Strange streak discussion: 2004 Dec 7 APOD

[wundy88]

firstly, this looks like Darwin in the north of australia. It has the 2nd highest lightning count in the world.

If there is lightning in the area upward streamers can rise from high pointed objects looking for downward leaders or vise versa. Only one or just a few will will actually meet allowing the current to flow.

This picture may be one of those.

I have seen two such pictures. One taken on a moutain top in Italy by lightning researchers and one in a national geographic magazine of a park showing several upward streamers emanating from 6 or seven trees and lamp posts.

[PrydeW]

If i missed the light post in question it's because i didn't have the photo on hand and didn't remember it clearly. I'm uploading a few more that are closer to the vantage in the original, but they are partially obscured by trees.

Okay.....so this person takes a picture of some strange phenomenon, goes out to look at the lampost in question to determine that there is no damage, and yet can't remember which lampost it is? Sounds really fishy to me....

-z

Just for that are interested, this photo has not come from myself. If he had done his math, he would realise that the light in question is actually about 2 more metres to the left!!!!!

[wundy88]

after looking at the picture more carefully, I think the headmaster at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry has sucked the light out he did in the film.

[Guest]

If i missed the light post in question it's because i didn't have the photo on hand and didn't remember it clearly. I'm uploading a few more that are closer to the vantage in the original, but they are partially obscured by trees.

Okay.....so this person takes a picture of some strange phenomenon, goes out to look at the lampost in question to determine that there is no damage, and yet can't remember which lampost it is? Sounds really fishy to me....

-z

Just for that are interested, this photo has not come from myself. If he had done his math, he would realise that the light in question is actually about 2 more metres to the left!!!!!

Like I said, I went on a whim thinking i knew where you were standing and could get some shots from the same viewpoint. When I got there I just went for a best guess and i seem to have missed it.

The closest i got was the jumping the fence at the cenotaph, but I wasn't game to step much closer to the edge of the cliff, hence the trees.

[Rob Crouch]

Has anyone noticed the tiny light spot in the clouds almost halfway up and almost above the lamp?

Same as the spot on the water on the bottom left... I suspect that is a array error or spots on the lens as they are exactly in the same place in all 3 images. I get that often if the lens is dirty on my Cannon Coolpix 2000.

[Michelle Hogan]

This is a meteorite ion trail and impact being photographed. The frames before and after show nothing. Frames taken 1 second before and possibly after might not have shown much either.

Shadow trail is not possible as it would have shown in some way in other frame.

Of the possibilities, this is the simplest answer. Prove Occam's Razor wrong.

Michelle Hogan

[Wayne]

As stated many times before, a meteorite impact hard enough to cause a visible flash would leave a definite impact scar on whatever it hit.

Anyway, I'm not purporting to know an answer, but if anyone wants to see a difference image between the strange one and one of the not strange ones, you can do so at this url.
http://hatserver.cjb.net/image/strange.jpg

I have not inlined it due to my bandwidth being limited.

[Rob Crouch]

This is a meteorite ion trail and impact being photographed. The frames before and after show nothing. Frames taken 1 second before and possibly after might not have shown much either.

Shadow trail is not possible as it would have shown in some way in other frame.

Of the possibilities, this is the simplest answer. Prove Occam's Razor wrong.

Michelle Hogan

From what I have read a meteor has to be larger than 10m to not loose a significant amount of it's initial entry velocity, and such a large meteor will make a much bigger bang I would think.
My vote is a expiring sodium/mercury lamp or an insect. That to me are the two most simple explanations.

[PrydeW]

From this location one can see that the lamp in question would have been "facing" the camera so the exploding light with shadow caused by the pole theory seems to be the better one than the "bug" theory.

http://www.samhaddow.com/things/5.jpg

If you actually goto the office on fort hill wharf (visible ATCO transportable in the left of this photo) and stand at the gate, you will see two red lamp pools which stands approx 18m metres tall. You will also notice that on top of poles, large halogen lamps (mat aluminium, and facing directly left, as per photo and slightly angled to the ground). If anyone in the NT actually viewed the paper on the next day the Port of Darwin Corporation Electrians inspected the pole and no globes were shattered and no damage to the pole, however the light was no longer working, the electrians had stated that a fuse had blown and it may have been caused by a power surge or lightning.

I can tell you for sure that there was no Lightning around at that particular time, the only storm cell that was building was the one I photographing (approx 50 km away, building up over west arm for those that know Darwin Harbour)

And just to add, I have taken thousands of photo's with this camera and not once have I seen something like this come up in one of my shots. There is another 15 or so photo's directly after "The Shot" (all at 1/20 & 5.6 with the flash on just to lower the shutter speed and all at an interval of 15 seconds) that has got everyone talking and none of them have the same anomaly.


Has been very interesting to see everyones view, I can assure you all that I am no expert on meteorites or nor do I claim to be, I merely enjoy photography at an amateur level.

Thankyou all for your input, even the idiots.....

[Guest]

I came across, by chance, this web page several years ago:

http://www.flyingrods.com/articlesfl/kfmb1.asp

Personally, I don't buy into the cryptozoological explanations of that phenomenon. I think it is more likely that the "flying rods" are some combination of ordinary insects and camera artifact. Maybe the streak and flash in the apod image is also some artifact completely unrelated to meteors or lightning.

[Tim Z]

It is possible that the light pole has nothing to do with this question. Also, smoke seen near the poll could be associated with near subject events. Take a look at the picture again, address the direction of a faint shadow trailing straight and direct form top left the middle of the bay. Does it make a splash? Does this look like a meteorite impact? Seems like a careful sonar study of a small area of the bay would reveal a small impact cone who’s orientation matches that seen in the image. Who wants to go to Australia with me?

[William M. O'Leary]

Maybe this is a meteor that came down just a split second before and during the opening of the shutter on the camera. Would the dark streak be burnt material as it came in ? That usually is still glowing though!
Maybe just an old piece of space junk.
Were their any waves in the water after the picture was taken?

[patrick_obrien@sympatico.]

The streak is the result of a jet leaving a "contrail" above the cloud level.
The "shadow" of the contrail is what is seen as the streak.
Regarding the "flash" it appears to be a "conveniently located" reflection of the sun either from the water or something in the water, or the glass off the lamp?
I have seen similar "lines in the clouds several times before" It requires the sun to be above the contrail, and cloud cover which is light enough to get a glow through, all except for the "line of contrail shadow"
Further the "flash is not really at the end of the streak, but below it...
A Tricky blend of the contrail Horizon, and the water horizon, NOTE the flash is NOT at the water horizon, but somewhat "lower" i.e. Closer.. Regards Patrick...

[AndyWoudstra]

It looks fairly obviously to be a momentary reflection of the bright cloud off the right side of the lamp posts cover. I really would like to see a close up of the light and it's cover to verify this. As I mentioned in my post from last night, the lamp post may be moving in the wind, so there is a chance that everything lined up just right for a fraction of a second, producing the reflection right into the camera.

I have seen this type of momentary reflection many times while driving - they can be extremely bright for a very short duration. As for the "smoke", that's just a ghost from the lens.

The bright flash could also have caused the shadow - this depends on the shape of the lamp posts cover, which I can't make. However, if the cover is hat shaped, that would do it since the reflection bounced off the right side of the brim, so the raised part would generate a shadow.

[Chris Lidgate]

Fascinating subject, and some great discussion.

For what it's worth I was originally a 'blown light bulb'er, my reasoning being

1) The streak does look like a shadow.

2) It *is* possible to create a parallel shadow like this from an exploding light bulb. Fist off, we require some sort of support strut to cast the shadow - ie the photographer was standing behind the strut. This is not a common sort of arrangement but looking at the photo someone found of what might be the lamp in question, not impossible (go back through the past 40 odd pages and look for the links - I didn't save them). Next we require not a point source of light but a patch of light, the same size as the strut. If we had a point source, the shadow would get wider as we get further away from the strut and the shadow would be so wide at the distance of the photograher that I don't think there would be any visible effect. But if we have a patch of light the same width as the strut this would form a parallel shadow. What would the strut width be - say 1" (2.5 cm for europeans). would an exploding light bulb create such a diffuse, but very bright patch of light ? my gut feeling is unlikely but not impossible. If there was some esacape of vapour followed by an ignition, this could have resulted in the right kind of flash.

3) Finally the white smoke or flash does look like it could be the smoke that might have accopanied my vapour explosion.


I don't buy the contrail theory at all as I think the sun position is far too low to produce the shadow shown, not only that but we're then left with explaing the white smoke or flash by some other means. A contrail it ain't.


However looking at all the posts, and especially the ones comparing the white smoke aoround the light to a fly, I have to say that I think the fly option wins.


1) Compared to the coincidences required above for the exploding light, (strut position, escape of vapour, or some other means to produce a patch of light of the same size as the struct to a high accuracy, and all this happening in the 50 ms whilst the shutter is open), the only unusual aspect to the fly theory is that the line of flight is very straight. From what I remember there are LOTS of flies in Darwin (which is why Aussies dangle corks from there hats !), so some of them at least ought to be flying in reasonably straight lines during the 50 ms in question.

2) For the technically minded a Cannon G3 can be adjusted to either fire it's flash at 1st curtain (ie the instant the shutter opens), or 2nd curtain (ie just before the shutter starts to close), or not at all, or when it feels like it, or not on a Sunday, etc ... There are LOTS of settings on this camera, and I think that all the pics are entirely consistent with the flash going off, but there being nothing close enough to the camera to be flash illuminated. I would have thought that the camera operator would have noticed the flash going off three times, but that's another story.

3) One bit that I'm not 100% convinced yet is how close the fly would have to be to the lens to make the image that we see - does any body have any
estimates yet ? My concern is that the fly is illuminated pretty dead centre of the frame - but on a cannon G3 the lens protrudes substantially from the front of the camer body. This would cause something that was very close to the lens to be in a flash shadow - look at this photo of a G3 for the details of flash and lens position.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong3/


So I'm a 85% fly man myself ....




-- Chris Lidgate

[Rob Crouch]

From this location one can see that the lamp in question would have been "facing" the camera so the exploding light with shadow caused by the pole theory seems to be the better one than the "bug" theory.

http://www.samhaddow.com/things/5.jpg

If you actually goto the office on fort hill wharf (visible ATCO transportable in the left of this photo) and stand at the gate, you will see two red lamp pools which stands approx 18m metres tall. You will also notice that on top of poles, large halogen lamps (mat aluminium, and facing directly left, as per photo and slightly angled to the ground). If anyone in the NT actually viewed the paper on the next day the Port of Darwin Corporation Electrians inspected the pole and no globes were shattered and no damage to the pole, however the light was no longer working, the electrians had stated that a fuse had blown and it may have been caused by a power surge or lightning.

I can tell you for sure that there was no Lightning around at that particular time, the only storm cell that was building was the one I photographing (approx 50 km away, building up over west arm for those that know Darwin Harbour)

And just to add, I have taken thousands of photo's with this camera and not once have I seen something like this come up in one of my shots. There is another 15 or so photo's directly after "The Shot" (all at 1/20 & 5.6 with the flash on just to lower the shutter speed and all at an interval of 15 seconds) that has got everyone talking and none of them have the same anomaly.


Has been very interesting to see everyones view, I can assure you all that I am no expert on meteorites or nor do I claim to be, I merely enjoy photography at an amateur level.

Thankyou all for your input, even the idiots.....

Aha! Fuses blown, that sounds like ball lightning! (scratch blown lamp/bug idea) All I can think of now.

Ja, the inputs have been varied and very interesting to say the least. BTW I think it is one of those one in a million shots and a keeper.

Where I live in South Africa we have a lot of electrical storms and very often have circuit breakers trip on our campus without any real direct strikes so I would not be surprised if it was somehow related to lightning or a similar effect.

[BILL HANCOCK]

OKAY, HERE'S MY TWO CENTS WORTH-I POSTULATE A MICROMETEORITE WITH
EXA CTLY THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF MASS HITTING THE ATMOSPHERE AT EXACTLY THE RIGHT ANGLE AND SPEED; IT VAPORIZES TO JUST ENOUGH NOTHING TO LEAVE A THIN VAPOR TRAIL JUST BEFORE IT IMPACTS WITH A FLASH. SOMEONE REALLY GOOD CRUNCHING NUMBERS COULD MODEL THIS FOR PROOF(?)

[Guest]

OKAY, HERE'S MY TWO CENTS WORTH-I POSTULATE A MICROMETEORITE WITH
EXA CTLY THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF MASS HITTING THE ATMOSPHERE AT EXACTLY THE RIGHT ANGLE AND SPEED; IT VAPORIZES TO JUST ENOUGH NOTHING TO LEAVE A THIN VAPOR TRAIL JUST BEFORE IT IMPACTS WITH A FLASH. SOMEONE REALLY GOOD CRUNCHING NUMBERS COULD MODEL THIS FOR PROOF(?)

You still get a huge chunk of cosmic rock, where is it? Micrometorites just do not have the mass to overcome the friction of the atmosphere. Anything moving at the speed postulated would have woken up the whole Darwin and NT imho and left a ruddy great hole in the earth.

[Chrissergei]

Hi people, dont panic its not something unexplainable, it happens quite often. All it was, was a hair or dust streak on the lens of the camera that took that photo. The wind probably blew it on and off, thats why there is only one photo with that 'streak'
It cant be anything else. Just doesnt make sense. I've heard contrails ? definitively not! for interest, i'll keep on reading this forum.

[Chrissergei]

this is getting interesting, i did not notice the strange sparks at the 'fence' near the water. yeah, some odd burst of lightning could've caused this. was there any rumbling thunder sound ?

[Rob Crouch]

Seems like this mystery is getting famous, last Google check there are around 203 mentions on other websites so far!

[Just Joe]

How about this one: The "flash" is reflected light off a small upheaval or disturbance of the water caused by the object/beam/whatever striking the water. This would mean the "streak" is the disturbance to the air particles in the object/beam path. The difference analysis photo shows a arched crest of smaller illumination to the right of the main flash ... maybe caused by varying wave motions/heights to the opposite side of the impact.

[BMcP]

That is the residue image of a tractor beam dish on Donald Trump's yacht
(hidden behind the dock) beaming back a load of hair gel from planet Greed.
That gives him power and frame over lowly earthlings!!
PS Don't tell him I told you.

[FinchWorld.hopto.org]

It ca't be a tractor beam, i see only boats, no farm yard vehicals.

In any case I made that smudge, its what you see when a seagul is hit buy a high intensity laser.

[Guest]

When lights burn out at startup, they often flash, briefly and brightly. I can't make out the design of the light, but, is it possible that the photographer captured a light bulb burning out -- and the line is the shadow of the light housing? Depending on the design of the housing, a burnout flash could illuminate everything around it, except for the column of air/mist shadowed by the housing.

smith @ canada.com

This sounds most plausible to me. It would explain the cloud of vapor that appears to be near the light. The direction the vapor emanates from the flash is consistent with being deflected by a housing in the direction of the streak. A close-up picture of the light and housing would be helpful in confirming this theory.

There is only one thing that bothers me about this theory. It seems to me that for the shadow of the housing to appear as a straight line the flash would have to extend beyond the housing just enough so that the angle of the light going past the housing is parallel on all sides. The odds of these conditions occurring and being caught on camera seem extremely high.