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SOHO Strikes Back
Nick Lightfoot writes "As seen on /. several days ago, Euroseti is holding a conference to show off it's collection of pictures of 'UFOs' taken by SOHO cameras. SOHO has released a response
page to show how a cosmic ray or other similar ccd artifact could be mistaken for a UFO, especially after the image has been enhanced. After watching Euroseti's video featuring some of the images, I was able to identify one of the 'UFO' images as a comet, and several others looked like they were just planets. Hopefully they will release some images on the web soon so I taking take a closer look at them without having to buy their £15 cd."
it's == it is
its == possessive pronoun
Jesus Fucking Christ !
The SOHO page *actually* shows how a 'flying saucer' can be faked by manipulating their data, NOT how the original data can be 'mistaken' for a UFO.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I was wondering when Slashdot itself would post a link rebutting Euroseti's pseudoscience. What's a wonder to me is that Slashdot didn't update the article by adding a link to here when this comment pointed it out.
Since the USSR wound down, GEODSS has also been used for finding near-earth asteroids. A few objects show up every month. Here's the list for December, 2002.
MIT's Lincoln Labs also operates an automated skywatch.
Here's an image from GEODSS. The objects that show as streaks are moving relative to the starfield.
If it's out there, one of these systems will pick it up within a few days.
With all this nonsense about UFOs flying around, I'd like to point that there is something actually interesting on SOHO's LASCO C3 camera images right now. The comet Kudo-Fujikawa has entered the camera's field of view. See the "live" pictures at the SOHO site. The comet is entering from the top of the picture.
That used to be true, but nowadays the LINEAR project picks up most of them. Amateur astronomers still account for a few a year, though. There are a lot of comets out there to be found.
Done.
Here's an interesting link--be sure to read the skeptic's perspective on the second page. In short, the UFO very likely was the planet Venus.
I have not been able to verify this (I don't have access to paper copies of the document) but it has been reported that even a group that would quite like to see a substantiated sighting of an alien craft (MUFON - the Mutual UFO Network) agrees that this sighting is bogus. (Citation is Abercrombie, Andy. No Title. The Lone Star (TX) MUFON Reporter. 15 May 1993)
The still pictures on this site are less than impressive. They could very easily be the result of the planet Venus, plus some artifacts due to camera motion, image enlargement, and smoothing. (Only this first image is unenlarged--and I'm not overly excited.) I can't seem to play their first video, but the second one is not from the eclipse; it is another event. To be fair, this second video is more interesting (it has a moving object), and represents either better evidence (on its face) or a hoax requiring more effort.
There is tons of video tape UFO evidence so I don't understand why you claim there is none.
There is tons of video tape evidence of an unidentified flying object, yes. Unless it is Venus. Millions of people were watching the eclipse that day--Mexico City is not exactly a small community. Where was the panic in the streets? The frantic news reports?
The clincher for me is that there were tens of thousands of astronomers present, both amateur and professional. The object is described in most reports as stationary and quite bright (visible even during daylight), and it was not far in the sky from a highly observed phenomenon (the Sun during an eclipse). Astronomers unable to indentify a very bright stationary object that suddenly appeared in the sky would not hestitate to report it. Why? Not because they're thinking aliens--but rather, because they're thinking supernovae. Discover a nearby one and you're famous for the rest of your life in astronomical circles. So where were the reports to the International Astronomical Union? Actually, since the object faded to invisibility much more rapidly than a supernova, it would be even more interesting--a hitherto undiscovered class of astronomical object, worthy of discussion and analysis. A quick review of the literature reveals nothing--not even a "Gee, that's weird" type note in an astronomical journal.
Unless all the atronomers are in on the conspiracy of silence. But there's nothing in it for them. A lot of them would be thrilled to have proof of other life in the Universe--it would help them get more funding.
~Idarubicin
It is very hard to analyze that if you don't know what has happened to the picture. The planet is easy enough, that's an over-exposed planet. The "exhaust fumes" is I guess what you're pointing at which is not straight. You would expect it to be straight if it is pixel bleeding, not if it is e.g. a cosmic ray. And if you look at it closely, you'll see that the streak consists of no more than 7-8 pixels, some in pairs, other alone on a line. What you're seeing there is actually the lines in the CCD, the image has been resampled to a resolution much greater than that of the detector, and then smoothed. I would say that a cosmic ray that has hit the detector in the vicinity of the planet. If you look at how many rays you would see during a sun storm, it is very unlikely that no cosmic would never be close to a planet in the field... Also, it is a very weak cosmic, it didn't even saturate the detector.
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