo]

"Wow."

That was astronaut Tammy Jernigan's stunned reaction last night when she viewed a photo of what appears to be space shuttle Columbia getting zapped by a purplish electrical bolt shortly before it disintegrated Saturday morning.


Former astronaut Tammy Jernigan

"It certainly appears very anomalous," Jernigan told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We sure will be very interested in taking a very hard look at this."

The photo was one of five captured by an amateur astronomer in San Francisco who routinely snaps pictures of shuttles when they pass over the Bay area.

The pictures were taken just seven minutes before Columbia's fatal demise.

The Chronicle reports that top investigators of the disaster are now analyzing the startling photograph to try to solve the mystery.

The photographer continues to request his name be withheld, adding he would not release the image publicly until NASA has a chance to study it.

"[The photos] clearly record an electrical discharge like a lightning bolt flashing past, and I was snapping the pictures almost exactly ... when the Columbia may have begun breaking up during re-entry," the photographer originally told the paper Saturday night.

Late yesterday, the space agency sent Jernigan – a former shuttle flyer and now manager at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories – to the astronomer's home to view the image, and have the Nikon camera brought to Houston today.

It was slated to be flown to the Johnson Space Center by a NASA T-38 jet this morning.

Jernigan reportedly asked the astronomer about the f-stop setting on his lens, and how long he kept the shutter open – apparently some four to six seconds. A tripod was used to steady the camera, and the shutter was triggered manually.

"In the critical shot," states the Chronicle, "a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail, the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades."

"I couldn't see the discharge with my own eyes, but it showed up clear and bright on the film when I developed it," the photographer previously said. "But I'm not going to speculate about what it might be."

David Perlman, science editor for the Chronicle, called the photos "indeed puzzling."

"They show a bright scraggly flash of orange light, tinged with pale purple, and shaped somewhat like a deformed L," he wrote.

Space shuttle Columbia's rollout to the launchpad (NASA photo)

Jernigan no longer works for NASA, though she's a veteran of five shuttle missions in the 1990s. Ironically, on her final flight, the orbiter's pilot was Rick Husband, who was at the helm at 9 a.m. EST Saturday when Columbia broke apart during re-entry into the atmosphere.

"He was one of the finest people I could ever hope to know," Jernigan said.

According to her NASA biography, Jernigan graduated from Stanford in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in physics. She went on to earn master's degrees in engineering science and astronomy from Stanford and UC-Berkeley respectively. She also holds a doctorate in space physics and astronomy from Rice University.

She's spent over 63 days above the Earth, completing 1,000 orbits, and having walked in space for nearly eight hours during her final mission aboard shuttle Discovery in 1999.

Before flying on shuttles, she was a research scientist in the theoretical studies branch of NASA Ames Research Center, working on the study of bipolar outflows in the region of star formations, gamma ray bursters and shock-wave phenomena in the interstellar medium.

Regarding the Columbia disaster, the space agency is additionally investigating reports of possible remnants found in the West, including California and Arizona.

"Debris early in the flight path would be critical because that material would obviously be near the start of the events," said Michael Kostelnik, a NASA spaceflight office deputy.

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[TLBSHOW]

INTERESTING......

[Gamecock]

Bump for later contemplation

[Timesink]

This obviously was a film-based (not digital) camera.

No, it's not obvious at all. You can take flash memory cards to the supermarket and get prints made just like with old-fashioned film.

[TigersEye]

Or it could just be nature throwing the dice and coming up you lose....

Or...it could be a natural phenomena that occurs during re-entry that has little or no effect on the shuttle and simply has never been observed before.

[TXnMA]

The photographer himself said:"on the film when I developed it".

Are you calling that individual an idiot or a liar -- just to support some wacko theory of your own? Anyone who uses a top-of-the line Nikon (I have three) knows the difference between "film" and "digital data".

Go wear your tinfoil hat somewhere else...

[isthisnickcool]

Why was that STS-109 if this was STS-107?

(Raising hand) Oh! Oh! I know the answer to that one!

See here.

[lonewacko_dot_com]

Have a link to the earlier thread? What was the make and model of this camera? Are you sure it was digital?

For more information on chromatic/purple fringing, see this: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=site%3Aphoto.net+chromatic+fringing+digital

[TigersEye]

It should have been daylight going over California, so the long exposure time doesn't make much sense to me.

It was still dark in AZ when the Shuttle passed over. Some kids took a video that was of black sky as it approached from the west and light as it disappeared on the eastern horizon. So it was still dark in CA when it went over.

[lonevoice]

Interesting developments bump

[snickeroon]

Can't seem to get a link here, but if you will go to NASA's home page and put "freestar" into the search window, you will be able to read about the experiments which included the video of the lightening sprites which yielded the unexpected bonus of the "red arc" noted in news stories reprinted on previous posts.

The reason I keep mentioning the Columbia patch was that the portion of the patch which represented "Operation Freestar" had a red arc of light which seemed to curve around the earth.... truly odd, since the arc of red light that was captured on video by the crew ...and as noted by one of Israel's foremost physicists...had never been seen before, and was reason for a great deal of scientific excitement as to what this finding would eventually reveal.

The reason Art Bell keeps appearing is that any time there is mention of conspiracy or oddness, Art Bell (now retired, his radio show now hosted by George Noory) is sort of the "catch-all" like mentioning "the grassy knoll..."

The reason I referred to the news story was prompted by the irony of the "electrtical/ plasma-like discharge...." surrounding the shuttle which allegedly appears on the photos taken Saturday in CA.

It just seems that when there is TOO much coincidence there is no longer a coincidence....and when it comes to this shuttle that is EXACTLY what is building....a bit like static cling.....

The patch has that same sense of deja vu (view) like artist renderings for book covers and cds revealing the fate of the World Trade Center years in advance of the event. It's just odd that such a rendering as shown on a patch would THEN appear on camera in front of the shuttle crew.

Then, during what should have been a normal return, another odd electrical flash-like anamoly shows up on a picture taken of the shuttle... it's description not unlike another Hubble photo available on the NASA site of a purple dwarf?

Clearly, there is more here than perhaps we will ever imagine, much less understand.

By the way, Operation Freestar" was the name for a group of experiments which was a payload "piggyback" on the shuttle through the Goddard Space Center. You were asking about the calibration of the cameras used, and all of that and additional information on some incredible equipment (lost with the shuttle) and seven extraordinary souls ("not lost but safely at home") can be found on NASA's site.

Hope that helps.

[Timesink]

The photographer himself said:"on the film when I developed it". Are you calling that individual an idiot or a liar -- just to support some wacko theory of your own? Anyone who uses a top-of-the line Nikon (I have three) knows the difference between "film" and "digital data". Go wear your tinfoil hat somewhere else...

Okay, hot shot, show us "tinfoilers" where the FILM goes in this puppy:

We're waiting.

[Timesink]

(Raising hand) Oh! Oh! I know the answer to that one!

Ahhh. Cool. Merci.

[Redcloak]

Well... I suppose that if one were to remove the memory... Does the film have to be any good after I get it in there? And is that tag line really necessary??

[snickeroon]

Nevada....Parumph..... Great show.

[TXnMA]

From the original post (#1):

Late yesterday, the space agency sent Jernigan – a former shuttle flyer and now manager at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories – to the astronomer's home to view the image, and have the Nikon camera brought to Houston today.

and...

"I couldn't see the discharge with my own eyes, but it showed up clear and bright on the film when I developed it," the photographer previously said.

----------

Show us proof that the "Nikon camera" camera used (and taken by Jernigan to NASA Houston) is the model you pictured.

Personally, I'll believe the photographer knew what he was talking about when he said,

"FILM"

End of discussion.

[Richard Kimball]

It was still dark in AZ when the Shuttle passed over.

Thanks for that info. IF the camera was the Coolpix 880 that has been mentioned elsewhere on this thread, I would discount anything taken with it under those circumstances. There's conflicting information on the thread, as some have posted what was definitely a digital camera, but the terms he used to describe the processing wouldn't logically be used by a digital photographer.

My guess, IF it is the CP 880, is that something light, such as a star, was in the frame, and moved around as the camera shook. Even though he used a tripod, most CP 880 users aren't going to use a shutter cable, and the act of pushing the shutter button would be enough to cause serious shake at that distance. In any event, with that camera, exposures of that length are notoriously grainy.

Not to diss the astronaut who saw the photos, but there's no indication she's done very much in photography in her bio (sounds awfully smart, though), and as much as I've worked with digital, I can usually spot why something happened. The Art Bell photos are the biggest hoot in the world. I checked the "ghost" section one time, and nearly half of the ghosts were cigarette smoke from a guy holding his cig while he took the photo. Most of the rest were obvious double exposures, light getting into the camera box on the edge of the film, and a few very obvious and very fake Photoshop jobs.

Of course, I haven't seen this photo, and am operating on the premise that it was the CP880, which I don't think has been confirmed yet. However, I think most of the laser-weapon and other talk is a little premature. My best guess is camera-shake combined with a bright spot that made impressions on the media (film or digital) more quickly than the darker images. Way to test is to look for light ghosting on the shuttle itself. It won't show as much, if it was darker, as it would take longer to register on the media, but it should still be there. I suspect the most obvious explanation now. I'll look at lasers from China if the first hypothesis is proven wrong.

BTW, yes I really do take photos. Here's one of mine

Nothing to do with the rest of the thread, but I took it last Sunday and was looking for an excuse to post it. ;o>

[Timesink]

Show us proof that the "Nikon camera" camera used (and taken by Jernigan to NASA Houston) is the model you pictured.

Original article. Seventh graf.

FR discussion of the article.

Page from which I obtained photo of the back of the 880.

He probably just called the flash memory card "film" because he's been calling it film all his life. Whatever you put in the camera that records the photos is the "film," regardless of whether it's strips of celluloid or a computer chip.