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A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia
Koyaanisqatsi writes "Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day presents a challenge worthy of a large audience: as it says, "Meteor experts don't think it's a meteor. Atmospheric scientists don't think it's lightning". An intriguing dark streak and bright flash that defies explanation showed up on some cloud monitoring pictures. The forumsetup to discuss it is currently hosed, so perhaps fellow slashdotters can shed some light over the mystery?"
but when this pic surfaced the first time, people speculated that the flat trajectory meant it had to be a tiny meteorite, with the flash resulting from the rock hitting a street light. a 1 in a billion photo, I imagine.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
Seriously, it just looks like the guy needs to clean his camera lens to me.
That tiny rocket from Krypton preparing to crash land on that old coot Kent's farm!
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
, or is it a plane.....no its superman
and hes going back in time to develop stem cell research.
It had to have been something in the development process. IANAFD (I am not a film developer) Could the film have been somehow kinked? I can't buy the fact that it is a freak astronomical event, even though it must have peaked enough people's interests to make it to NASA's picture of the day.
I'd say round paintbrush, 20 pixels, black with 10% opacity.
Either that or he needs to clean his camera lens.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Don't be alarmed. Okay, panic a little if your get your water from there.
It would have nice if it was pointed out in advance just where we were supposed to have been looking!
My web domain.
A poor Photoshop job?
--- Ban humanity.
Heh, this should have been a slashdot poll... What is the mysterious object in the picture?
1) part of the ISS that fell off.
2) a meteor
3) a meteorite (to troll the astronomy experts who will have to chime in and explain the difference)
4) the opening salvo of an alien invasion
5) Santa's sleigh
6) Cowboyneal's private jet
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Looked like a big cloud to me - then I saw what I thought was dirt on my monitor but it turns out that that is what I am supposed to be looking at.
Koyaanisqatsi was the title of the 1983 film which has the prophecy:
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster. Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky. A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."
for any sort of natural phenomenon. It suggests a photographic artifact of some sort. Is the flash definitely related? It certainly appears to be coming from the end of what the APoD caption identifies as a light pole, which is not working. Could it have failed with a sudden flash? Could it coincidentally have occurred at the same time as the streak artifact?
Behold the riant ape! Beware, his crooked thumbs!
...And then they discovered they had some dirt on their lens.
"There are 10 types of people in this world--Those that understand binary, and those that do not..."
At the bottom of the streak. Looks like something got hit. Maybe the street light as another poster pointed out?
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Can't the person who took this photo just walk up and take a few pictures of that light post that seems to have been struck by something?
It's a now flying shark with a "laser"!
I'll get you Dr. Evil!
--Good morning fellas; Hand me that thing; Boy, this work's hard; Guys, break's over.
Possibly the exhaust trail from a Surface-to-Air Missle?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Fireworks? What are the time intervals between the 3 photos?
UBU
Sunlight. Or sunlight reflecting on the cloud.
It is a bird coming in from the upper left behind the camera. If you look at the point where the line intersects the light pole you can see the birds blurry outline. Since the shot was taken in low light the shutter was open long enough that a fast moving bird would cause a a line like that.
Perhaps examining the light pole that appears to have been hit would provide a clue? Did anyone do that?
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
i cant resist...i for one welcome our new straking overlords
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Uh, oh! A death weapon that can destroy light bulbs! Someone alert the military!
That was me.
I was trying out my new death-ray. I had it miscalibrated so that you could see it.
Don't worry about it. When death comes and strikes from the heavens for real, it'll be completely invisible.
-Ming the Merciless
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Test firing of a new satellite based EMP.
It was a laser guided, satellite launched micro-missle which was targeted on OBL who was found to be hiding in Australia. That flash is all that was left of him.
The pic before/after this one don't show OBL on the pier because he was hiding in the water underneath it.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Photoshop something that ends up on the slashdot main page - difficulty astronomical! Still no cure for cancer.
If you zoom in on the "impact" you can clearly see Gen. Ackbar's head.
Let us all bow our heads in silence as we remember these small but brave travelers.
"The forum setup to discuss it is currently hosed, so perhaps fellow slashdotters can shed some light over the mystery?" ...or perhaps a those fellow slashdotters can help with the hosing, 'cause now I imagine their poor server is suffering under weight of all that is mighty, the "Slashdot Effect", and the forum is currently firehosed...
It's fireworks!
...the escape pod the R2D2 and C3P0 used to escape the evil Empire with Princess Lea's plea for help.
I'm coming Princess!!!!!
That solution is the solution to a different 'challenge' APOD, not to the dark streak in the current picture.
No, that wasn't the Space Based Laser. That was just some ranging fire to make sure the targeting is accurate. The Space Based Laser fire will commence shortly.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
What amazing lucky! The streak may have existed for a few seconds only and the photographer have shooted it. Is this really serious?
Ummm...yeah... A solution to a totally different question. You didn't read EITHER article, impressive.
Geez...
What I don't understand is how the "flash" at the end of the streak is so clean of an image. Even with crazy f/stop settings and an ISO equiv of 400 - I would imagine a picture in that light would have to have a shutter speed of at most 1/30th of a second, more than enough time to cause blur even to a slowly moving object. Am I off base here?
I love APOD. I go there daily. My main problem with APOD is the mass reusing of pictures without any way of knowing if the "picture of the day" is a duplicate or not.
:-)
Yes I tried contacting the APOD maintainers as indicated in this previous APOD slashdot story
Animoog.org
I think it's a tractor beam.
Aircraft parts fall off.
Aircraft toilets malfunction.
Has the light pole been checked for bacteria?
Most of the vital parts on an aircraft are built by the lowest bidder.
This is from the September 13th APOD. Not the December 5th APOD.
Thanks for playing.
Steve
bah!
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Didn't you see the little silver De Lorean Gull Wing disappear just before the little flash? I suspect it was using about 1.21 Gigawatts of power at that moment...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
> I, for one, welcome our new streaking overlords...
As long as they are hot attractive females, I got no problem with that.
That's not the solution to this image. However, it is the solution to the APOD from September 13th which can be seen at: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040913.html
"Me fail English, that's unpossible." --Ralphie
From the article:
Images taken just before and after the above frame show no streak or flash. The light pole near the flash has been inspected and does not show any damage, although the light inside was not working.
Can we reasonably say that it was just a light bulb blowing off? Streak? Boy, for sure when I get a bright lamp in the frame I have all kinds of streaks going off it on the picture. So - I'd say it's either an optical or digicam artifact caused by the flash.
Read better. That's the solution to this APOD.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
It's the GoldenEye!
I hope the overlord is sexy, so we can enjoy the streaking!
Menzoberranzan Networks
The photograph shows a flash of illumination, not an explosion. The lamp was inspected, the bulb did not work but there was no physical damage.
A meteor that hit and caused a flash would have left some external marks. Not a meteor thus.
Perhaps a photoshop? A simple answer, but somehow less than pleasing.
No, what we see is the trace of a death ray, shot by a military satellite, able to take out lamp bulbs without any collateral damage. Dear god... these things could be circling above our heads as we speak... focussing their deadly beams on us...
Luckily there is an obvious and well-tested solution, which consists of a triple layer of aluminum foil wrapped securely around the head.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Maybe we're all looking at this in reverse. Perhaps something at the top of the light pole ejected an object via a small explosion, resulting in a faintly detectable smoke trail leading away from the pole.
"How do you expect me to see the forest with all these damn trees in the way?!"
Official response.
Notice the dark smear does not go all the way to the lamp post. My theory is it is a smog trail from a plane taking off or landing from an airport just across the bay. The smoke near the light pole is from a boat at the pier warming up its engine, and the sun is reflecting off the lamp post.
It was really my 1/5 scale remote controlled F-22 testing its air to surface missiles.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
It's clearly an artifact. If the flash at the end of the streak was something "out there", it would have to have either hit the water or the light. The after pic shows no waves and the pole is unharmed--there's no even any "smoke" left. It's hard to judge how much time has passed, but it can't have been more than a few seconds. (On the far right is a speeding motorboat and he only gets a little ways between each frame.) With no fragments or smoke just a moment later, it has to be an artifact of some kind.
I have observed this phenomena before when a jet, leaving behind it's contrail, flew between the lower cloud level and the clear sky above. If you look at the picture, the sun is illuminateing the clouds from the right, with a the streak appearing on the left. The plane therefore bisected the path causing the shadow to occur. Now the question is, what was the interval that the pictures were taken in the before and after shots. I have seen this to last a few minutes until the contrail dissipated significantly to no longer produce the shadow.
You're funny.
"Those innocent fun games of the hallucination generation"
K: On a more personal note Beatrice, Edgar ran off with an old girlfriend, you're gonna go stay with your mom a couple nights then realize you're better off.
J: Yeah, 'cause you know what? He never appreciated you anyway. In fact, *you* kicked *him* out and now that he's gone you're gonna go into town, go to Bloomingdales, find some nice dresses, you know, maybe find somewhere you can get, you know, a facial, and hire a decorator to come in here fast because... damn.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
From the headling I expected this story to be about an exhibitionist at a cricket game.
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
Come on, it's just a hair that flew in the wind near the camera so i's a bit out of focus...
OK, here's my solution. The light levels are fairly low: the EXIF data from the big image reveals that the Powershot G3 used 1/20s exposure at f/5.6.
I reckon the streak and the blur are very, very close to the camera, and that the intersection with the streetlamp is conincidence.
I believe that the mystery object is an insect flying "north-west" (i.e. towards the top left of the camera). The EXIF data tells us that the flash was fired, although goodness knows why any decent photographer would use a flash for that shot.
The flash on most cameras fires at the beginning of the exposure time, and the insect is captured in flight and out of focus near the middle of the frame. It then continues flying for the rest of the 1/20s exposure causing the black streak.
Where do I go to collect my prize?
Ydco co
Well, it's obviously Martians.
First they blow up your lightbulbs,
Then they attack you,
Then they catch your cold,
Then you win.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
Something has gone horribly wrong with the joint NSA/Aussie venture working with aliens from outer space in their secret Pine Gap research base. The interplanetary war has begun, started by agents of the United States Government. I, for one, am going to lay in a supply of iodine tablets and pure drinking water in anticipation of the fallout that is sure to come after we attempt to nuke their orbiting stealth battle platforms.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
Somebody find Reed Richards ASAP!
"Meteor experts don't think it's a meteor. Atmospheric scientists don't think it's lightning".
What do they know? Those stupid hacks still can't predict the weather tomorrow.
It appears to be lightning hitting the dock light. Or a blown transformer w/ a projectile.
My first interpretation was that the bulb on the light-pole simply blew up, and the resulting flash either messed the CCD to produce the streak (I've seen many similar artefacts on digital photos), or perhaps the streak is a kind of lens flare.
that the dark streak and the bright artifact do not meet. The streak looks to be "above" the bright artifact, and continues past it.
Also, the bright artifact has a brighter core that is vertical with respect to the rest of the frame. This could be consistent with a reflection off a cylinder such as a lightpole.
It's probably just the reflection off my tinfoil hat.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
They said the bulb was burned out when they examined the light pole. Light bulbs usually go out with a bright flash. Is it possible that the image was taken when the bulb flashed and the line is an artifact of the CCD? This last 4th of July I got some strange purple lines in images I took of fireworks going off. They weren't part of the fireworks flash, but artifacts from the camera having light metered to a specific level and then suddenly encountering a bright flash (this would be different than when the camera is expecting a flash from the internal flash).
It looks like it could be some sort of reaction by a particle passing parallel across the surface of the film when the picture was snapped. It would have to be a very slow moving particle though in order to produce that sort of effect though. Thats the only think I can think of however unlikely that is. If it isn't totally obvious, I'm totally talking out of my ass by the way.
tFA doesn't say how long the exposure was. If it was long, the possibility of a popping bulb at the same moment that a bug flew past the camera begins to seem more plausible.
Behold the riant ape! Beware, his crooked thumbs!
I call it a skid mark. Whatever.
Actually, here is something revealing, it seems that his before and after images are reversed:
$ strings strangebefore_pryde_big.jpg | head
uExif
Canon
Canon PowerShot G3
ACD Systems Digital Imaging
2004:11:25 15:23:11
0220
0100
2004:11:22 18:53:07
2004:11:22 18:53:07
IMG:PowerShot G3 JPEG
$ strings strange_pryde_big.jpg | head
uExif
Canon
Canon PowerShot G3
ACD Systems Digital Imaging
2004:11:25 15:20:49
0220
0100
2004:11:22 18:52:52
2004:11:22 18:52:52
IMG:PowerShot G3 JPEG
$ strings strangeafter_pryde_big.jpg | head
uExif
Canon
Canon PowerShot G3
ACD Systems Digital Imaging
2004:11:25 15:22:47
0220
0100
2004:11:22 18:52:37
2004:11:22 18:52:37
IMG:PowerShot G3 JPEG
$
That solution you posted is for an entirely different photo and it seems, entirely different phenomena.
While his explanation seems plausible that does not account for:
1) the slight gray streak of what appears to be smoke in the picutre
2) why the light no longer works
The answer to the second issue could simply be one of those quirks where the bulb had reached its end of life at approximately the same time the picture was taken.
While the author is certainly more knowledgable in the area he talks about than I am, I can't say I can agree with his conclusion. The flash as shown in the photo appears to be more consistent with the effect a lightning strike has (i.e. a bright flash).
Further, if you look closely at the picture, you can distinctly see what appears to be a puff of whitish-grey smoke surrounding the light pole in question. This would also be consistent with a lightning strike. I know this because I observed the after-effect of a transformer outside my parents home getting hit by a lightning strike years ago. Even though I looked out the window seconds after the strike there was still a bit of smoke hanging about.
The fact that there is no noticable damage to the pole can be explained by using the electrocuted pickle example (get out your CSI DVD in case you're wondering what I'm talking about).
Finally, there is no rainbow effect noticeable in the photo compared to his example.
Just some food for thought (or beer if you like).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If you compare the "before" picture against the "after" one, you'll notice that the tip of the light post where the flash is in the picture looks like smoking. I assume that it was, indeed, a micrometeorite which hit the light post.
Se here for some reports.
The streak and flash is the discussion server crashing and burning under the weight of the mighty /.
Umm... that's not the POTD that we are talking about, but rather another that he has posted. The pictures are not even close. Did you make it past the first sentence?
Troll or karma-whore? You decide.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
I wonder if it's some sort of lightning strike. Not one with a spark (not in the photo anyhow), but simply the column of ionized air terminating (and destroying) the street light. There are a lot of clouds in the sky so maybe there's a sizable charge built up and it's discharging to the streetlight, which is a tall, metal, grounded object.
I've never experienced lighting directly, but I recall something about the air ionizing before the strike, which is what creates the path for the electricity to follow.
This photo is part of an automated sequence, so perhaps the electrical strike happened just a moment before the image was taken, or perhaps the ionized air was enough to destroy the light without an actual 'spark'. Without witnesses it's hard to say whether it was lighting and, as many have questioned, what's the condition of the streetlight now?
i wondered where my Happy Fun Ball went!
Your response makes you look *really* stupid, because the "solution" you just read has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE MYSTERY PICTURE IN QUESTION. Worse, every single other response to the parent - most of which were BEFORE you - recognizes that (though I'll give you the benefit of the doubt there, since it took you some time to write your response). The "solution" is talking about a completely different and unrelated picture!
*Wow*.
Thanks for a good laugh though.
I, for one, welcome our streaky and glowing new overlords.
Elmo knows where you live!
To me, it looks like the bright spot is in the water, rather than on the light pole, which would make more sense, considering that the light pole was apparently not damaged and that flash looks like it had enough energy in it to at least make a scorch mark.
It wasn't a meteor, it wasn't lightning, so what else could make a straight line from ocean to sky and make a bright spot in the water?
Space-based (or just high-altitude) laser feels about right to me.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
If it was reflecting right back at the camera, it could certainly result in that line.
It wouldn't reflect directly back, but at a slight angle. The light hitting the lense at an angle would make one side long. In this case....very long.
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
I remember seeing the same thing in The Omen.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Clearly some new Romulan weapon, obviously fired from that cloaked bird of prey. This area probably had a very high neutrino density.
It's a solution to a *completely different and unrelated APOD*!
Blue chunk of iced poop falling from a plane.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Frozen airline poo. You can all stop thinking about it now.
Welcome our new Tractor-beam producing overlords.
1. Is the trajectory staight, or does it drop slightly. Putting a ruler up against my screen indicates it drops slightly, but that doesnt mean anything.
2. Is it a flash, or is it a steady bright light (like what a meteor head would be). Need to know the exposure time for that info.
3. Is there any sign of the trail in the after photo.
4. How long is it before the after photo was taken?
5. It the flash infront of, behind, or exactly congruent with the pole top.
6. Is the trail wider at the top than the bottom. If it is, is this dispersion of smoke or paralax and the object was moving away.
7. Is the image film or digital.
8. What is the white stuff? Shock front? Something disintegrating? Why is it that funny shape?
9. Was the light working previously? When was it last known to be working? There may be pictures of it from the night before.
Well, thats my questions. I think its a meteor.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
Now obviously I could be wrong, but under the right conditions I have seen jets make shadows just like that...and the first time I saw one it kind of creeped me out too.
Nah. The real aolution is here.
It appears the "flash" is light reflecting off of the lightpost. The streak could easily be explained by the light hitting the camera at an angle.
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
Another sighting of the Australian puma!
It certainly looks very much like ball lightning to me. Googling "ball lightning" seems to confirm this, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, ball lightning is often dismissed.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
That Aolution is the aolution to a completely different article ;)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I didn't notice this until I looked at the before and after pictures in sequence with the main picture. But it appears that the streak may be the trail of some object hitting the water. If you look where the streak meets the water, there seems to be something bright where the streak meets the water that is not in either of the other 2 images.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
The black streak is exhaust.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
in the sky
I would rue the day I walk outside, looked up, and saw goatse.....
Monstar L
Did anyone else think it may just be a weird coincidence. The bulb was not borken but it wasn't functional either. Lightbulbs often emit a flash of light right before they burn out. The conrail streak may not be related to this, quite possibly from some fireworks. The streak just happend to line up with the lamp. Then the camera caught the lamp just as it flashed before it burned out.
You're the 10th person to point that out. Illiterate or simply couldn't be bothered to read the other replies? You decide.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
A "laser" attached to a friggen shark.
We are the people our parents warned us about.
Take a look at the way the clouds are moving - I've never seen clouds billowing inwards.
before
"the" picture
after
Look...I told you fools earlier...its MICROMAN using his hypersonic power of flight to dive into the water to fight the evil of Dr. Atlantcus and his submerged menions!
Jezz!
Since you have been outed as a fraud, it appears that my own solution is now just as valid. I believe it is a consortium of Martians coming to sign the closing papers on the other recent Slashdot articles. Remember we are making Parks and designing suitable housing for the Red Planet.
This is the same phenomena you see from the sun
http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/atoptics/ray1.htm
At the moment of instantaneous flash, a source of ambient light travels towards the camera, same as the sun, in parallel rays. Since the camera, observer, is at a distance, these rays seem to diverge as they approach, think of railroad tracks that appear closer together further down the track, but are nonetheless parallel.
Unlike the suns crepuscular rays though, which we see as brighter owing to the fact that most are blocked by clouds when we observe crepuscular rays, only a very tiny fraction of the rays are blocked in this photo, possibly by a section of the pole the flash occurs from. Thus, the ambient lighting is slightly increased, except along the parallel ray that is blocked.
I have not come up with a valid source of the flash, I must admit the smoke confuses me there, but my best guess it a transformer or bulb.
You're the 13th person to point that out. Maybe read the previous replies before adding one.
And even with 13 people reporting it, it seems it's not enough judging by the moderation
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
but the before and after pictures, seconds apart are clean
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
I am in no way an expert at this stuff, but judgin from the color, streak, projectory, and location (Australia), it look to me like a burning hot piece of some very durable metal that was falling through the atmosphere. A lost satellite best fits that description.
Regards,
Steve
Does the EXIF time info count backwards?
before: DateTimeOriginal - 2004:11:22 18:53:07
strange: DateTimeOriginal - 2004:11:22 18:52:52
after: DateTimeOriginal - 2004:11:22 18:52:37
This would imply that the before shot was taken 15 seconds before the strange shot, and the after shot was taken 15 seconds after.
This seems like a reasonable amount of time for any particulate cloud to disperse. Mind you a bottle rocket seems a bit weak to launch on such a straight trajectory...
Still seems most likely that there was some sort of projectile launched from the lightpost.
UBU
Was a filter of some sort used? It looks as though it's a plane, since there is an artifact by the street light, not something hitting the street light. It appears reflected to me. The path is darker than the object.
Actually your sig pretty much explains the picture. :)
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I for one welcome our alien overlords
I want to believe ;)
I don't see what the fuss is about, it's just where the texture repeats!
Fnord.
Yes, those pictures are out of order. Check the time stamp on the pictures.
It's rather odd that the streak is a perfectly straight line.... You would think that if "something" is in the atmosphere, it would curve, possibly degrade in trajectory (stupid friction)
Is there a casing surrounding the cammera, and is it metal? That could account for the "perspective" shift. It appears like a view camera, where a tilt can control perspective.
I think it's some space debris falling at a high angle. Metal in origin, a part of it would have survived through the atmosphere and traveled at high velocity, turned into a molten form and splashed down in the lake. As you can see, besides the flash (from the impact) there was steam from the water. The dark streak that was left behind was the burning of impurities in the metal itself. I bet if they took divers out to that location and checked the bottom of the floor they would find a fist full of metal that's fairly un-corroded from the rest of the junk there.
They're in the wrong order, as has already been noted. Just look at the way the clouds move.
I bet the Bush Administration was trying to wipe out a nearby gay bar with a laser weapon and missed. Instead, it struck that light pole. Ole W's prolly got him a Death Star up there in space that he's using to shoot everyone who doesn't live in Jesusland. And I'm pretty sure Australia didn't vote for Bush. So they are gonna get it for sure.
And don't try to tell me different cause I'uns went to college. Well, NC State anyway.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Here's what I have gathered from the other posts: 1. Something from "out there" - unlikely, because there would be some residual effect in the next photograph. However, a small enough object may not make that big of a splash or smoke. Additionally, if the object struck the street lamp, it would have caused damage (which it didn't). If the object didn't strike the pole, then it created the flash coincidentally directly behind the pole. 2. Problem with camera, et. al. - unlikely, because none of the other images show a similar problem. Also, the "problem" would have to have created three coincidental effects. a) the streak, b) the flash, and c) the smoke. 3. Streak came from the street lamp - unlikely, because the street lamp shows no damage. I can see a bright flash from a burning out bulb causing a streak on the film, but that does not explain the smoke. Other than image doctoring, have I missed anything?
Was JUST a demonstration of my powers. Next time I will hit downtown Enid Oklahoma unless I receive the sum of One Million Dollars. Muhahahaha Muhahahaha Muhahahaha!
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Maybe this is just APoD's game of NotPron (deathball.net/notpron/). We're supposed to take the image and raise the contrast or look at it under the moonlight or something so we can reveal a hidden message that leads to the next mystery. 0.0001% of the population make it to Level 2.
Paleontologists don't think it is a dinosaur, NASA doesn't think it is a spacecraft, financial experts don't think it will have an adverse effect on the economy, lawyers could be preparing a lawsuit on behalf of Bigfoot for IP infringement, the FDA has said it could have adverse side effect, the White House has declined to comment. Currently the photo is on sale at eBay with the high bid at $785.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
One of the original stories on this http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11 483286%255E13762,00.html credited the photo to amateur photographer Wayne Pryde.
The bit about cloud "monitoring" appears only in the APOD story.
WTF?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
There's a link at the bottom of the page that explains the picture. http://space.mit.edu/~lewin/apod/
Come On. Read to the bottom!
Somehow I doubt that a meteorite that was going fast enough to vaporize on impact would leave a *dark* steak in the frame. Secondly, if it was big enough to leave that wide a dark streak, it would make a MUCH bigger impact than that little flash. But moments later, there's no visible sign, even in the water.
I personally own a similar Canon G-3, and I've never seen a dark streak on the image, even when shooting pictures with a strong point light source (as was speculated for a blowing-out light bulb). In fact, with the G-3, a well known problem is "purple fringing" around bright lights. None of that here, so the bright splotch is probably not that bright.
I personally subscribe to the "bug in front of the flash" theory.
(Question: one post suggested the EXIF data shows the flash fired. Why would a halfway decent photog leave the flash on for a distance shot like this? It just risks illuminating the dust between you and the subject matter.)
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
``We don't know what it is, but it's ours and everyone who has looked at the photo now needs an SCO licence for their brain.''
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
It is merely a weather balloon. Now look at this light for a sec.
It looks like a lightning bug to me. If you lower the brightness and increase the contrast of the image, you can see a shape below the flash that looks like a body with wings. The body of the bug caused the dark streak, and he flashed us just as the shutter was closing.
There appears to be a surfaced submarine to the right of the impact area. Maybe this was one of those space-based "throw metal at the ground" weapons being tested on the sub.
They just got tired of the lights running all night and couldn't sleep.
seems to be the simplest answer to me, something like a bottle rocket could make a flash like that when it explodes and a tiny, almost indistinguishable cloud of smoke as a tail. I am surprised such a hoopla is being made over this, when there are so many possible explanations for the phenomena pictured.
of impact suggests to me that this is probably artificially launched.
I passed the Turing test.
I think it's a piece of debris from an airplane. Perhaps a chunk of ice, which might explain the trail. Do any airplanes discharge their toilets while airborne?
See? How difficult was that?
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"The light pole near the flash has been inspected and does not show any damage, although the light inside was not working."
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Number two... fire the laser!
Now, look at this little red light. Its just swamp gas from a weather balloon reflecting off of Venus.
rewriting history since 2109
Intel SAT 7, perhaps?
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I see shadows like this all the time. An object small cloud or something casts a shadow that shadow can be seen as a line of darkness against a light background. Just so happens the shadow is falling on the lighs sensor making it come on. Still 1 in a million picture though.
It could be a rocket impacting a dude with invisibility or maybe a weird kind of BFG-10K (the original has red trails you know)
High end machine too. (judging from the rendering details)
I don't think it's even in the same plane as the street lamp. I think it's behind the lamp and in the water.
This story is two weeks old.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
... that was my orbiting brain laser. Sorry for the confusion.
-Derek
Anyone look at the position of the boats. Specifically the little one nearest the flash. Position doesn't seem consistent between the before/during/after.
rewriting history since 2109
Itsa 'nother slashdotted server going up in a smokey poof
Table-ized A.I.
Somebody put a little flower in front of the camera. It is so close that is out of focus.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
I see a bright light in upper right corner of the photo. The line is going from upper left to bottom right, and appears to have nothing to do with the bright light; the line itself seems to have nothing to do with any flash of light.
Now, my eyes certainly aren't the best, too many years squinting at computer monitors, but it looks to me like the black streak doesn't even touch the flash, but instead vanishes over the horizon, somewhere in that land mass. Also, if it was something hitting the pole, it would have been damaged, and if it had hit the water, later photos would have shown the splash/ripples. Well, maybe. It would depend on the length of time between photos, I guess. It doesn't extend to the end of the photo, either, but goes into some of those clouds on the left. The flash looks like it has some kind of aura around it, like when they remade the first Death Star blowing up, but again, it's hard for me to see, and it could just be the light reflecting off a ripple in the water. I think the flash it just the light blowing, however. I don't know. If the black streak were in more than just the one picture, I would just chalk it up to a distant vapor trail from a jet taking off or something. If it's something flying through the air, it'd have to be travelling pretty damn fast to be so straight, whether it's going up or down. My best guess would be at it travelling up. I should think that if it were falling, it'd have more of an arc to it. Really, we'll probably never know what it is.
"I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles."
If you follow the speedboat on the far right, it is heading inbound. It moves a little to the left, then ducks behind the pier except for a small bit of the tail end of it. This happens in proper sequence. Likewise the tugboat moves just a little to the right in each successive picture.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
This is more evidence to corroborate the theory that mutant bugs are taking over the earth.
s /2 0020924-mutant-fly.shtml
Here's more evidence:
http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/mshnvm/volcanocam/faq
Ok, I did some work on this...
First, EXIF fields in the photos... something you should look at first.
Camera: Canon PowerShot G3
Date and Time (original): 2004:11:22 18:52:52
Exposure Time: 1/19 sec.
Aperture: f/5.6
And for the photo After:
Date and Time (original): 2004:11:22 18:52:37
So the photos were taken with 1/19 sec. exposure, every 15 seconds.
I took the two images into GIMP, substracted them, brightened the result a lot (using Levels) and ran it through despecle. First, the lamps do look perfectly identical between the photos (or there'd be a spot around the lamp where it changed shape). In fact, the only bright bits that remain (apart from the sea reflections) are the flash and the streak.
The streak looks conical, at 1-1.5 degrees (I measured roughly using GIMP). It ends before the edge of the picture. It's about 1200 pixels long, in fact. The street lamps are 60 pixels long... Assuming that a street lamp would be on the order of 5-10 metres high, you get about 100-200 metres streak.
The cloud is VERY visible on the difference image; it has yellow-orange central spot and 2 pure-white spots to the sides; this seems consistent with a central fire and a smoke circle.
Now I substracted the before and after image and brightened them the same way. I *think* there is a visible dark spot at the place where the white cloud was; however, the image is so noisy that it could just be my imagination.
I think that the flash and the cloud were from the blown lamp. They dissipated rapidly, but there could be traces left... I'd have to do much better image processing to be able to tell.
I have no idea whatsoever what the dark streak could be. It doesn't look like a CCD sensor problem - overloaded CCDs leak brightness straight up, as far as I know. I also don't know of any lens flare that can darken the photo. It could be smoke, in which case something would be hitting the street lamp. But that would've caused lots of visible damage.
I refuse to use
This is either an internal relection within the camera, or an object so close to the lens it is out of focus.
My first guess is the internal reflection of some mechanism behind the camera lens. It looks just like the reflection you see of yourself when looking out of a window.
The line is too straight to be a moving object out by the shore. It is more likely a string or stick with something on the end close to the lens. (the string would be swinging to make it straight.)
I'm going with internal reflection.
a line of dust on the film/ccd... dots and patches occur on most digital slrs if lenses are removed in non sterile surroundings often enough...
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
Do you think it couuld be a stray military missile? Such things sometimes happen (remember suspicions about a TWA airplane being hit by a rocket?), and compare streaks with those on pictures below: http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/aminet/pix/vehic/missil e.jpg
http://www.sterett.org/images/miscphotos/Dave%20Bi lak/DB-Missile%20trail.jpg
http://www.cpf.navy.mil/rimpac2000/images/missile3 .jpg
Finally we have proof.
Looks like a human hair on the lense to me...
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
...well fellow Slashdotters, from what I can theorize from squinting at the photo, it looks like someone has already built a prototype space elevator. First mentioned on Slashdot - here.
Am I the only one seeing smoke from the bottom of the lamp-post?
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here.
Look, there are boats in the picture, there could be another one past the light pole, obscured by the trees. Maybe tied up to the low level docks you can see to the right of the light pole.
Someone on the dock or in a boat behind the tree shot a flare gun out towards the water. The streak across the picture is an artifact because the flare was so bright.
Now the real question is whether there was another flare shot from the grassy knoll?
The Department of Homeland Security has determined that this is definitely some sort of weapon of mass destruction.
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Anyone else notice that the smoke trail doesn't taper off as it gets higher into the sky? It's just as wide as it fades into the clouds as it is near the ground.Someone forgot to Photoshop in perspective. All this image needs is Bigfoot in the foreground and a UFO or two off in the distance... oh, and http://www.fark.com printed in the bottom of it.
Ok, it's really simple.
1) It's bright.
Bright things moving though the atmosphere tend to be very very hot.
2) It's durable.
Things that make it this far down tend to be be fairly substantial in nature.
So now we supposively have a bright, hot, durable object impacting a body of water at high speeds... THAT LEAVES NO TRACE AFTER IMPACT. Steam maybe? A ripple or two? Honestly, would somebody like to run a simulation on a superheated baseball sized rock slamming into the ocean at close to mach? Maybe a golfball to be conservative? Heck, I'm speculating the damn thing might explode just in temperature differential alone when it touches the water, if not angerly boil for a good long time.
The only conclusion I can specuate where it may have been any substantial object falling from the sky is that one in a billion chance it actually fully vaporized a second before impact. Even so, you'd still have some sort of audio event at those speeds, I'm imagining.
I'm going for visual artifact or an environmental lighting glitch myself.
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Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no mod points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Part of the problem is that with a single viewpoint, we cannot know how far from the camera the bright spot was really located. I think its intersection with the light pole is a visual coincidence, and that it is IN FRONT of the pole. Part of my reason for thinking this has to do with the so-called "smoke", which looks to me more like a side view of a supersonic shock wave. Part of that "smoke" is clearly in front of the base of the light pole. So, the distance between the camera and the pole should be inspected, for impact evidence.
You can see this dark streak almost every day in southern california, or almost anyplace that has contrails visible in the sky. When the contrail goes between you and the sun, you can see a dark band coming down from it. Watch for it!
Basically, what you are seeing is the equivalent of a sunbeam, except that it's a shadow-beam. A sunbeam occurs when there is a small hole in the cloud, and the light going through the hole illuminates the dust particles and water droples in the air along the path of the light. If the light is strong and the background relatively dark, it is easy to see these sunbeams (or God rays.)
Shadows through the sky are somewhat harder to see, because the contrast is not as great. When they are dramatic, as in this picture, you have to have the fortuitous situation of looking through a long, well defined slab of shadowed air, with well-lit air on either side. Airplane contrails are the perfect shadow source for this.
Imagine a 3D volume of a shadow cast by a contrail. It is a long thin slab of shadowed air. If you are within that slab, and looking along it, all the air in that direction is shadowed, for many miles, so the contrast between the shadowed air and the surrounding air is strong.
A good bit of the light around the shadow beam is not light scattered by dust or water droplets, but is just the same Raliegh-scattered light that makes the sky blue. The dark streak through the sky will be noticably darker and especially less blue than the surrounding air.
As you can tell, this is one of my favorite (of many!) atmospheric optical phenomena. Once you start to look for them, they are quite easy to see. Occasionally you can see them from natual cloud formations or even topographical or architechural features when the conditions are just right.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I've heard of the same thing. Rods if you search on UFO stuff. There just bugs.
http://www.ufotheatre.com/rods/rods.htm
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
http://taree.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?story_id= 355753&class=news
Headline: Meteorite boom shakes Manning
That was easy next... Actually I think it is just a survey marker the heavy equipment will be here next tuesday.
Maybe this will shed some light. It's a Photoshop "difference" between the before image and the mystery image, with a bit of levels adjustment to make it more obvious. http://img119.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img119&image=x2fst rangeprydebigdi.jpg
Yes, we ALL noticed it. That's what this entire thread is about!
Maybe this will shed some light. It's a Photoshop "difference" between the before image and the mystery image, with a bit of levels adjustment to make it more obvious. http://img119.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img119&image=x2fst rangeprydebigdi.jpg
But if the before and after pictures are swapped, then it still moves correctly, but in the opposite direction. And zooming in, I think I can see the wake to the left of the boat, which agrees with reversed photos. It's behind the dock, then about middle from dock to edge, then near the edge, moving right. It's telling that some of the street lights on the dock are on, and the picture is taken near dusk. Thus, the timing is such that the bulb tries to turn on, but blows.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
It's an eSheep burning up on re-entry.
Don't even pretend like you don't know what eSheep is just because you're all into Linux and shit.
Carpe Deez
C'mon guys, haven't you ever seen a meridian from below before ?
Good one.
I did some image processing on this image and discovered a couple things:
1) The "streak" does not line up with the street light. If I draw a straight line right along the very bottom side of the streak, it's barely touching the street light. But who really knows...
2) As someone else mentioned, the "before" and "after" images are reversed.
3) The leaves in the trees/bushes near the camera do not move more than a pixel or two. The clouds move a little (looks pretty cool in sequence, actually), but not a lot. This leads me to believe that there is very little wind. However, by watching the waves in the water over the 3 frames, it appears that the wind is traveling towards the camera and to the camera's right. This is consistant with the direction the "smoke" appears from the streetlight with the "flash". Due to the somewhat calm nature of the wind, the smoke must have been traveling for some non-zero period of time, and obviously a much longer time than the period of the exposure of the camera (or we'd see smoke blurred all the way out from the light).
4) Now I will contradict the last thing I said. Notice that the "smoke" from the light is perfectly semetrical and has an odd shape, sort of like a curly-brace '}'. Its direction relative to the light is exactly opposite that of the streak. This may lead one to conclude these two shapes are related. Fudging #1 a bit, this would lead me to believe that the streak and the "smoke" are artifacts generated by the lens of the camera. Notice that the streak only appears on parts of the image with certain brightness levels. One might note also that the hue of the streak is exactly the same as the hue of the clouds around it, it is just darker.
So I don't know exactly what's going on, but my guess would be a camera artifact taking place as a result of an exploding street light at the moment the image was captured.
The article mentions the lightpost will be/was inspected for damage. I would like to see the results of such an inspection (and an inspection of the surrounding area) if it was in fact performed.
I am thinking you meant to say trajectory rather than projectory
It's a miniature black hole. Think someone in China caught it on film too? The flash is where it entered the water, just happened to be in-line with the light pole.
Ma gavte la nata
Its the Matrix coming undone at the seams, and hoping for a better plotline to finish the trilogy with.
Nobody's seen Keanu in a while.
Here's my take on it.
The guy may be somwehat okay with Photoshop, but he oughta learn a bit more physics.
The street lamp failed with a bright flash, sparks, and smoke. Happens all the time. The camera captures both direct light from the flash and indirect light from the flash reflected from particles in the air. The indirect light is mostly uniform except where the street lamp pole is shadowing the flash. Hence a streak. Happens all the time at sunsets if you look carefully.
...did you see Elvis?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Not likely since it was no where near that streetlight, that "flash" is the splash with heat release when it hit the water.
It's a firefly. The "smoke" is the wings (illuminated by the firefly's own light), the bright flash is the light, the dark path the firefly's path before lighting up. Anyone know if there are fireflies in that area?
A piece of crud hanging by a thread or hair from the opening blade of a focal plane shutter in a 35MM film camera will generate a diagonal black streak. Was this picture taken with an SLR?
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
I read the headline and eagerly hoped for a picture of another lady running across a test match cricket pitch .... alas, it wasn't.
Like a model rocket or say, a bullet? It could also be radiation of some kind instead of a solid object, a kind of radiation which turns atmosphere dark and lightpoles sparky.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
The broken light is throwing everyone off. Forget the light, just coincidence. The "line" doesn't extend to the light, imo. I think it actually has to do with the land behind the light across the water. Thats where the "end" is.
Look at it from that point of view.
You've got to ask yourself, are the streak, flash and smoke actually connected events or are they coincidental?
And here's the kicker: Were the two photographs really taken in that order and not the reverse? That would explain why there's absolutely no remnants of smoke in the "after" picture.
I think it's a hair across the lens.
But then, I'm not a RealPhotographer...
sigs, as if you care.
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans... or at least put out a street light."
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Ah, but Intelsat IA-7 was not as dead as originally thought.
I for one welcome our miniscule streaky overlords.
Seriously though, this is pretty dumb, it appears to be nothing but a camera problem, either that or it miraculouly doesn't effect ANYTHING around it. I had a camera once that did nothing but leave little smear shapes around things, wasn't aliens or meteors, it was a shit camera.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
The lamp on the light pole burned out with a pop, the resulting "trail" is nothing more than a pseudo lens flare or visual artifact caused by the flash on the camera.
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It all goes downhill from first post
I analysed the images and found that there is reflected light on the water that places the flash very close to the street light. Try this: - Load all three images into Photoshop. - Convert each image to Multichannel mode. - Select the yellow channel only in each image (channels window) - Bring up your curves window "Cmd+M":mac, "Ctrl+M":PC - Set the highlights: input 40% output 0% and the shadows: input 62% output 100% Do this for each image on the yellow channel only (save the curve and reuse it for each image for accuracy) Once each yellow channel is adjusted. (make sure you are not viewing channels in the the channel colour - view yellow as black) Tab through (cycle) each image to see the highlight in the water appear. (zoom out from each image with your keyboard - PS will place them all at the same position on your screen for a still animation). The light reflection you see will be a similar effect produced by lights on the waters edge from a NYC skyline at night - Tall and defused. It's not a bug. There is no smoke. That is a flash near the street light. No camera flash was used, and there is no sun beams present in the scene. I have no other explanation at this time. All I can say is the dark line is not smoke.
I like this theory. Interesting!
The flash/"smoke ring" isn't addressed, but it could be a coincidence? The thing is, it couldn't really be light reflecting off of that pole from the sun, as it would be currently in the path of the "shadow-beam". So what is it?
You can pick your nodes, and you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friend's nodes
The photo appears if it was taken in the Sydney area. The Manning area is 200 km north, and it is quite possible that if someone was 200km away, they do not have the same cloud coverage as Sydney. Why do you say the photo was not taken in early morning?
I don't need any questions answered, it's clear that this could only be one thing: a quark matter strike!
Albeit a very small one.
However, it vindicates this guy.
the sun is top right, shadows and sunbeams should go top right to bottom left I think.
The possibility that it is a plane contrail is pretty null, because the light source of the picture comes from the far right corner, either even with or maybe behind the larger white cloud. This would make casting a shadow across a cloud parallel to the light source fairly far-fetched, unless you're taking into consideration reflection, but that would have to be an incredibly strong reflection to create such a contrasting streak. The streak almost seems transparent, and if you look close enough appears to end on the horizon, not passing over the small amount of water between the horizon line and the lamp post. This could be a trick of color though, because the trail has a sort of blueish hue in comparison with the ionized clouds behind it. Light flash on the post does look like a reflection, at least the brighter yellow hue. There are smaller whisps of what almost looks like smoke surrounding it. What I can think of, other than the absurd, is a sort of electrical charge in this falling object, that came so close to the light that it fried the blub. This would account for the undamaged pole and the non-working light, and possibly the flash. The trail seemes too long and large for a falling object though, and frames before and after show no trail or streak. This would let one infer that if it were a falling object it would be travelling very, very fast, and if touchdown was in the water there would have been a splash in the following frames. The other interesting thing is that the trail doesn't appear beyond the clouds in the upper left of the picture, meaning that it either originated in the clouds or could only show with a contrasting background. SO, after all this, I still don't know for sure. But my guess is a highly charged particle or group of particles, after travelling through the clouds and creating the trail at very high speed, passed by the lamp and created a short from the energy they were omitting. They then hit the water, making no or little splash, all withing a short period of time.
I still think it was a meteorite of some sort. The "trail" seems to get darker further towards the ground. The meteorite could have exploded before hitting the ground (which does happen). I think it's a mix of coincidence for sure.
I don't see what else it can be, it's something fast, energetic, going up to down.
Either a laser or a meteor... chance picture tho.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
But how do you explain the smoke?
And, a reflection would cause a bright streak, not a dark streak.
It appears the streetlight simply burnt out... This would cause a small explosion, but does not damage the light... The artifact cast is just from the bright light emitted. If you look very closely, there is a small amount of 'fuzz' around the light in the last picture that wasn't there in the first... Occams Razor ;-) Simplest explanation is the most likely...
Also, the boat in the background isn't moving ;-)
Anyway, flame away...
If you zoom in to where the bright light is, about 400% digital zoom with Photoshop, you can tell that the smoke is actually coming out from far below the tip of the light? It actually looks like some steam or something coming from the ground, moving up from the left side of the pole.
At least the steam/smoke part of it definitely doesn't look like anything related to this so-called "impact".
Zoom in on the pic at the end of the steak. Theres a weird shape. Any ideas? It looks like its either the source or the endpoint.
wonder if an airplane left a line in the clouds?
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Before
Flash
After
Look at the times again. According to that info the before image was taken 30 seconds *after* the after image.
Something is definitely not right.
I was heading west in Arizona with a front of clouds, similar to that in the picture, in front of me. I saw for a brief amount of time a straight, diagonal line across the cloud front. I would appear and disappear. It was so cool, I pulled over to take a shot with my Digital Reb. On inspection of the sky it appeared that the line was a shadow being cast on the cloud front by a exhaust trail from a high flying jet. It looked almost exactly the same. But, unlike the picture there was no explosion to mark where the shadow terminated on the horizon.
My take is that this is merely a con-trail shadow, and the explosion is him capturing the reported failure of the wharf light in one of his time exposed shots.
NMG
If you look just to the upper right of the rightmost tree, there is what appears to be a light-purplish flash behind the bridge pillar. The light post appears to be on the other side of the bridge (or conveyor) and looks like the trajectory would end up in the water. The sonic boom, if there was one, could have caused the lamp to go out without the particle physically striking the post. Probably a near miss. While it could be a jpeg compression artifact, it IS in the trajectory of the 'tunnel'. I think that the most likely explanation is a sand-grain sized meteorite who's final demise was caused; not by striking the light post, but by the atmospheric friction which happened to be at the highest just above the surface of the water. The moisture from the water might have played a role in the atmospheric density. It is a one and a billion shot but how many billions of images have been taken since the invention of the camera!
reply to self.
Well, as has been pointed out by others, it only means the image sequence is reversed.
It's the first unoffical test of the crossbow project. Because the best defense is a good ofense.
No but really that is quite interesting, if it's real. 14:57, 14:58....
*hangs head in shame*
should have read title when previewing...sorry
Was the photo taken outside or from inside behind glass? If the latter, its a reflection.
one thing that everyone is overlooking: if you look at all three photos, you'll notice that the "light pole" is actually the mast of a sailboat on the other side of the pier. look closely and calmly at the before and after shots. you can just see the rigging on the mast. the light poles on the pier are regularly spaced, of one consistent height, and have obvious light fixtures on top. the other vertical elements (irregularly spaced, of differing heights, with no obvious light fixtures) are boat masts, including the pole that is intimately involved with the mysterious phenomenon. some masts have running lights atop them, but those are generally very small. the "exploding bulb" theory is completely invalid, i think. also, as several posters have mentioned, the sunlight on the clouds indicate that the sun is below the horizon to the right and behind the photographer. on another list, the guy who supplied the photo said it was early in the morning when he took the pictures. there's no sun to reflect off of anything down by the water, unless it's off the clouds first. there's definitely no way that a contrail could leave a shadow at that angle, despite what many very confident posters would have you believe. sun shadows are parallel to sunlight! it's not a contrail shadow! it's not anticrepuscular rays! it's not heilegenschein, a halo, a corona, the glory, or a rainbow! and besides, none of the various aspects of the phenomenon appear in the photos immediately preceeding and succeeding the photo in question. most of the possibilities discussed would last longer than a few seconds. the bug hypothesis has not been soundly eliminated. otherwise, it must be a photographic artifact. was the photo taken from inside? could the phenomenon be a reflection off the inside of a window? so many great ufo photos were just some guy's watch reflecting off the glass...
According to the timestamps, the before and after are reversed. They are all taken in about 30 seconds. The boat on the right goes from behind the dock to the right, which matches its wake, and the clouds billow up in that order.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
Anyone thought to go and check the light?
"If it has screws, it was meant to be taken apart."
To add to that, the image shows the particle disintegrating in a flash from atmospheric friction within feet of the surface of the Earth.
Therefore, it is NOT the first image of an object striking the Earth.
Considering that ocean covers 75% of our planet I think there are a LOT of things us silly monkeys don't understand about the dominant environment on this planet. It looks like something either shot down or was sent to space or something else along that line. I'd check to see if there are any satelite pics that were taken at the same moment and see if it was one of those ball-lightning 'sprites' or if something entered the atmosphere from that trajectory.
The shadowy 'streak' seems to be some sort of light at a wavelength we can barely see. I'd say it was a streak of carbon from something from space like space-junk or a small meteor but the streak doesn't seem to dissipate with the weather. It looks like some form of light since it's a straight line as opposed to a smoking streak of something...there's my 2 cents...LET THE BASHING BEGIN! :)
For what it's worth I just did a photoshop diff on the durning and after images and then bumped up the contrast a smidge. The results can be found here: Image Link (5.2 MB JPEG)
||| technological transcendentalist |||
The "flash" looks like the upward moving ground leader from a lightning strike. Those leaders often do not connect to form an actual strike. It actually appears to be coming from the base of the lamp, not the top, which would be the most logical place for a leader to form.
The streak, I'm not so sure. As others have suggested, it could be a contrail "shadow", however, it seems much too straight to be a hair, or even a shadow, as contrails quickly deform. Even if the ground has no wind, upper atmosphere usualy does and contrails will not stay that straight for very long. It does apear to converge (smaller top-left, to larger closest to the flash). But, I could be wrong on that.
-Doug "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
Anyone else noticed that the cloud in that re-leveled picture looks like a flying pig?
Pretty cool! This makes me think that it's a reflection from a case or a filter of the sky above the camera, with a plane traversing it. The perspective is perfect.
The camera has to have a case of some sort protecting it.
If this isn't a meteor, which I'm not entirely sure why it couldn't be; then it is a shadow from some sort of vapor train that you cannot see in the picture.
I suppose it could also be an amateur rocket fired from the ground and/or an elaborate hoax.
The streak appears when the post blows up. Did anyone notice that post blow up or am I the only one to have look at more than just the streak?
I don't get it. I've been staring at the images for about 15 minutes, and aside from the hair on the lens, I don't see anything interesting.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
I looked at all three. Still looks like smoke around the lamp to me. The white plume only shows up in the picture with the streak. There is none before or after. Definite proof of smoke as smoke can dissipate at varying speeds due to different environmental conditions as well as the kind of element being burned and releasing the smoke. I would guess this lamp is a mercury-vapor lamp. So it's not unreasonable to expect that the "smoke" seen around the light could has something to do with the vapor in the lamp. After all the light wasn't working when they went to look at it. It's not irrefutable proof, but I'm thinking this has something to do with either the light itself, or something hitting the light in such a way that the damage is not obvious.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I for one welcome our dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords.
Duh.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
Maybe its a test fire of a satellite defense network. A low power test to see the accuracy of the weapon.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here...
everything has been ruled out! it's a reflection on the window the camera was pointed through! who knows what it was, maybe tracklights, the photographer's toy lightsaber, a beam on the ceiling and a wall sconce... we have to let it go and move on.
The fellow should have checked out the street lamp.
My guess is that the bulb exploded, launching a light projectile towards the upper left hand corner of the picture on a plane that is more or less parallel with the plane of the picture.
Opposite this projectile a much more massive chunk traveled downward and from this peice we see some smoke trails traveling both downward and upward. The downward trails appear to ensnarl the pole somewhat.
Given the shutter speed is about 1/3 of the usual minimum for taking pictures there is ample time for the projectiles to travel the distances we observe.
Another possible explanation is a small pyro device tossed into the air which explodes on this side of the street light. If one looks closely it does appear that some of the smoke is on this side of the street lamp pole. So maybe we had some kids fill a soda bottle with gunpowder and light a fuse and toss it into the air. Checking hospital reports may yeild the clues we need!
Given the size of the long trail into the upper left hand corner however, I suspect that whatever was thrown in this direction was on fire and we are only seeing a vapour/smoke trail that disappears within a few seconds (like 15 for instance). I wonder if sodium from a high pressure sodium lamp can do this.
It seems to me that the light wasn't working in the "before" picture, either. So the fact that the light doesn't work now isn't really as interesting as it could be.
I know plenty of places that are slow about replacing burnt out street lights!
--LWM
The "light pole" is actually a mast / crane of the ship nearly hidden from view , except for its superstructure off to the left. The bright flash is either a light on the mast or perhaps a flash due to some welding. The gray line is the shadow of a passing aircraft. The shadow is very likely in the distant background, but lines up with the mast. The clouds in the upper right are illuminated by the sun off to the left. Brian Hawes
Seeing the diff reminded me of cool picture i saw on photo site: http://hagar.nomad.ee/pildid/images/3362.jpg :)
Cloud of mosquitos caught in flash. Looks like a flying crosses scene from Pink Floyds "The Wall" movie
The actual site is http://foto.kala.ee/
News story
Here's a picture of damage caused by another meteor
I haven't read anybody mention something about the man getting out of his car in the after photo. If you look at the tree in front of the second all-white building on the left, directly underneath it, you can make out a car. If you look at the before, occurence, and after photos, you can see the man getting out of his car. As to what this means, I'll leave that up to you.
Some bored e-3 at NORAD decided to see if he could bull's-eye a seagull with a "smart-pellet" from LEO. Looks like he could.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
I definitely don't claim to be an expert, as I only visited this website about a week ago, but it looks kinda like the "contrail shadows" found here:
http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/atoptics/rayshad.htThat doesn't really explain the flash - but that looks unrelated to me anyway.
read the previous posts! it's not a contrail shadow!
Do not test secret doomsday weapon carrying rocket where people can photograph it. Right now I'm only an Angry Scientist. I graduate to Mad after I make a play for world domination.
"My enemies hate me. My allies hate me. I hate myself."
There is not enough valid information about the pictures to come up with a sound answer. Although I tend to agree with posts along the lines of the most obvious explanation is probably the correct answer(Occam's razor).
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I can't see anything in the picture that could be making such a shadow, BTW.
Play Command HQ online
My first impulse was to guess "camera artifact." But some people who are knowledgeable about digital cameras who have posted here seem to doubt that it is; so let's assume that it is not.
It has already been speculated that microscopic black holes sometimes intersect the orbit of the earth, passing through the earth and/or its atmosphere in a few micro or milliseconds.
If the picture's only artifact had been the dark streak, my guess would have been that we were seeing exactly that: the trail created by a microscopic black hole traveling through the atmosphere. This would explain how an object traveling through the atmosphere at high speed could do so without creating great heat (and an atmospheric glow): rather than displacing atmospheric molecules (consequently imparting kinetic energy and creating heat), a black hole would be _absorbing_ them, leaving a partial vacuum in its wake. This vacuum would be visible as the dark streak.
But we also have the flash to contend with. Not just the flash, but also the fact that the flash occurs in a location very near a streetlamp in the picture. For the moment, let's assume that this indicates that the object in question hit the streetlamp.
Let's describe the flash. In addition to the bright region just to the right of the top of the lamppost, there is a dimmer region that is roughly the shape of a squat "T". (This may be a lens artifact, but it may not.) The "top stroke" of the T extends perpendicular to the dark streak, about 3 times the width of the bright part of the flash on either side. The "down stroke" of the T is a halo-ish circular glow just beyond the bright part of the flash along the path of the dark streak.
I do not think that a black hole would explode or decay on impact with matter slightly more dense than the atmosphere. I don't have science to back up this guess, it's just my instinct. Also, while I don't know what a decaying black hole would look like, for some reason I don't think it would look the way this flash does.
So if we need an object with strong gravity to explain the dark path, but we can't use a black hole, what does that leave us? I am going to theorize the existence of something I will call a "Purple Hole." (I just Googled the term, and I don't see that it has been used in astronomy or physics. Apologizes if that turns out to be wrong. Apologizes also to http://ghs.ming.k12.wv.us/Purple_Hole/Gilbert High School.)
A black hole, while exhibiting extreme gravitational effects, is made up of ordinary matter. So the physics used to analyze black holes, and to predict when and under what circumstances they might decay, and what the products might be if they do decay, are based on models where the amount and density of matter is extraordinary, but the matter is not.
But what if the object in question were a mixture containing, in addition to ordinary matter, dark matter and possibly dark energy? We might have an object whose gravitational effects were similar to those of a black hole, but whose behaviors in terms of decay were quite different.
In particular, it is possible that the decay of the object would produce mainly weakly interactive particles. These particles would mostly pass through ordinary matter showing little or no macroscopic effect. This would explain the lack of visible damage to the street light. It might also help to explain the fact that the object decayed at all (whether it struck the streetlamp or not). A microscopic examination of parts of the streetlamp might show paths left by decay particles.
OK, maybe this is silly. But it's fun. Thanks for reading this long post.
heh wow thanks for pointing that out. Now I'll go hide ;)
Regards,
Steve
Looking at the blowup of the main picture, the light is emenating from a standard power pole. Closer inspection shows a central blast arch, with a larger surrounding blast arch - dust or steam billowing out at an angle from behind the pole.
From what I see, it appears a transformer on the backside of the power pole blew up - causing the flare; the picture was taken miliseconds after the explosion.
The line on the image in the sky is probably the artifact of a lens flare, caused by the intense light at the moment of maximum light output - a milisecond before the picture was snapped and scanned - leaving the artifact behind.
If I was able to visit that location, I would examine the power pole at the point and see if there is no residue from a transformer blow-up or other malfunction of power lines at that location.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I was privy to the first 10 pages of original discussion, so hopefully I can add some helpful insight to this mystery.
.5m (~19in) during the exposure. The only problem is that in the incorrectly-labelled after photo, there appears to be a small amount of white smoke around the base of the pole.
1. It is not a contrail shadow, nor any sort of shadow related to the sun. The sun is off the upper *right* of the picture, as evidenced by the clouds.
2. The original post stated that the lamp-post was inspected and showed no damage, only that the light did not work. The light had not exploded, so theories to that effect are lost causes (sorry.)
3. Upon closer inspection, the "lamp-post" actually appears to be the mast of a ship. The lamp-posts are regularly spaced and taller than the pole the streak ends on.
4. A photo-analyst (or so he claimed) mentioned that the color of the flash at the end of the streak was definitely related to the color of the light reflecting off the water. The consequences of this, however, were not explained. *shrug*
All in all, the most convincing theory I have heard is that it is a winged insect passing in front of the camera. A quick google shows the fastest it could be going is ~10 m/s, which would have it travelling a maximum of
Cognitate on!
Move along, there's nothing to see here.
That? That was swamp gas.
Move along...
Look up strangelets
The forumsetup to discuss it is currently hosed, so perhaps fellow slashdotters can shed some light over the mystery?"
Yeah, it's definitely hosed.
Think of it like this: you take a flash picture of someone in pitch black, it doesn't matter if the shutter is set at 1/2 second, the exposure will only be as long as the flash (~1/40.000th second).
That being said, the flash *is* actually blurred. IF you look at it, it looks blurred radially outwards. With the center being to the bottom right and more intense (indicating motion, but also explosion during motion).
I personally think the plume of smoke has nothing to do with the artifact. I also have a hunch that tells me the flash is actually a much smaller object way *in front* of the lamp post. (not further behind). Don't ask me why, it's just a hunch.
If I were to rationally come up with a hypthesis, I'd be inclined to say it's a firework-like object that blew up and never hit the water. That's what the flash looks like. Although, the trajectory indicates too high speed to be a firework. Maybe ammunition, or a fighter jet flare of some sort?
Blow up the pic a bit, and you'll see that it's several pixels off to the right of the pole.
Note I haven't looked into the EXIF data at all from the images, but it would be interesting to see what the apeture of the camera is in the mystery picture as compared to the other two.
Anyhow. There's my theory. Maybe that's it?
troon is absolutely right - this thing is a bug flying across the field of view, illuminated by a flash.
There is a certain class of crackpot who thinks that out of focus pictures of insects flying across a photoframe are evidence of some strange unknown creature.
Fortunately, we can visit their websites and laugh at them. Unfortunately, they can now point at the Astronomy Picture of the Day and say "See! NASA found more evidence for rods!"
Link to roswellrods.com - don't forget your tin foil hat, and your annoying-flash-website spelunking equipment.
Link to an actual sane person describing the phenomenon
More discussion
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Any chance that this is just a clever Photoshop hoax? It looks from the picture like a street light blew up. Why didn't this dude run down to the pier and take a picture of the damage?
-R
It looks like it could be a static spark in the camera. In the right conditions, the act of advancing the film can generate enough static to cause a spark in the camera and expose the film. It is just a coincidence, that the spark happened at the top of the light pole. There is what looks to me like lightning around the light pole, that is to big to have gone unnoticed by onlookers. The line could be a result of the spark or something unrelated in the processing.
After further analysis and applying advanced image enhancement techniques, this image will make clear what the cause of this is. http://webpages.charter.net/gohome/strange_pryde_b ig.jpg
the there appear that the pole is a power line pole, and not a street lamp.
there is no light in the before picture, like the other street lamps
the smoke is both rising and falling
and the smoke is in front of the lamp.
it seems to me that something behind the trees gave off some smoke (steam?) and a puff happened to catch the sun just right.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
- Pictures before and after do not show the streak. You would think that the smoke trail would linger in the air for a while thereafter.
- The edges of the smoke streak are what seems to be perfectly straight. Against, atmnospheric turbulance should cause the edges to be slightly billowed and/or irregular
- The edges of the streak should be more like a long thin cone, indicating an expansion of the smoke plume as time passes with the transit of the proposed meteorite through the atmosphere. In the photo, the edges of the smoke plume are parrallel to each other.
- The flash of light shows a seemingly symmetrical splash of light at right angles to the path of the streak. An impact would have hot particles going off at various angles, shedding sparks and light depending on the angle of impact.
- Vaporization would tend to be omni directional, modified by the speed of transit/impact.
The secret to good photoshopping is attention to details."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I think you mean Schroedinger's Cat. Heisenberg was a dog man, he couldn't withstand the uncertainty of the feline personality.
Which direction was Cassiopia?
.
Where do the souls of street lamps go when they die?
Ok, bigger than a bottle rocket, launched from off to the left at a low tradjectory over the bay, exploding as it approached the ground. Shutter happened to release right when the firework exploded.
That would explain the lack of obvious physical damage to the lamp then.
Keith D.
Yeah, it looks like a firefly, flying up to the left during the picture, and maybe a little bit towards the camera. Alternately, is could be a bug captured by the flash at the beginning of the picture, fading out as it flew up to the left.
They welcomed our dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords 2 years ago ... In Japan!
In Soviet Russia, dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords welcome YOU!
In Korea, only Old People welcome dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords
These aren't the dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords you're looking for...
[/me waves goodbye to karma]
Required reading for internet skeptics
Surely - lightbulb "blew" (exploded, formed a minimininova) & threw shadow of lampstandard, lampshade or whatever, UP into sky through evening mist; thus making the mist visible. The principle being that sparrows are more common than canaries, perhaps even in Oz. Question now - why did the bulb "blow"?
"The light pole near the flash has been inspected and does not show any damage, although the light inside was not working."
I bet the light in the light pole blew, and when it did flashed brightly. the picture was taken at just the right moment to catch the flash, and in doing so got some glare on the lens.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
Someone may have mentioned this already, I haven't had time to look through all the posts. But, did anyone notice the haze around the light? At first I thought it was steam from a building and didn't think much of it, then I realized the towering cumulus cloud in the background isn't a cold weather cloud, at least not in weather cold enough to make steam obvious. After I saw the before and after pictures and noticed that the haze wasn't present there... I'd say I have to go with the bug theory. It seems perfectly possible the flash illuminated a shiny bug as it was flying by and perhaps the haze if a reflection off the wings? I'd also have to say that it seems unlikely that its an "explosion". I own a Canon G5 (which is basically a G3 with one more megapixel) and it suffers from hellified chromatic aberation. I've seen happen from own flash on objects 30-40 feet away. I'd say whatever the light source was in that picture had to have been rather diffuse otherwise there would've been "purple fringing"
You would be correct if the streak was a smoke trail.
More likely, it is the falling (or rising) object exposed over time (1/19 sec).
My favorite theory is that it is a rising bug. The spark at the lowest point is a reflection of the camera flash (it did flash).
The position of the lightpole is a coincidence.
It's somebody lighting a cigarette while in a cloaked romulan warbird. One of the old kinds. . . with the shoddy cloaking devices.
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
I think it might be a raindrop streaking across in front of the camera lens, reflecting the sunlit sky. It looks like it's about to rain. The wind would cause the raindrop to slant. It's just a coincidence that the lamppost is in the same location as the raindrop's reflection.
I think I can prove it isn't a bug. If you look at the before-during-after photos in sequence, there is some specular highlighting that goes on in the foreground during the flash. This means that the light of the flash was reflected off the ground. Look closely, and you'll see several pixels light up in the "parking lot" area during the "blast".
So any solution that relies on the flash being very close to the camera has to be wrong, unless you can explain the reflection off the asphault of the parking lot some other way.
I am really suprised that nobody has suggested what I thought of. The lighter "thing" at the tip of the light post looks like some kind of a spirit. The dark line was it's flight path and it went throught the light causing it to malfunction. Just my thoughts...
I am not sure that we can definitely resolve this (it would be a surprise to me if I could given the small amount of information available), but this discussion doesn't seem to be following very strict logic, and perhaps I can help a bit there. To begin with, we should all keep in mind that to have the discussion at all we must discount hoaxes both by and *upon* the photographer. We must make this leap of faith (no offense intended to Mr Pryde), but should always keep it in the back of our minds. Having taken this step, lets not forget (as many here seem to have done) what data we are offered. For example, the lamp "in" the fireball "was not working" after the picture. I think we can presume that we would have been explicitly told if it had been exploded or melted, and we were not. It is not possible for me, at least, to definitively determine the scale of the event. It does seem to me that if the fireball was real, and had enveloped the lamp, there would likely remain some sign of it. Likewise if it was real and exploded behind the lamp, we would hope to see the lamp outlined in it. Neither is the case. Thus it seems likely that the event happened *in front of* the lamp. If this is the case, then we have no reason to think that the event was very big, and in fact if it was very close to the camera it might have been quite small. A close look at the fireball shows a clear/white "shock wave" somewhat separate from the yellow fireball itself. If the lens opened a bit before the flash was taken, and if the fireball was quite close to the camera, then we can imagine (as one possibility) something coming obliquely at the camera across the little bay, exploding in front of the camera just as the lens opened, leaving a small cloud of smoke or dust in a shock front which was then illuminated by the flash. I do not say "this is what happened". And I have heard experts say this could not have been a meteor. But if a small meteor *nearly* hit the ground but the last remnant exploded (admittedly producing no fragments, so it wasn't likely a iron meteor. Perhaps it was just an icy remnant of a more complex body) near the front of the camera, coincidentally in line with the lamp post, it seems that the result would look very much like this picture. The fact that it was closer, and thus smaller than it appears, might explain why there are no signs of the explosion or trail in the next frame, 15 seconds later, as one might expect if the event were larger and farther away. If we accept that the event was small and close to the camera, we can probably find other explanations, but I confess that I like the small meteorite explanation best given the circumstances. ./Leigh Clayton [Toronto, Canada]
It's the shadow of a contrail. The atmosphere has some haze, so the sunlight is reflecting off the air in all areas but the contrail shadow.
The list portion of the cloud on the right indicates that the sun is above and to the left of the photo, exactly where it would be to make such a shadow.
As a pilot, I've seen this while flying a couple of times, and a few times from the ground. Watch carefully the next time a contrail is exactly in line with the sun (so from your POV the contrail crosses the sun).
This leads me to suspect that the sun reflected intermittently in the glass of the lamp. The tiny "smoke" trail you see around the light looks very much like the light trails that are generated by a point source, such as a candle flame, when a camera vibrates a bit during an exposure.
How could a reflection be intermittent? I suppose if the top of the light pole was moving around a bit, say from wind or waves, you could have this happen.
This does not explain the diagonal streak, but a plausible explanation is that the streak is a lens flare from the point flash.
Xcott
It's Moya.
If you double-click the image a few times, it expands, right? Well, I did that a couple of times and I think that I know what it is. I've seen people who said it was a light from a pole, a meteor, an insect; I've seen a whole bunch of things. The insect theory doesn't really hold up when you think about it; how do you explain the flash of light? A trick of the light and/or light from the poles doesn't explain it either; a trick of the light would be more spread out, and none of the other poles are lit up like that, so the only thing that could be happening there is an exploding bulb. I think that the streak is a piece of hair or something, but that it's unrelated to the flash of "light". I think it rather unlikely that the "light" is natural at all. My theory is that the film was damaged or mishandled at some point. It looks like a flaw in the film close up, particularly the "mist" around the light pole. It may have been slightly torn or something. If that were a natural phenomenon, you would have SEEN it; it would've been visible to the naked eye. Yet the photographer saw nothing, and nothing showed up on pictures taken immediately before and after this image. This is why I think that this is the most likely theory.
Yes, of course it would be possible for someone to use a JPEG tagger program to alter the meta-data of a photoshopped file. But would you think to do this? I wouldn't have. And for a mundane sort of mystery like this picture presents, why would you bother? There is no fame or fortune to be had by this photographer. Would you go not only to the trouble to photoshop the streak and flash into the picture, but also to cover your tracks by restoring the meta-data to fool people who look at the file with a binary editor or JPEG comment reader?
On the other hand, this does raise an interesting question of how could one check that an image had been digitally edited? Modern digital cameras usually are configured to compress the image (to JPEG or some other compressed form) before they even store it to flash memory. I wonder if there are particular tell-tale signs of repeated JPEG compression, like what would happen when the compressed camera image is decompressed, edited, and recompressed. It also may be possible to figure out which software produced the JPEG file by quirks of different implementations of the JPEG compression algorithm. The JPEG standard leaves room for different compressors to choose different data to discard to perform lossy compression, and it may be possible to determine from which data remains enough information to figure out what software produced the file.
there are no mention of the direction of the streak or the location of the photograph taken. but suprise suprise I see B52's
regularly fly (thursdays at 0700 and 1600) a route E-NNW and visa versa which I presume is changeover crews to/from Diego Garcia (Camp Justice) leaving contrails. So it is possible that such trails exist on non comercial traffic routes. In the absence of commercial traffic at this height/direction (above 35'000 ft) If you not aware of the time/directions you may mistake it for something else.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11 599504%255E28102,00.html
Is it just me or is this not the first sighting.
Hair on the lens. The flash may be the end of the hair catching some sunlight (squint facing the sun and see the glare off your eye lashes to see what I mean.)
These frames are probably time-lapse, and so the hair blew onto the lens... snap a picture was taken... the hair blew away again... snap another picture.
"That's exactly what I said, only different."
It's the seam in the sky. See the ST:TOS "The earth is hollow for I have touched the sky"
I am so Smart, S-M-R-T, I mean S-M-A-R-T
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Australia is full of wierd events.
I've personally seen two strange flying objects that I cannot explain, and my Dad has told me about a brief encounter he had when he was younger.
One thing I've seen was a white disc-shaped object moving through the sky at high altitude, but not flying gracefully as your northern hemisphere ufo's do, oh no.
The pilot of this ufo must of thought it would be funny to flip the ship edge over edge, like a tossed coin moving horizontally instead of vertically.
The other ufo sighting of mine is your more "mysterious lights" sort.
Latish one evening while I was standing on the back verandah I happened to see an orange light moving low in the sky from the east towards the west.
I thought it might have been an F-111 doing a "dump and burn" since I live near the RAAF base at Amberley, but I couldn't hear it, and you will definitely hear a "dump and burn" when it's happening.
I watched because it looked kinda cool, and was surprised to see it join two other lights, one coming from somewhere off to the north and the other from the west.
They buzzed around the top of Denmark Hill - kind of a small parkland just near the Ipswich Hospital - doing some really close and tight turns and maneuvers for several minutes, and then flew off towards the north-north-west until they were out of sight.
Now, I'm not saying they were aliens, or some secret government project or whatever, so leave that tin-foil sitting on the hatstand.
I'm saying that if you keep an eye open, you'll probably see at least one very odd occurance in your life.
I'd like to believe there are aliens. I have no proof to the contrary so it remains forever a possibility for me.
I often imagine what would be the best thing to do when meeting an alien from outer space - probably don't move, don't smile, and don't wave hello in case the bugger misinterprets it and goes for his sidearm - but I don't pin all my hopes and dreams on it like some people.
Just a few hopes and dreams. :)
We live in a big freaking universe, and since it was possible for life to start on earth, I don't see why life couldn't start on another planet - no pseudo-religious arguments about god please.
Anywho, whatever the dark streak and bright flash in the photo actually is, we're never going to know for certain, so why not let this photographer think it's aliens, or a meteroite, or a star wars laser test gone wrong.
We can argue about it back and forth for days but there's really no point.
The guy took some pictures, wasn't abducted by aliens or the government, and now his life is a little more mysterious.
Good, we all need a bit more mystery in our lives sometimes. It'll give him something to talk to his grandkids about.
Ah, I know what to do when I meet that alien. Offer him a drink. :)
I've seen Tripping the Rift and Farscape. Everyone likes to get sloshed.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
According to these exif headers in the parent post, the picture is JPEG, a compressed format. Without the RAW picture to analze, I'd pass the "tail" off as a possible artifact created by the JPEG creation software inside the camera as it dealt with the bright spot.
Lights don't always burn out instantly, they can _burn_, which includes creating smoke. Depending on the conditions and that we're likely talking about a large filiment (like you see in the metal halide and similar industrial bulbs) it wouldn't surprise me if it burnt brightly for several seconds before (and into) when the picture was taken. This would explain seeing smoke and the bright light at the same time.
The only thing left is ensuring that it's an appropriate time of day for lights to be on. It looks like some of the lights are on, and that it's dusk/dawn (the exif headers corroborate that it is dusk). Dusk is when automatic lights turn on.
We're possibly seeing nothing more than a bulb burning out (during turn-on or soon there after, which would be a reasonable time given that this is when most bulbs have problems) and a JPEG artifact.
I would like to see a picture from the night before and night after (they would likely show that that light is worked the one day and not the next, unless the maintanance guys are quick).
So many weird explanations.
Assuming it's not a doctored photo then to me it just looks like a meteorite impacting the water.
With the angle of the sun and the sparse but dense clouds I would say the explosion/flash is just the sun reflecting off a splash of water.
Look in the before/after pictures and you can see a small wave creating the same type of effect from the sun off the water.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
the sun is slow on the horizon, could be opposite that angle.. if it was something moving it would show an arc with gravitational pull.. nothing moves that fast. it's clearly a lens flare or reflection of some sort.
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
the shiny red spot
is in the before and
after pictures
but the artifact
is not - perhaps the camera
has a bad pixel
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
That sounds about 50,000 times less likely than space debris that _just_ grazes the post (or hits the water behind; not touching the lamp-post)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It looks a lot like a seabird caught by the flashgun (bright flash == the eyes, 'smoke' around the light is the body + wings), with the dark streak being the bird exiting stage left. To get the eyes lit up the bird must have been flying towards the camera and must have been quite close to leave such a long streak. EXIF info in the images indicates that the exposure was long (1/20sec); a bird would probably cover about a metre-ish in that time, so the distance to the end of the track from the camera would have to be quite small (~a couple of metres). Or it could be a particle beam from one of those star wars satellites getting a bit trigger happy :-)
I read the title as "A Strange Steak Imaged in Australia.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
It's certainly a bit suspicious. Looking at the EXIF tags, I don't understand why the time of taking/digitizing of the picture decreases with each successive picture. Also, those times (18:53:07, 18:52:52, and 18:52:37) suggest 15 seconds between each shot, not just a few, which can also be seen from the high cloud in the middle. Thus the boat to the far right is not "speeding", it is crawling forward at a low speed, and the reason the other boat is moving slightly is because it's drifting.
Taking a look at the flash, it doesn't appear to be that bright. Basically, it's a yellowish blotch that partially obscures the pole nearest it.
Looking at the long streak, we can note a few things: although slightly difficult to determine, the streak extends over the sky, slightly over the horizon, but not all the way to the flash; it's perfectly straight; it has an even width all across, and even intensity except the top part; it appears to fade out at the top end, and has disappeared by and even before the edge of the photo.
Finally, the fuzz, or "mist" just to the right of the flash. It is not perpendicular to the long streak; it has a almost straight, but not curved, form. The form is like a line, just slightly bent in the middle towards the flash, with smaller, perpendicular oval blobs at the ends in the direction of the flash, and a curvation in the middle that goes around the flash. The middle curvation has a slightly square, not-quite-round shape.
All of the really small details I mention could be false, due to the heavy compression, but the larger facts are definitely facts. I'm unsure if the pictures are recompressed. All the EXIF tags are intact, except for a mention of ACDsee, and a later modification date, probably the upload date from the camera. I don't know if the Canon PowerShot G3 can produce images with this much compression and low quality, but since it's not a cheapo camera, I highly doubt it. The camera was on auto-mode, which might explain the color and brightness change in the last picture.
My Explanations:
a) Something fell from the sky.
Maybe, probably not. Different points on the trail are obviously not at different distances from the camera (even width), thus, the object has to be moving. The "shockwave" or "bow wave" in front of the object is not perpendicular to its path, and is also straight, not bow-formed. In any case, it's not coming from the clouds in the distance.
b) Lightning.
Unlikely. Doesn't explain the straight streak, doesn't explain why the smoke is below the flash, or spread out as it is while the flash is still occuring.
c) Streak/mist is a sensor or lens artefact.
Unlikely. Definitely not a sensor artefact, those do not come in diagonal versions. The mist could possibly resemble some lens flare, but is only on the right side of a fairly weak flash. The streak is darker than the background, lens flares are brighter.
d) The lamp blew out.
Unlikely. Explains the flash, and possibly the mist (or smoke), but shows the middle finger to the long straight streak. The streak is unlikely a shadow, since there's nothing to cast a shadow on in the middle of the air. The streak is, again, of even width all across, perpendicular to the camera lens axis. The thin streak is also not a shadow of a long pole.
e) It's a fake.
Likely.
Any comments, corrections?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Clouds always billow inwards in the southern hemisphere.
Look guys.. Assuming its not a hoax, it's clear something hit the top of that post. The brightest area of the flash is to the bottom right of the very top of the post, which is consistent with a high-speed object coming in from the top left of the image, hitting the post, and producing a flash to the bottom-right of the impact point. Even the cloud around the flash is in the right direction, perpendicular to the dark streak. The dark streak is consistent, and the exposure would be darker so long as the moving object is not on fire or giving off light itself. My advise: Inspect the post! To say that "the street light doesn't work" is not nearly enough info! The lightbulb doesn't have to smash to produce a flash from a high-speed object. It most likely hit the steel pole, or the steel cover on the >top of the bulb dome. It could have just nicked the post at the top. My advice: 1) Climb to the top. 2) Take high-res pictures all over the top of the post. 3) Collect dust and look at it under a microscope. 4) Compare to neighboring posts. I'd like to know what it is too...
The answer is obvious. The camera caught the exact moment that the lightbulb burned out. When a lightbulb burns out it emits a bright flash of light. Ever see one burn out at home when the switch is turned on. The streak is caused by the cameras reaction to the bright flash of light from the bulb.
The answer is obvious.
The camera caught the exact moment that the lightbulb burned out. When a lightbulb burns out it emits a bright flash of light. Ever see one burn out at home when the switch is turned on.
The streak is caused by the cameras reaction to the bright flash of light from the bulb.
Why doesn't someone just bother to look at the fucking street lamp which was supposedly shattered and solve the goddamn "problem"?
:P
Fucking scientists.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The camera caught the exact moment that the lightbulb burned out. When a lightbulb burns out it emits a bright flash of light. Ever see one burn out at home when the switch is turned on.
The streak is caused by the cameras reaction to the bright flash of light from the bulb.
Intersection
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
I can see that the area of 851,1029, (the streetlight that is still lit)-- is the EXACT same in the 2nd and 3rd frame. You can even see the box-shaped halo around the area.
Why didn't noise affect this area like it did for every other pixel-- it was copied and pasted!
CrossIPTC software for digital pictures is a repair and cross-platform conversion tool to efficiently exchange IPTC metadata using extended characters between Windows and Macintosh platforms. CrossIPTC rewrites IPTC accents for Windows when created by a Macintosh computer [or vice-versa] to ensure compatibility and properly display author, captions, keywords, categories, credits and origins information containing texts with accents. Some CrossIPTC Features : - Mass conversion of extended characters into IPTC fields. - Translates Macintosh accents to Windows accents or Windows accents to Macintosh characters. - Works with all standard IPTC fields and with customised (non-standard) fields - Displays IPTC metadata information for each image - Lets you copy image IPTC data set to clipboard when browsing folder images. - Allows to display captured IPTC character strings, in Hexadecimal values - Optionally keeps a copy of input files to a backup folder. - Customization of period interval between two scans for processing - Language: English Designed to facilitate images and digital photos transmission, CrossIPTC enables automatic stock photography conversion during migration from one platform to another executing a mass repair on IPTC File Info fields added to JPEG or TIFF pictures: it translates Macintosh extended characters to Windows characters or Windows accents to Macintosh accents. Since extended characters are absolutely necessary for example in French, German, Portuguese and Spanish texts, no more need to avoid the use of accents for the description of digital pictures to treat by the other platform: the images are always tagged with appropriate accuracy to allow a good cataloguing and indexation. CrossIPTC works with all standard IPTC fields and with customised (non-standard) fields.
Other similar tools are available, of course, and could be well known to a photo geek. Of course, selling the rights to the photo means hundreds if not thousands of dollars in reproduction rights. Nothing outrageous. Just extra beer money.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If he couldn't stand the uncertainty of a cat, why did he come up with a whole principle about it?
Fascinating Entendre
I've done some photoshop on the picture an the "flash" and "smoke" is actually a bug, the head body and wings are clearly visible:
I've actually seen hundreds of these, but I've never seen one captured (film or digital image). It's not a freak camera malfunction or some one's hoax - they are real. They always transverse at about the same inclination: I've never seen a truly vertical one. What are they? I think they are probably conduits to heaven for souls, but noone's going to buy that.
Well done! Clearly a bug! Or, as we like to say in the biz, "an undocumented feature".
I've wasted a lot of money in my life, the rest I spent on motorcycles and women.
As they used to say: suck it & see.i.e.Experiment: Arrange to blow a bulb in light on similar weather day at same place & time & film or video it. If same streak results well & good & all Slashdot scienists, philosophers & assorted jokers can shut up. If no streak keep repeating experiment till get one as this joker thinks you're certain to get it sooner or later, depending on weather. To blow bulb: switch power off, screw in a coin under bulb(in my day for house lights it used to be a sixpenny piece)switch power on -- beautiful flash!!! But another coin will do If Oz iz out of 6d pieces, or a correctly folded piece of silver paper. If you have friends at the local power station, municipal/port/park electricity switch the on/off problem is easy, if not then interest the local/world media & it may come to pass. But for God's sake shut up & try it.