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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[G Larry]

Thanks!
I was afraid to post that thought.

[steve86]

You don't understand that that is NOT low power, do you?

Read the Jane's article yourself.

Very defensive. You seem to be really afraid that your premise may be wrong.

[Timesink]

According to her NASA biography...

Um, is there some reason to believe the bio is false? You don't have to source a bio blurb.

[Gary Boldwater]

One could always fire an optical pulse train where the leading pulses burn away the atmosphere (thermal blooming) allowing the following pulses to continue onward.

[Richard Kimball]

Where did you get the camera info? On the post I saw, it said a Nikon 8, which is not the ID of any Nikon camera I'm aware of, digital or film (course, I'm strictly a Canon shooter, so I don't follow Nikon very closely). It should have been daylight going over California, so the long exposure time doesn't make much sense to me. I've shot a CP990, and the CCD, lens, and software are very similar. It's fine as a consumer digital camera, but I have difficulty believing that anything of any value would come from this type of camera, taking that long an exposure at that distance. Again, though, your post is the first reference I've seen to that particular model.

[Timesink]

Disagree. It looks good on her.

She IS a cutie, isn't she?

[Timesink]

and shore-to-warship laser cannon weapons.

Columbia wasn't a boat.

[Tennessee_Bob]

Oh - thanks. I suppose I'm supposed to be able to go to sleep after perusing that site? Now I'm worred that my daughter's fish might be after me. Geeze.

[TXnMA]

See my #73, on this thread. We seem to be in agreement on photo-related issues -- once again!

(BTW, I hadn't seen your #38 or #40 when I went offline to compose my #73...)

Good work -- again...! :-|

[Tennessee_Bob]

How do you know? Have you seen the photo?

Well...no...it's just a guess....

[Timesink]

Doesn't this add credence to the Arab / Muslim notion that the shuttle was divinely destroyed, as a rebuke to the United States?

No.

[Krafty123]

Ok I think I now what happened (donning tin foil)... The "elves"/"sprites" are actually manifestations of sentient beings, who became upset of having had been documented in such a public fashion. Worried, they attempted to make an example out of Columbia; in an attempt to deter research in their direction... /sarcasm

[Diddle E. Squat]

I think this is the actual photo, and I know that it is from California:

[Sacajaweau]

This is what I heard also...there are two more guys involved in this picture. I think I remember that after he had taken his photographs, he ran up to his buddies and asked them "what they saw". More photographs??? Maybe but it depends on what these guys were into and the extent of their photographic interest. Sometimes, these guys just like to observe.....with photos available from other sources. No one expected a disaster.

[Timesink]

STS 109 March 2002....Columbia suffers a systems failure during pre-test cycling prior to de-orbit burn.

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

[ez]

There's no way the Chinese could have hit an object over the US with a focused beam weapon, through 4,000 miles of atmosphere.

Look, I only looked that laser thing up this morning in response to a tinfoil post, but I think it's interesting. Soon, this "purple light" phenomena will be explained. In the meantime, why shouldn't we stretch our minds to consider all scenarios?

RE 4000 miles...Did the shuttle pass over China before heading for the US? Could it have been fired at from near our shores?

For the record, I do NOT think Columbia was hit by a laser cannon, but it wouldn't shock me...

[snickeroon]

Keep the tin foil close by.....or prepare to get a scientific "jolt" out of the blue. Here is the entire story from the African Independent Paper with a Reuters byline:

"  Luminous arc lights up scientists' lives

January 24 2003 at 06:41AM


Cape Canaveral - Astronauts videotaping thunderstorms from the space shuttle Columbia captured what scientists said on Thursday was a never-before-seen red glowing arc of light running parallel to the curve of the Earth.

"Two nights ago over Africa was an extraordinary image. We saw a huge horizontal line of air glow which has been brightened by lightning below it. It extended to several hundred kilometres horizontally and we feel it may be something new," said Dr Yoav Yair.

Yair, project co-ordinator for Israeli experiments on board the shuttle during its current mission, said analysis would attempt to confirm scientists' initial impression that the glow is neither a "sprite" nor an "elf" - two other electrical phenomena associated with thunderstorms.

"It is raw data hot from the oven," Yair said. "It's a grainy and noisy image but for scientists it's a treasure trove. That's what we like."

'It is raw data hot from the oven'
Scientists were excited by the news that astronauts on Sunday captured the first-ever pictures of "elves" taken from space with a calibrated camera. The shuttle and its seven-member crew, which includes Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, are on a 16-day science mission that began on January 16.

The study of luminosities associated with thunderstorms is part of what Yair described as a new discipline in the field of upper atmospheric physics. "Sprites" - red flashes shooting up from thunderstorms - were discovered only as recently as 1989, followed by "elves" - spreading red doughnut shapes - in 1994.

The latest luminosity, Yair said, was a narrow limb-like glow, hundreds of kilometres long, red in colour and probably made of nitrogen. Yair said the band was especially bright.

"It seems that the atmosphere still holds surprises for us," Yair said.

Yair said scientists studying these electrical discharges were looking to further basic scientific knowledge rather than develop new products.
'It seems that the atmosphere still holds surprises for us'
"But if you understand the global electrical circuit, and if you want to fly certain high-flying aircraft through this layer of atmosphere, then you have to know really well what's going on up there in terms of electricity," Yair said."


Look, this is truly weird, but when you add the Columbia crew patch to the story (note the red arc)....you have a story almost too odd for even Art Bell....

[ez]

and shore-to-warship laser cannon weapons.

Columbia wasn't a boat.

That article was from when we were in Yugoslavia, what's that, 5 years ago? Maybe they built a bigger one.