Strange streak discussion: 2004 Dec 7 APOD

[Guest]

Important features to be addressed:
1. the flash of light consists of a brighter portion down, rectangular, about 1/8" x 1/16", with major axis almost verticle, and having an arc about 1/8" around the top half.

The arc mentioned could account for blurring due to a ~1ms flash.

2. down right of the flash is a shape of white light that is too complicated and too geometrical; therefore it appears artificial as in manmade. Kind of like the following, only turned almost perpendicular to the streak (odd that it isn't perpendicular and it doesn't line up.)
(___ ___)
......|_|
(periods added to move the bottom piece into postion.)

The white thingy can be explained along the lines of the bat wings in a previous picture:

More difficulties:
The dark streak is about 3/16" wide, and it's center does not line up with the center of the flash.

This can be explained by looking at the picture of the flying bug on page 73 here:
a bug will rarely fly in the direction its body is oriented due to air currents.
Furthermore, an air current could account for the straightness of the path.

The center of the flash does not line up with the supposed light pole which is nearby.

The fact that the flash approximates the postition of the light pole is mere coincidence.
The fact that the light pole in question was found to be damaged is questionable and needs evidence.
Who investigated the light pole?
How can we know that the pole he investigated was the one in question?
Were other light poles also damaged?
Why are no other light poles lit in any of the other pictures?
Why would the lights come on at the time of the pictures?
Without more information regarding the light pole, and with the fact that the bright spot does not correlate closely enough to the light pole, the light pole cannot be taken as the proven source of the light.

The center line of the streak also does not line up with the geometically-shaped white light thingy.

This is explained because the bug is not going to be facing in the direction it is moving, since it is being carried by an air current.

[Guest]

Still no info on the flash? If it was ~1ms indeed the bug theory can be ruled out due to absence of the bright spot blurring.

Unfortunately I can't find much information. Without information, the best guess is a maximum of 1/1000 second (which would work out to a blur of about 24 pixels or so). The specs say the flash range is 0.7m to 5m. If 1/1000 second is the longest possible duration, this would make the shortest possible duration 1/25,000 second (which would work out to a blur of 1 pixel).

In any case, unless the data is somehow imbedded in the jpeg, I don't think we have any way of knowing what duration the flash was.

My guess is that the flash was pretty short, or else we'd see some evidence of the flash on the vegetation in the foreground.

======
I think an expert in this field should be involved (from Canon?).

[Guest]

Why is the image of the bug white?

Please see my bat picture on page 69.

Were the bats traveling left to right or right to left?

[Guest]

Why is the image of the bug white?

Please see my bat picture on page 69.

Were the bats traveling left to right or right to left?

Direction would be immaterial.

[Guest]

Please see my bat picture on page 69.

Were the bats traveling left to right or right to left?

Direction would be immaterial.

No it would not. If they are flying left to right the bat is white and the trail is black. If they are going in the other direction the bat is black and the trail is white (Assuming the flash was at the end of the picture)

[Luis]

Sorry forgot to add my name in the previous post. It is mine

Were the bats traveling left to right or right to left?

Direction would be immaterial.

No it would not. If they are flying left to right the bat is white and the trail is black. If they are going in the other direction the bat is black and the trail is white (Assuming the flash was at the end of the picture)

[Andrei Ol'khovatov]

Dear All,

When I first visit this www-site, I posted that the picture resembles a little known and poorly understood natural phenomenon which is temporarily called "geophysical meteor". But now, especially after it was discovered that the flash didn't coincide with the lamp pole, I can say that this strongly decreases chances of a geophysical meteor.

Currently I incline to think that the idea that it was an insect/bug pictured near the camera is the most probable. But it needs some details to check still.
Hoping that in a few days will know what it was.

Best wishes to all participants,
Sincerely,
Andrei Ol'khovatov
Russia, Moscow

[Guest]

Looking at the photo it looks like a sodium lamp burned out and exploded on an overcast evening. Lots of humidity in the air and the clouns overhaed are carrying a charge. The sodium atoms in the bulb are all in a plasma state when the glass burst. The purpleish color of the trail and the straight line of it suggests to me that it might be a cloud chamber effect.

D. Dimas

[anon]

Possibly ball lightning, if you believe in such things.

[hazeii3]

...because you mention wing beats,are you suggesting summing the pixels perpendicular to the trail? It's certainly a nice idea....

<snip>

Just out of curiousity, I'll try an FFT on those pics tomorrow and see what appears; I'd certainly expect a strong signal from them.

Yes, I meant perpendicular. Geez, I screw up the most important word in the posting.

And I agree that the result might look sort of like the "rods" people capture with video cameras.

I did the necessary processing, first off with a 'rods' photo taken from this web page. Here's the extracted image, rotated so the trail is horizontal.



Performing separate FFT's on each strip of pixels and displaying them in pseudo-3d gave the following result, in which the wing beat frequency stands out very clearly.



Naturally enough, summing the FFTs that went to make up this image gives a very clear signal; having scaled the spike height to stay on-screen, the noise is completely suppressed.



I've previously posted the 3d FFT of the image trail from the APOD image (it can also been seen here), now here's the sum of the FFTs from that image:-

.

There certainly doesn't appear to be any sign of a periodic signal - which doesn't mean it's not there, of course, it may just be buried too deep in the noise to be detectable.

I'll add these results to my reference page anyway, maybe someone will come up with another suggestion.

(Incidentally, if fpj sees this, there are now images with an alternate rotation on that page; they do indeed make it clearer that the trail is not straight)

[Jon]

I'm thinking this location is exactly opposite on the Earth of where Roswell, NM is. It took all these years for the object that "crashed" at Roswell to finally go through the Earth and exit the other side, thus completing its study of our planet. The flash is the point where the Roswell craft exploded out of the surface of the Earth, leaving a smoke trail as it flew into space on its journey back to Mars to report that there is no intelligent life on this planet. We should expect an invasion shortly. I just hope Earth's bacteria will again defeat the Martians as they did the first time they visited during War of the Worlds.

[Jon]

If anyone agrees with my assessment, I'd be interested in hearing from you. jon6293@yahoo.com.

[rbolan]

I am late to this discussion. It is Saturday and this is my first chance to review the APOD site.

I agree with the idea of a shadow for streak itself. I live in Colorado and I have often seen shadows like this when the sun is very low in sky at sunrise or sunset. It could be the shadow of a small cloud or even a plane that happened to pass behind the photographer. Those kind of shadows always appear to diverge from the sun and converge on the opposite side of the sky, but of course they are perfectly straight parallel lines in reality because the light source is 93 million miles away.

However, that does not explain the flash of light or the wisp of smoke. Someone suggested the wisp of smoke might be something on the lens, but if that were true, it should also be in the before and after photos.

I have a more basic question. Why did you take 38 shots at 15 second intervals here? Were you studying the cloud formation? That seems to be the only thing of interest here. It also seems to me that your pictures may be labeled out of order, becasuse the cloud formation seems to shrink if viewed as before, flash, after, but grow in a normal way if the sequence is reversed.

And now, to let my imagination run wild and come up with a bizarre theory to explain it all (this is the internet after all!) how about this:
Someone fired a gun (wisp of smoke) and shot out the light (flash) and a bullet steaked past your head as you took the photo and was blurred by the exposure time of 1/20 sec.

--rbolan

[quote="RJN"]What is the strange streak and flash on the 2004 Dec 7 APOD found here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041207.html ?

In an email from the photographer who took the picture, Wayne Pryde, Wayne said:

[quote]I had taken 38 shots at 15 second intervals at a shutter speed of 1/20 and aperture of 5.6. I can confirm that there were definitely no fireworks happing on that evening.[/quote]

As stated in the APOD, I am not sure what caused the streak and flash. My hope is that this discussion will zoom in on the correct answer or narrow the realistic possibilities.

- RJN[/quote]

[Fulton]

It has to be a shadow. It's too straight to have been caused by lightning. The way the clouds in the upper right corner reflect sunlight, the sun was in the right position to cast such a shadow. I see no evidence in the photo that the shadow actually contacts the lamp. In fact, it seems to stop at the land on the horizon and actually end at some point over the horizon. It appears that the bright light that coincides with the apparent aiming point of the shadow is either a reflection from the same sunlight that cast the shadow behind the object or a flash from some fireworks. There also appears to be some smoke below and around the light--and the "light pole may be just a column of smoke.

[victorengel]

Why is the image of the bug white?

Please see my bat picture on page 69.

Were the bats traveling left to right or right to left?

The bats fly under the bridge from right to left and then emerge and fly downstream in front of the sky from left to right.

[victorengel]

Were the bats traveling left to right or right to left?

Direction would be immaterial.

No it would not. If they are flying left to right the bat is white and the trail is black. If they are going in the other direction the bat is black and the trail is white (Assuming the flash was at the end of the picture)

Like I said in my original post, the flash was at the beginning of the exposure (1st curtain sync), so it looks like the bats are chasing their shadows.

[victorengel]

maybe someone will come up with another suggestion.

I do have another suggestion. Do the same thing (FFT sum) for a strip near but not intersecting the putative wing path. Use this as a baseline sum and subtract it from the other sum. This would subtract any pattern noise and possibly reveal an underlying pattern.

[Guest]

I have my guesses - they have all been made anyway. It's a light bulb blowing and sending a shadow which a digital camera has enhanced "all by itself" - i.e onboard software designed to enhance details. Use film to see reality. It certainly isn't a meteor (it would have been seen and reported), or an alien craft or anything other-wordly - to put it politely
But the most important aspect for me is that an unexplained phenomenon is considered thanks to APOD and The Asterisk* by a huge diversity of (mostly) intelligent people. I follow this discussion with intense interest.
G Houston

[Guest]

It has to be a shadow. It's too straight to have been caused by lightning. The way the clouds in the upper right corner reflect sunlight, the sun was in the right position to cast such a shadow. I see no evidence in the photo that the shadow actually contacts the lamp. In fact, it seems to stop at the land on the horizon and actually end at some point over the horizon. It appears that the bright light that coincides with the apparent aiming point of the shadow is either a reflection from the same sunlight that cast the shadow behind the object or a flash from some fireworks. There also appears to be some smoke below and around the light--and the "light pole may be just a column of smoke.

Have you considered the insect possibilty?

skyglow1

[Dave]

Am I the only one that cannot see a streak in the picture, though I can see what I think must be the flash? The suppossedly high resolution image brought up by clicking on the APOD image is awful quaility and still has no sign of the streak! I am beginning to suspect that the APOD image may vary depending on the viewer's ISP (mine is AOL). Does anybody know of a link to an image that does show the streak? Thanks.

[victorengel]

Am I the only one that cannot see a streak in the picture, though I can see what I think must be the flash? The suppossedly high resolution image brought up by clicking on the APOD image is awful quaility and still has no sign of the streak! I am beginning to suspect that the APOD image may vary depending on the viewer's ISP (mine is AOL). Does anybody know of a link to an image that does show the streak? Thanks.

My favorite is this one I did myself. To create the image, I used Neatimage to eliminate background noise from the before and after pictures. Then I averaged them to create a baseline. Then I reduced contrast of the average image and the streak image and created a difference image. I enhanced the streak using curves and a couple of other steps. Then I combined the resulting difference image with the original, to bring back some of the detail from the original scene.

http://the-light.com/Photography/strangebug.jpg

[Cloudbait]

Am I the only one that cannot see a streak in the picture, though I can see what I think must be the flash? The suppossedly high resolution image brought up by clicking on the APOD image is awful quaility and still has no sign of the streak! I am beginning to suspect that the APOD image may vary depending on the viewer's ISP (mine is AOL). Does anybody know of a link to an image that does show the streak? Thanks.

One of the "joys" of AOL is that by default they mangle images at their end to further compress them. This "feature" can be turned off- make sure you do so. The AOL overcompression could easily explain why you don't see this subtle but still fairly obvious feature in the image.

[Ed in Oregon]

My favorite is this one I did myself. To create the image, I used Neatimage to eliminate background noise from the before and after pictures. Then I averaged them to create a baseline. Then I reduced contrast of the average image and the streak image and created a difference image. I enhanced the streak using curves and a couple of other steps. Then I combined the resulting difference image with the original, to bring back some of the detail from the original scene.

http://the-light.com/Photography/strangebug.jpg

Victor,
Look at your beautiful image, just off the end of the pier, next to the boat in the distance, at the very edge of the image. Is that another bug? It is heading into the picture, so there isn't a streak visible.

I think we're up to three visible bugs now. (The other is directly above the first one, against the clouds, in the far distance and very faint. It isn't visible in this image, but it can be seen in some of the extreme difference images.)

[Ed in Oregon]

Victor,
Ignore that, it's the boat moving.

[victorengel]

Look at your beautiful image, just off the end of the pier, next to the boat in the distance, at the very edge of the image. Is that another bug? It is heading into the picture, so there isn't a streak visible.

I think we're up to three visible bugs now. (The other is directly above the first one, against the clouds, in the far distance and very faint. It isn't visible in this image, but it can be seen in some of the extreme difference images.)

First, thanks for the compliment.

I think what you're seeing here is the boat. When a difference image is calculated, if something moves between the two frames, then it appears to be emphasized in the original location and negative in the new location, or vice versas, depending on which way the difference was taken.

In this case, the before and after pictures were combined, and the sum subtracted from the middle picture. The boat moved, so what you see is a black boat and a white boat (one positive, one negative). The spot above the indect, if it's what I think you're talking about, is just a stuck pixel. It has the same value on all frames. Most digital cameras have stuck pixels somewhere. Usually, they map them out if they know about them (assuming the camera has the mapping feature).