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1:30 pm
February 23, 2009
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T.A.Sharps
| | Iowa | |
| Investigator | posts 60 |
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Well the reason I asked what they could be if they were zigzagging, and stopping, and then zooming off like something was flying around is because this is what Gorge Noory was talking about what he saw with the night vision goggles.
So what he saw was in real time, and did not have flight characteristics of anything we know of, and could only been seen by its IR light.
What do you look for to try to see these satellites?
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" Your reality Sir is lies and balderdash and I am delighted to say I have no grasp of it whatsoever!"
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5:38 pm
February 23, 2009
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Learjet
| | Australia | |
| Lead Investigator | posts 1122 |
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I usually just look for anything moving, but the only zigzag ones I've seen are weather balloons. A small light is placed on them to help aim the radar dish for wind finding. They can zigzag quite a bit at times. These are launched once every six hours around the clock.
If he's seeing a whole stack of them it would be something else.
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6:50 pm
February 23, 2009
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Wallydraigle
| | Ohio | |
| Investigator | posts 114 |
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Or it could be nothing. We don't really have anything to go by but his word, and he is trying to sell us something, afterall.
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12:56 am
February 24, 2009
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Revenant
| | Hopelessly Locked In A "Fear Cage" | |
| Lead Investigator | posts 1393 |
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"Skepticism is not a position, it's a process." -Dr Michael Shermer
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12:58 am
February 24, 2009
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Stephen
| | San Jose, CA | |
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Without a solid background reference, it's easy to think that stationary points (like stars) are in fact moving in a zig-zag fashion. This has happened to me in the past– I've thought, "when is that plane going to land?", then realized that I was staring at a star. This is called the autokinetic effect. Apparently, it happens because our eyes are constantly making small motions. Our brain normally compensates for the motions, so the outside world looks stable. If there's no background for comparison, or if you've got a restricted field of view (like through night-vision goggles), your brain can lose track of where your eyes are pointing, and mistake a stationary point for a moving one.
Apparently, it's a distinguishing feature of UFOs that they move in a falling-leaf pattern. You do the math.
Ed Grimsley, the man who took Noory up on the hotel roof and lent him night vision goggles, has his videos here. I'm not familiar enough with night vision goggles, but I'm not terribly impressed. He moves the camera around in a jittery way, and is quite excited about the disk-like shapes he's seeing. (I'd like to see comparison images of a known satellite. Do night-vision goggles turn point sources into disks?) I'm going to guess that the goggles aren't just IR, but also amplify ordinary light. Don't know, and I'd love to hear from an expert in night vision goggles.
Most irritatingly, these sightings were within twenty miles of me, made from a hotel I know inside and out! That'll teach me to miss a conference.
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Stephen the Friendly Skeptic
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12:17 pm
February 24, 2009
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Learjet
| | Australia | |
| Lead Investigator | posts 1122 |
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I have night vision equipment. It's a little Russian 18mm starlight monocular. Similar to what Ed Grimsley would be using.
I'm sorry, but I think I have ruptured someting from laughing too hard at Ed Grimsley's video. 
The entire video is badly out of focus, bloating star sizes with lashings of off axis coma from cheap lenses thrown in for good measure. All he has in the video are a couple of ordinary satellites in a field of stars.
This is the sort of video I would expect from someone's first time out, not knowing anything about NV equipment – after smoking some weed and unable to focus the camera on the NV tube properly. Which pretty much sounds like what is happening on the audio track. 
NV tubes bloat bright pin point images even when they are in focus. And if you buy your lenses from China, expect seagull like distortion at the edge of the field.
How would I know? I build my own telescopes which includes grinding and testing my own mirrors.
Stephen you didn't miss anything, other than passive smoking of weed.
The msnbc article was more interesting. Lightning Sprites are one of my favourite things to photograph. Did I mention I have too many hobbies? Generally though, the light they emit is deep red and our eyes are very insensitive to that part of the spectrum. An IR camera is really needed to show them up well. They are the things that create those "tweek" noises on VLF natural radio.
A sprite captured from my back yard. Mintron video frame with 8mm f1.3 lens.
 
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12:18 pm
February 24, 2009
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T.A.Sharps
| | Iowa | |
| Investigator | posts 60 |
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"…if we see enough of them we might see a battle…" "… I think we just scared 'em"
- A great quote from the raw footage vid.
I just watched that raw footage, apparently there is a gigantic intergalacticplanetary fleet of starships that fill the sky that we can't see…
Yeah, every point of light in that footage seems to be oval shaped. I did see some moving across the picture, but there is no way to tell at what range it is or what it is, accept it is a light moving that is the same as everyother light. Maybe it looks more impressive in person.
I didn't see what was described by George Noory, I do not think he is trying to sell the show by syaing he saw these things. He has always said he has never seen a UFO, until that night, and what he saw technically would be a UFO. Also that radio show hardly needs to be sold with lies and hoaxes, if you are up late enough to listen to it, there isn't much else to listen too, or even on TV to watch, and it is on every night. I think it has been well established by now. I never even heard a commercial for I just happened on it one night.
With Ghost Hunters they advertise all the time, and obviously have more to risk if their ratings slip, hence the obvious hoaxes.
So what would skeptic say it was if you witnessed something flying like those sattalites, but fast, moving from one side of the sky to the other. Stopping in one place, and changing direction and moving fast to another part of the sky? Going very fast, not slow.
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" Your reality Sir is lies and balderdash and I am delighted to say I have no grasp of it whatsoever!"
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12:19 pm
February 24, 2009
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Learjet
| | Australia | |
| Lead Investigator | posts 1122 |
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Why do images fail to post sometimes? Trying again. I give up. Try direct.
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12:32 pm
February 24, 2009
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Learjet
| | Australia | |
| Lead Investigator | posts 1122 |
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T.A.Sharps said:
So what would skeptic say it was if you witnessed something flying like those sattalites, but fast, moving from one side of the sky to the other. Stopping in one place, and changing direction and moving fast to another part of the sky? Going very fast, not slow.
I'll believe it when I see it.
You just can't go by what other people say they saw, or have taken on their blurry video.
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9:06 pm
February 24, 2009
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Stephen
| | San Jose, CA | |
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Learjet: Great photo! I hope that we can find ways of justifying all your hobbies here. :)
T.A. Sharps: Yeah, I liked that quote too.
Re an irregularly-moving light: All I can say is what this skeptic would say: show me the evidence.
First, I'd need some evidence that the apparent motion wasn't caused by a jittery camera or the autokinetic effect. A locked-down camera on a tripod would be a decent start, or some kind of motion control rig that could tell me exactly how the camera had moved.
Next, I'd need to know that this object was actually far away and fast-moving. Moths and birds can move in a zigzag fashion and can look very un-moth- and un-birdlike given the right lighting. If someone were to tell me, "No, it was far away– it definitely wasn't a moth or bird or bat," I'd have to ask exactly how they knew. Did it pass behind some extremely distant object?
If we had some kind of hard evidence, like video footage, and some way of getting the motion data, we might be able to figure out how fast this object was actually moving.
That might rule a few things out, but no motion pattern could prove that it was actually an alien spaceship (unless its trail happened to spell out "HI I'M AN ALIEN SPACESHIP AND HERE'S A MUCH SHORTER PROOF OF FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM").
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Stephen the Friendly Skeptic
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1:46 pm
February 25, 2009
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T.A.Sharps
| | Iowa | |
| Investigator | posts 60 |
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Yeah I thought that it was funny that in one sentence they were having epic intergalactic battles, and in the next these galactic battle ships were scared off by some stoners on a rooftop with Mr. Wizzard.
I trust what George Noory says he saw. However after I saw that video this guy Ed seems like a moron. A "true believer", with his hardcore evidence, that looks like a video of out of focus Christmas tree lights. Actually, I bet you can film the same thing with some glitter in a fish tank.
I like the reference Ed makes to the one kid who is smoking something, but he can't tell us what it is.
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" Your reality Sir is lies and balderdash and I am delighted to say I have no grasp of it whatsoever!"
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2:26 pm
February 25, 2009
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Revenant
| | Hopelessly Locked In A "Fear Cage" | |
| Lead Investigator | posts 1393 |
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Learjet said:
The msnbc article was more interesting. Lightning Sprites are one of my favourite things to photograph. Did I mention I have too many hobbies? Generally though, the light they emit is deep red and our eyes are very insensitive to that part of the spectrum. An IR camera is really needed to show them up well. They are the things that create those "tweek" noises on VLF natural radio.
A sprite captured from my back yard. Mintron video frame with 8mm f1.3 lens.
I thought you would like that article. I have to admit, I laughed when I saw it. I thought of your other post on natural earth noises and the links to the articles about them. I thought "Yeah, this is probably exactly what he's after." 
And that picture you posted is outstanding. Man, I have to get some cooler hobbies… 
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"Skepticism is not a position, it's a process." -Dr Michael Shermer
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6:37 am
February 28, 2009
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CrowTRobot
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| Investigator | posts 228 |
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Stephen said:
Most irritatingly, these sightings were within twenty miles of me, made from a hotel I know inside and out! That'll teach me to miss a conference.
So. It's not all about hunting ghosts…
The video….Man. That's bad. That's just bad. Ed makes GH/GHI look like a Jacques Cousteau documentary.
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