What is this...?

[Scorpius]

Well Fellow Stargazers - I had a go at investigating this mysterious object mathematically but still no idea what it is however, maybe this will help eliminate a few possibilities or at least provide some insight into its size and altitude. If I’ve gone about it all wrong - guess someone will let me know (which is fine) – but here’s what I did...

I started by tracking down this online calculator which can determine one unknown value if the other two are known.

The three values are linear size (actual size), angular size (apparent size in degrees) and distance (which in this case is altitude). There’s several online but here’s one that was easy to use. http://rechneronline.de/sehwinkel/angular-diameter.php If you want to try it out, just remember that r & g must be/will be the same unit of measurement (doesn’t matter what unit, they just need to be the same). You also need to reset the form each time by clicking the delete button before starting a new calculation. Also, I used degrees for angular size but there’s an option for radians as well.

So the next thing was to find two known values which wasn’t easy since we don’t know how big this thing is or how far away. It occurred to me early on that some type of reference points on the moon would be needed so after watching the video several times - I realized the object seemed to fit very nicely between craters Lansberg B & D as it traversed the lunar surface.

However, I never could stop the video at just the right moment so I paused the video, then took a screenshot - then zoomed in real close in PS - created a layer from the object in question - then transformed it into a smart object.

Now I could move it around and place it anywhere I wanted and sure enough the space between Lansberg B & D was a perfect fit – or at least perfect enough for my purposes.

So now I had a beginning but this was nowhere near enough. So I thought, wonder how far it is between Lansberg B & D anyway? Well turns out Google Moon gave me that answer without too much fuss so I’m thinking – now I’m getting somewhere.

But even though I knew the distance between craters B & D is 41 mi (66 km), I still needed another value to go any further. So next, I pondered how far away the moon was when the video was taken. Turns out there’s another handy webpage that provides this info based on location and date so here’s a link to that website: http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/moon/distance.html  It doesn’t give you the distance for every day of the year but was able to set the location for Liverpool, UK (which I believe is near Wirral) and chose June 21, 2015 since it was the closest date available. So it turns out that on June 21’st the moon was roughly 251,558 mi (404,843 km) away from Liverpool.

So now I finally had my two known values in like units – a linear distance on the moon - which for now we’ll call our linear size (g) - and how far away the moon was from Wirral which is our distance r. So when I plugged these values into the calculator it gave me that elusive angular size in degrees I’d been searching for since the object fit so nicely between craters Lansberg B & D. This turned out to be the solution to the problem and in case you’re wondering, the approximate angular distance between Craters - Lansberg B & D is 0.009341°.

So once I determined the object’s apparent size in degrees and since I already knew the distance from Wirral to the moon– I could now go back and assign various “hypothetical “ linear sizes to the object in order to determine at what altitude it would have been. So I entered several potential contenders and came up with the following results: *

(Linear size based on longest dimension)

Small Bird (Sparrow)

Linear Size: 0.5 ft (0.1524 m)

Altitude:  3,067 ft = 0.6 mi (935 m = 0.9 km)

Medium Bird / X-Large Flying Squirrel 

Linear Size: 1.6 ft (0.5 m)

Altitude: 9,814 ft = 1.9 mi (3,067 m = 3 km)

Flying squirrels can’t really fly they just glide from tree to tree so they could never get any higher than the treetops without strapping on a rocket booster. He’s a cute little feller no doubt but he - or one of his cousins - ain’t the object in the video.

Large Bird / Average Cluster Party Balloons

Linear Size: 3 ft (0.9 m)

Altitude:  18,401 ft = 3.5 mi (5,520 m = 5.5 km)

Looks like it could be a small cluster of party balloons depending on how high you believe they can go without popping (more on that later)

Saved the verdict on birds until now. It’s not so much a question of how high they can fly as it is a question of how high they do fly. According to my research - birds of all types rarely fly higher than 500 ft (152 m) above the ground beneath them. That’s not to say they can’t fly much higher, such as when migrating, but otherwise there’s not much point in wearing themselves out just because they can. Turns out birds are pretty smart creatures after all so I’ll go out on a limb here (no pun intended) and suppose - based on the altitudes listed above – that the object in the video is no species of bird.

Large Cluster Party Balloons

Linear Size: 6 ft (1.8 m)

Altitude: 36,803 ft = 7 mi (11,041 m = 11 km)

See previous comment however - 36,000 ft may be pushing the envelope for balloons!

Cessna Skyhawk Single Engine Airplane

Linear Size: 27 ft (8.2 m)

Altitude: 165,612 ft = 31 mi (50,297 m = 50.2 km)

Cessna Skyhawk is out since its service ceiling is listed as 14,000 ft (4,267 m)

Object About the Size of a School Bus

Linear Size: 36 ft (11m)

Altitude:  220,817 ft = 42 mi (67,472 m = 67.4 km)

For those school buses capable of flight at these altitudes - this remains a distinct possibility.

Boeing 747SP Commercial Passenger Jet

Linear Size: 184 ft (56 m)

Altitude:  1,128,618 ft = 214 mi (343,493 m = 343.4 km)

The Boeing 747SP is out of the running since its service ceiling is listed as 45,100 ft (13,746 m)

International Space Station

Linear Size: 357 ft (108.8 m)

Altitude: 2,189,764 ft  = 414 mi (667,356 m = 667.3 km)

Since the maximum orbital altitude of the ISS is 270 mi (434 km) it is beyond all doubt - not the object in the video.

The biggest disappointment in all of this – assuming my sums are correct – is the supposed maximum altitude of standard helium-filled party balloons differs wildly depending on who you ask. Here’s several links to online discussion of the question but from what I can gather the most consistent answer is somewhere between 28,000 – 30,000 ft (8,534 – 9,134 m) which is about standard cruising altitude for a commercial passenger jet (hard to believe balloons could go that high huh?). The reason I’m inclined to go with this number is due to the following explanation scrounged off the web:

“In order to calculate how high a balloon could go before popping, you need to calculate the density of a helium balloon that has a radius of 0.1143 mm. Calculate the volume of the balloon using the formula for the volume of a sphere; then use the volume to calculate the density. You'll find that the density of a helium balloon of that size at room temperature is about 0.1663 kilograms/meters (kg/m). Because density is altered by altitude, the helium balloon can reach a height of 9,000 meters, or 29,537 feet. Anything higher than this altitude will cause the helium within the balloon to expand and the balloon to pop.”

Party Balloon Altitude Links:

http://www.ehow.com/facts_7467764_high-balloon-go-before-pops_.html

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=1020.0

http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/how-high-can-helium-balloon-float

http://askville.amazon.com/helium-balloons-float/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=7604850

And if you’d like to check any of my conversions, please feel free: http://www.checkyourmath.com/index.php

No need to quote me if you want to respond – just say hey you!!! - with way too much time on your hands – here’s what I think, etc.

*Oberth-Class Starships and Klingon Birds of Prey were not included in this study due to a lack of reliable information regarding their exact size...   

[StargeezerTim]

A worthwhile project Scorpius that utilises a range of web based and other sources of data. You have approached the matter systematically and with some imagination, utilising an inductive approach to your research question. 

Unfortunately, you fail to provide enough referencing for your sources and your work lacks originality in places. Overall, however, a worthwhile project that displays some original thinking and a rigorous approach to your investigation. Unfortunately, you have completely ignored or overlooked the 'superhero' hypothesis, rendering you examination of the issues rather incomplete.

A mark of 63% is well deserved.

Congratulations, and I look forward to reading and marking your next submission.

Professor Stargeezer (University of Life, and death, and everything)

[Ruud]

Twelve points, douze points, go to Scorpius from Virginia!

[Scorpius]

A worthwhile project Scorpius that utilises a range of web based and other sources of data. You have approached the matter systematically and with some imagination, utilising an inductive approach to your research question. 

Unfortunately, you fail to provide enough referencing for your sources and your work lacks originality in places. Overall, however, a worthwhile project that displays some original thinking and a rigorous approach to your investigation. Unfortunately, you have completely ignored or overlooked the 'superhero' hypothesis, rendering you examination of the issues rather incomplete.

A mark of 63% is well deserved.

Congratulations, and I look forward to reading and marking your next submission.

Professor Stargeezer (University of Life, and death, and everything)

Wow, thought I'd at least get a B -. Actually the superhero hypothesis can be applied by using the values for a large balloon cluster (6 ft) which should be close to Superman's height. But if it's Superman, he can jump all the way to the moon in a single bound anyway so what difference does it make?    I think you just push your favorites harder than most so how about boosting that score to an 85? 

[StargeezerTim]

A 63 is a B- in Social Science academia, with an A being any mark in excess of 70. I am willing to increase your mark to a B+ and award you a 68.

Congratulations! :-)

[Tzitzis]

Seriously?Wow. You did all these calculations and hypotheses... Well done, I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps you should make other posts like this one and others can comment and judge you

[J_N_Y]

Scorpious... I just... Wow. The single best post I have read on these forums so far. You sir, are a cut above!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[beamer3.6m]

Looks like Batman to me

[Scorpius]

Twelve points, douze points, go to Scorpius from Virginia!

Thanks Ruud, never won any douze points before - so feel quite honored...   

Seriously?Wow. You did all these calculations and hypotheses... Well done, I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps you should make other posts like this one and others can comment and judge you

Thanks but the whole judgement thing makes me nervous since my results are often prone to error (read on) 

A 63 is a B- in Social Science academia, with an A being any mark in excess of 70. I am willing to increase your mark to a B+ and award you a 68.

Congratulations! :-)

Thanks "teach" - I'm pleased with the grade you awarded...

Scorpious... I just... Wow. The single best post I have read on these forums so far. You sir, are a cut above!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Thanks J_N_Y, I appreciate the kind words my friend but not so fast, as it appears there was an error in my calcs regarding the distance of the moon from Wirral. You see not thinking too much about how the moon’s distance from earth changes over time - I wrongly assumed it was a gradual change on an annual basis. However, this is not correct as the distance goes from closest (perigee) to most distant (apogee) roughly every two weeks due to the moons elliptical orbit. So by using June 21, 2015, I was off quite a bit and should have used August 2’nd instead. Point is, even  though 8/2 occurred after the video was taken, it would be a far more accurate measurement and makes a difference of about 42,000 km.

Due to this mistake on my part, I must now go back and re-run the numbers to make sure it doesn’t “rule back in” any potential possibilities that were previously ruled out. This is going to take some time but my gut feeling is it probably won’t make much difference – but guess we’ll see.

In the meantime, it occurred to me one key factor not addressed thus far is the mystery object’s speed. I’m hoping someone can offer some insight regarding any formula that can determine something’s speed if it’s size and altitude are known by using the moon as a reference point. In other words some kind of “drift in the FOV” formula that could be applied to the object in question. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated and if anyone’s wondering why I’m going to all this trouble – it’s because I love a mystery, especially if it can be solved through logical thinking and math. The idea is to think of as many known objects as possible then run the numbers to see if their size, altitude (and now speed) are consistent with real life. Although I believe some type of satellite would have been too low to be the object, I’d be willing to run the numbers if someone could offer some info on their various sizes. For instance, I’ve read that a communications satellite is about the size of a large refrigerator but apparently there are a number of other types whose sizes are both smaller and larger than that. I’m thinking a gentleman on here by the name of wxsatuser could provide some insight to this question since he’s been a satellite guy for years? 

Anyway, I’m supposed to be building an observatory and can’t afford to dig any deeper into this at the moment however, I’ll keep an eye out for any suggestions on how to determine its speed and for any other “real life objects” someone suggests it might be.

PS: I’ve been listing results in both imperial and metric units which is a real pain. So from here on, I’ll just be using metric units which I know is what most everyone on here goes by anyway. It’s just when I was going through school (in the US) metric units were more or less an afterthought and - as the old saying goes – it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. But I'll be using metric units from here on since it takes so long to convert every result to the other system.

Cheers,

Scorpius

[Scorpius]

Sorry to keep bumping this thread but have a legitimate question for OP (see below).

Attempting to extrapolate a more accurate distance (based on table in previous post) of the moon from Liverpool, UK when the video was captured.

Given there was a 42,701 km change in distance from July 21, 2015 @ 12:00 noon  to  Aug 2, 2015 @ 11:06 am (54 min. less than 12 days) - here’s the math:

12 days x 24 hrs. = 288 hrs.

288 hrs. – 1 hr. = 287 hrs. (1 hr. correction for 11:00 am on Aug. 2’nd)

287 hrs. x 60 mins. = 17,220 mins.

17,220 mins. x 60 secs. = 1,033,200 secs.

6 min x 60 secs. = 360 secs. (6 min. correction for 11:06 am on Aug. 2’nd)

1,033,200 secs. + 360 secs. = 1,033,560 secs. from July 21, 2015 @ 1200 noon to Aug. 2, 2015 @ 11:06 am.

42,701 km ÷ 1,033,560 secs. = 0.0413144858 km per sec. change in distance.

0.0413144858 km ÷  0.0010000 (conversion factor) = 41.3 m per sec. change in distance over specified time period.

So my question to J_N_Y - do you know the date and time your video was captured? Don’t expect you’ll remember down to the min. (unless video properties have logged it) but the more accurate the time - the more accurately the distance from Wirral (Liverpool) to moon can be determined for future calculation of true angular size of the object in question.

This thing is becoming an obsession - which isn’t good since there’s a lot of other things I should be doing right now. Heading over to my remote site now to see if I can get something accomplished on the obsy but will keep a check on my phone to see if you remember the time...

My build thread: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/247778-windy-knoll-observatory-my-build-thread/

[JamesF]

This thing is becoming an obsession - which isn’t good since there’s a lot of other things I should be doing right now.

This is exactly why I avoided getting into doing the same maths that you've done

Though I'd probably have estimated the angular size based on the focal length of the OTA and the number of pixels covered by the object, and estimated it's speed based on the distance it moved between frames.

There's a bit of me that would like to try that even now, but there are other things I really must get done.

James

[Psychobilly]

Looks like an xbox controller

[Tzitzis]

Looks like an xbox controller

LOL    

[J_N_Y]

Sorry to fuel a bad obsession - The original video, and Sharpcap settings are at this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y07zvhach305z9r/AACVW29wmwWRbwWsLnGMkAv1a?dl=0

If you're not happy downloading them to there, i can work something else out.

Timestamp for when the file was created is:

Edit** timestamp is from a copied file - I will have to find the original one! sorry!

Edit 2** Friday 31 July at 00:29 is the original file

If you want more precise coordinates of where it was taken - feel free to pm me

Sorry to have caused such a stir with the vid!

[JamesF]

I think what we have here genuinely is a UFO

James

[Dave In Vermont]

I think what we have here genuinely is a UFO

James

Nah.....This proves it was a Flying Squirrel at the thruster-controls of the ISS.

Calling Bullwinkle,

Dave

[Scorpius]

When I stumbled across this story, I thought this could be it!!!

http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2015/07/31/slow-moving-very-bright-fireball-turns-sky-green-over-argentina/

I started looking at time zones and calculating speed since I knew the exact time of the OP’s video and more specifics on his location. Stellarium shows the moon was low in the sky (roughly 20°) and almost due south when the video was captured.

But when I went back and watched it again, I realized our mystery object had traversed the moon from west to east which would be wrong since Argentina is SSW of the UK. I was disappointed until I noticed in one of the Argentina stories - a reference to a meteor strike (actually hit the ground) in Iran on July 31’st as well. Unfortunately, there aren’t many details that I can find on the Iranian meteor but I did locate this video interview. It would be great to know what time of the day or night it struck Iran and in what direction it was traveling. One thing’s for sure, a path from west to east - observed from the OP’s location facing south - would put our mystery object on a plausible trajectory towards Iran.

http://player.mashpedia.com/player.php?q=wRdQ3gE72ZE

Maybe it’s a long shot but was just wondering if anyone here speaks Iranian and could interpret the video? Time and date is the big question but the direction of travel prior to impact is important too...

[Tommohawk]

Sorry to fuel a bad obsession - The original video, and Sharpcap settings are at this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y07zvhach305z9r/AACVW29wmwWRbwWsLnGMkAv1a?dl=0

Edit 2** Friday 31 July at 00:29 is the original file

Just a thought - you originally said "Anyways, I was shooting the moon on Thursday at about 12:30am." 

So I'm guessing you really do mean very late Thursday, ie Friday 00.29, but might be as well to confirm. Also if you got the timestamp from the camera file, it may be GMT, so probably as well to check if 00.29 GMT or BST.

I say this because my DSLR camera doesnt automatically update to BST, so I need to be carefull when doing WinJUPOS derotations etc.

BTW when checking ISS posiiton on Stellarium, I agree it wasnt close at that time, but was near on 29th at 00.29. However, on Stellarium the track and ISS icon seem greyed out - not sure what this signifies? Any ideas?

[J_N_Y]

Just a thought - you originally said "Anyways, I was shooting the moon on Thursday at about 12:30am." 

So I'm guessing you really do mean very late Thursday, ie Friday 00.29, but might be as well to confirm. Also if you got the timestamp from the camera file, it may be GMT, so probably as well to check if 00.29 GMT or BST.

I say this because my DSLR camera doesnt automatically update to BST, so I need to be carefull when doing WinJUPOS derotations etc.

BTW when checking ISS posiiton on Stellarium, I agree it wasnt close at that time, but was near on 29th at 00.29. However, on Stellarium the track and ISS icon seem greyed out - not sure what this signifies? Any ideas?

Yeah to confirm it was early the Friday morning - stayed up later than originally intended, sleepy day in work on Friday!

I see your point about the times, I can double check with a new recording on Sharpcap tonight to see whether it draws the time from the laptop clock as opposed to anything else. the laptop clock is right but it's always worthwhile to check tonight when I get home from work.

Just another pondering - I have no idea what orientation the camera was in the EP holder at. Sure someone can work that one out simply enough from the path of the moon through the image, but just a thought.

[Scorpius]

Another very interesting link. I don’t subscribe to any type of conspiracy theory and know nothing about this particular website but find it interesting there apparently were multiple meteor strikes in Iran on July 31’st which happens to be the same day (just barely) the OP’s video was captured. Sounds like there was some major devastation in certain areas which would seem to indicate the incoming object was large in comparison to the much smaller objects (even dust grains) responsible for most shooting stars. Of course there was also that huge, slow moving fireball over Argentina on the same night but it will probably turn out that our OP’s mystery object was just a bird, plane or cluster of party balloons. But then again, it’s also still possible it was Superman on a midnight excursion or a Klingon warship just stopping by to check us out… 

As the old saying goes – “the plot thickens”

http://planetxnews.com/2015/08/09/why-are-nasa-and-the-us-media-covering-up-a-devastating-meteor-strike-in-iran/