UPDATE: Contrail Science writes:
Note to the media – since this was almost certainly Flight AWE808 (US Airways) from Hawaii to Phoenix, why not have a camera crew somewhere in the vicinity (does not need to be exact, or a chopper), at around 5-5:30 today, and if the weather is right you’ll see the same trail again.
Here’s the flight path below for 11/8/10. If anybody gets any new photos today, leave a comment and I’ll get them posted here.
Original post starts below:
There’s quite a buzz in the blogosphere about this video shot by a KCBS News helicopter. Explanations range from “Moonbeam Gov. Jerry Brown is headed home to visit relatives” to “missile launch kept secret by the Pentagon”.
Whatever it is, I’ve seen nothing like it. The speed doesn’t match a missile, but the trajectory and cloud pattern certainly seems to. Perhaps our readers can help figure this out. One alert reader “slp” posted in comments a link to a likely Occams Razor style explanation.
watch the video:
For people outside the USA that may not be able to see the first video, try this one:
For reference, here’s a certified missile shot from the Air Force Space Command:
I’m wondering if this isn’t some stunt plane practicing over the ocean (where the pilot doesn’t have to worry about buildings, power lines, towers, guy wires, FAA airspace permissions, etc.) with a smoke generator turned on? Watch this video from about 15-20 seconds in. That looks like what the “missile” video is. Add some red sunset lighting and you’ve got instant “slow moving missile”.
UPDATE: Thanks to alert reader “slp” who wrote: “Likely a contrail:”
Indeed it looks very much like this jet contrail seen off San Clemente, from Contrail Science Overflow, excerpted below:
Jet contrails from some angles look like missile trails
An interesting contrail cropped up off the coast of San Clemente, Orange County, California on December 31st 2009. The curious shape led some people to think it’s a missile launch, which it does kind of look like (all taken from San Clemente)
“Missile-like” contrail. Note this is the Dec 31st contrail, not the Nov 8th CBS one. That’s at the bottom of the post.
…
This view is from Corona del Mar, about 20 miles Northeast of San Clemente:
Here’s a similar photo (of a different contrail, obviously) on the same day at the other side of the country:
Not a missile launch.
…
Here’s the idea with math:
The idea that it’s a missile launch comes from three misconceptions. Firstly that the trail is vertical – it’s not, it’s a horizontal trail, at around 32,000 feet (about six miles). It’s the same as this:
This contrail is no more vertical than the road is, and nor are the power lines at 45 degrees. Everything is horizontal – it’s the just the angle you are viewing it from. All of these show horizontal contrails.
Secondly there’s the misconception of direction, that it’s flying away from the viewer, when it’s actually flying towards the viewer. This is because the “base” of the contrail seems wider than the tip. Perspective tells the brain that this mean the base is closer. But actually you can see the base has been greatly spread by the wind. Since it’s still so far away the effects of perspective are greatly diminished, meaning the actual width of the contrail is what is creating the illusion. Imagine is a plane with a 100 mile long spreading contrail were coming towards you; what would it look like? It would look exactly like this.
Thirdly there’s the idea that it goes all the way down to the ground. Now that might be true if the Earth was flat, but the Earth is round, and things go beneath the horizon eventually, no matter how high they are. A plane 200 miles away but five miles up is always below the horizon. If the horizon is raised (as it is here, with Catalina Island), then the distance is less. Here’s some math:
This diagram is not to scale, but the math is the same regardless. The solid curved line is the surface of the earth. The dot at the top is San Clemente. The little triangle is Catalina. “d” is the distance to Catalina (d=35 miles). “c” the amount of Catalina that is visible above the horizon (c=0.05 miles, really a bit more, but let’s be conservative). “a” is the altitude of the plane, (a = 6 miles). “r” is the radius of the earth (r=3963 miles).
The green wavy line is the contrail. Notice it’s at a fixed height above the surface of the earth, and is going directly towards the OC.
The point labeled (0,0) is the center of the earth. (0,0) means X=0, Y=0, where X is horizontal and Y is vertical. What we want to know is how far away the plane is, the value x. We do this with cartesian geometry, noting that the lowest visible point of the trail is at the intersection of the dotted line, which is a circle of radius (r+a), hence the equation x^2 + y^2 = (r+a)^2 and the line labeled “sight line”, which is has the equation y=x*c/d. Combining these equations to solve for x yields a quadratic equation, which we can solve with Wolfram Alpha:
intersection of (y=r+x*c/d) and (x^2+y^2 = (r+a)^2)
and with the real numbers:
intersection of (y=r+x*c/d) and (x^2+y^2 = (r+a)^2) where a=6 and d=35 and c=0.05 and r=3963
Which gives x = 212, meaning that the bottom of the contrail is around 200 miles away. So if the front of the contrail (the actual aircraft) is somewhere above and behind catalina, then that means the contrail is over 100 miles long. At 500 mph, that means it could have formed in 12-15 minutes, which seems consistent with the descriptions in the discussion above. (feel free to play around with the numbers there to see the affect of various assumptions)
Full post here: Jet contrails from some angles look like missile trails
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Well, that description is a very creditable piece of work.
Well, I must wade in. The lack of speed suggests slow motion and/or direction of line of site. I am not impressed that it is a rocket.
So whre did it land?
… couple all this with, apparent lack of RADAR imagery from the air traffic control RADARs in the area, lack of reports from surface vessels (ships, pleasure boats, kayaks) out on the water reporting a ‘missile’.
The only report we have – the traffic copter video … for which the aircraft contrail explanation more than satisfies … see:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AWE808/history/20101108/1955Z/PHNL/KPHX
– for the likely flight (US Airways #808 > 08-Nov-2010 > PHNL-KPHX passing overhead just to the south of the Los Angeles area en route to Phoenix from Honolulu).
(Full Credit: others than myself.)
.
It is the victim of a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick.
Or the vessel that dropped this thing off!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/02/alien_pod_lake_ufo/
😉
I’m really more concerned with incoming. Can we move on?
A Notam was put out for that area for 20:00 yesterday.
NOTAM for LA. KZLA LOS ANGELES A2832/10 – THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS ARE REQUIRED DUE TO NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER WEAPONS DIVISION ACTIVATION OF W537. IN THE INTEREST OF SAFETY, ALL NON-PARTICIPATING PILOTS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID W537. IFR TRAFFIC UNDER ATC JURISDICTION SHOULD ANTICIPATE CLEARANCE AROUND W537 AND CAE 1176. CAE 1155 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1316 & CAE 1318 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1177 WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. W537 ACTIVE, CAE 1176 CLOSED. SURFACE – FL390, 09 NOV 20:00 2010 UNTIL 10 NOV 01:00 2010. CREATED: 08 NOV 20:52 2010
Was the notam for ASW ops?
I hope our response time isn’t that slow!
Missles do change course. And they don’t look like they’re going very fast once they pitch over.
It’s interesting that NORAD said the the US was not threatened by the missle, vs. we have no indication that a missle was launched. With all the sensors they have, you would think they would know immediately.
If it was indeed a missle, it’s hard for me to imagine that we (the US) would send one off in the general direction of where the President is staying.
But 35 miles off the coast would be one hell of shot across the bow if it were foreign.
I lived in that area for years.
Those planes practice there all the time.
That part of the Navy doesn’t deal with ASW exercises they deal in Weapons development:
Its a bird, its a plane, no its……….
Anthony,
Your point about light on a fuselage is reasonable, but the size of the contrail directly behind the light is far too wide.
The shape of a rockets plume is also a good indicator of the heat expelled. Planes accelerate air with the burning of fuel. They typically have narrow contrails and a gap between the engines and the trail. For the trail to be this wide directly behind the vehicle, you need a rapid expansion of a lot of hot gasses, planes just don’t do that. Even an F18 has a high bypass ratio, with most of the air passing unburned through the engine.
This was a rocket.
If its just a contrail then how is the spiraling of the plume explained? Rockets have fins and can produce a twisting plume. Contrails cannot be twisted (corkscrewed.)
Furthermore, if it was just a contrail of a airliner coming towards LA on the way to Phoenix then it would have eventually crossed the coast over the heads of the very people who were positioned at the perfect angle to produce an optical illusion of a missile launch. Obviously, this didn’t happen. So we can discount that theory.
From Unicus’ detailed explanation of the well understood contrail illusion it seems likely this kind of illusion must occur in the LA region with many thousands of jets coming and going daily all the time. Why has this one instance fooled everyone from NORAD on down?
Maybe because it’s not a contrail. I’m with Jeff Id on this one.
TFB:
“the full bull”
the art of riding…
for eight seconds at least,
a lie so large that it fills our imagination and takes us on the ride of our lives…
only to throw us in the dirt of realization and the pain of reality.
It was NOT a weather balloon
It was NOT a curious form of lightning
It was NOT a contrail of a fancy smoking plane
It was NOT methane gas burning off of the arctic
It may have been a missle fired by us
It may have been a missle fired by them
But it was a missle
do not fall for TFB
dr suzuki said it could be godzilla. yes it is godzilla!!!!!!
That NOTAM is for TODAY(Nov.9). It was created yesterday(Nov.8), a few hours after the contrail was videotaped. Don’t worry, you’re not the first to repost this without actually reading it first. I’ve seen this posted in numerous places.
It certainly looks like a missile launch – from some vantage points it seems as though the missile is visible. Large missiles do not accelerate like smaller missiles, it takes them time to build up speed and you can almost make out what appear to be course adjustments characteristic of missiles in the trail itself.
I’m no expert and Anthony does make valid points with good examples but I am leaning towards it being a missile based on the video evidence and lack of explanation from any official sources. If it was an aircraft doing something routine (given the current international attention) someone would have said something by now. If it was easily excused, the Pentagon would have some solid answers – not having them makes them look bad. Hopefully other footage from maybe a vessel at sea closer to the event will materialize at some point. I am surprised to only see one video of this event.
What has surprised me is the lack of mainstream coverage. Maybe a Chinese Boomer launched an ICBM to demonstrate its power and our vulnerability in the wake of Bernanke’s $600 billion dollar currency tax (which they will bear the brunt of along with the few US savers) and an escalation of international tensions. Then again, maybe it’s just a fluke – but flukes of this magnitude should not be allowed to go unexplained for hours, let alone days.
Hopefully it was a plane but if it was a missile I’m afraid we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the months and years to come. How long (hypothetically) would Los Angeles have had? 5 minutes? 10?
There is no mystery here. Obama is trying to sneak back in to US. It suppose to happen after dark, but they’ve forgot that on last weekend clock should be set back by one hour. 🙂
P.S. The funniest thing has happened when I’ve tried to run this post through spell check. The “ABC” does not recognise Obama and suggest “Osama” :-), 🙂
My take: not an aircraft, as none of the required lights are visible: the left wing navigation light would be red while the right wing light would be green, so that anyone can tell which direction the aircraft is heading in by sight at all times. Taillight would be white, and show above the other two. There would also be two ‘flashing’ red anti-collision beacon lights in operation, as well as the presence of small, flashing white high-intensity strobe lights at each wingtip (though possibly more, on the trailing edge of a jumbo jetliner).
None of these other lights were visible, though they should easily be on any commercial aircraft — and whatever this was, it was large (definitely not a crop duster or skywriter).
And correct, the apparent ‘slow motion’ of the lift would be due to a massive device overcoming both it’s own considerable rest energy (inertia) AND gravity… though a rocket or missile — many of which are navigable — would definitely tend to accelerate as it gained altitude, which this one also appears to do.
I say it’s a launch of some sort, and a big launch, not even necessarily OURS (which could explain the official silence!!) — so this is obviously classified, for whatever reason.
This entirely appears to be a submarine launched ballistic missile tilting towards a probable splash down in the South Pacific. It is clearly traveling faster than a jet fighter and you can see from the cloud cover at nearly 40,000 feet it punched right thru that ceiling level. Seeing the cloud cover as the X axis, the missile is clearly traveling in a just off Y axis as it powers over to a South Pacific splashdown.
Contrails, what BS! Might as well spew Swamp Gas or merely a Weather Balloon! Another clue this was not the contrail from any jet fighter nor commercial jet is the distance between the object and the contrail. On Jet’s the contrails are no less than the full aircraft formed behind it, with a missile it is LARGER and formed right at the nozzle spewing the noxious fuel mixture out into the atmosphere.
This is some type of large ballistic missile which was launched by a USSN ballistic submarine a mere 35 miles off California’s most populated county (LA County). Nice of the US Military Complex to fan the flames of FEAR and PARANOIA, how original!
[snip]
Robert of Ottawa says:
November 9, 2010 at 6:22 pm
So whre did it land?
http://www.california-map.org/california-la.gif
San Nicolas Island. Pacific Missile Range. Solid fuel propulsion. No mystery just secret.
It is an aircraft contrail. Missiles ascend rapidly and cross multiple layers where winds are in different directions – you’ll see multiple S’s in the plume. I’ve seen many when I lived in the area. Additionally, there’s only one report from one vantage point (the helicopter) as far as I can find. That means from other perspectives the contrail does not appear to be anything other than a contrail. The aircraft that made the contrail will be along the azimuth that the helicopter was filming, but it could be many miles in the distance. Seriously, fly long enough and you will see contrails that appear to be missile launches, and in a few minutes your eyes will snap to a new perspective and what you thought was a missile is actually a contrail. Wait for NORAD’s final report.
Could it be this simple – the Navy fired a missile for training but didn’t feel the need to let anyone know because…well, because the Navy simply isn’t in the habit of talking about their missile operations with the general public and they’re not about to now? It is heading for the Kwajalein Atoll, a standard test, perhaps a qualification test of either a new submarine system or updates to the Trident II. Perhaps some atmospheric conditions allowed us to see what normally happens when we’re blissfully going through our day? Occams Razor and all?
Watch Mystery Missile Launch full video at: http://mystery-missile-launch.notlong.com
Airliner contrail.
KCBS News helicopter must have noticed it and jumped to a headline-grabbing conclusion.
David Y (November 9, 2010 at 4:07 pm ) sums it up nicely.