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
I think it was Oceanic flight 815. In the sideways timeline of course. 🙂
Dave Springer says:
“Poor conclusion. Parsimony clearly and largely favors a rocket explanation. A contrail explanation needs to invoke rare weather to explain why contrails like it aren’t regularly seen by the massive number of aircraft transiting that area and it also requires a number of optical illusions being invoked to explain the appearance of it. On the other hand a rocket requires no special circumstances to explain the observation and rockets are known to launch in the vicinity on rare occassions which explains why it isn’t an everyday observation.”
Your conclusion requires there to be an unexplained launch of a large rocket. This would be a very unusual circumstance.
Airplane and optics. Simple.
Recently we had the same sort of “scare” off the east coast of Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/05/28/ufo-newfoundland-dnd.html
jvp
[snip -chemtrails]
Actually, they are seen. I’ve seen contrails that came out off the pacific ocean that looked like this before, usually the plane is well past me by the time I see them.
As I posted before, this is generally what the sky looks like after a launch from vandenberg:
http://www.astrocalculator.com/Images/MinotaurRocketLaunchPlume_b.JPG
This was the image from this supposed “missile”
http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2010/11/10/alg_mysterious_missile_launch2.jpg
See the differences? One of them has been blown around like crazy in different directions along it’s length to end up looking like a big squiggly in the sky. The other is uniformly distorted along it’s length by (presumably) residing in a layer of air all moving in the same direction.
Also, here is what the shuttle launches at sunset look like:
http://centripetalnotion.com/images/shuttleshadow.jpg
Please notice how the BOTTOM of the rocket plume is DARKER than the top on the shuttle image. This is completely different from this supposed mystery missile.
Olaf Koenders, Wizard of Oz? says: November 9, 2010 at 9:09 pm
>>“I would suggest something like Virgin Atlantic-Galactic rocket”
Puh-lease! That launches from some 40,000 ft from it’s mother plane, not the ground! It’s definitely just an aircraft contrail – nothing special, unless you’re one of those weirdo “chemtrail” fanciers.
Since we appear to be looking down on the trail, it must start lower that the altitude of the observer (lower than a couple of thousand feet). Thus the trail is low level and cannot be a contrail. Also, the trail kinks as it passes through the cloud layer, again suggesting that the vehicle is rising through a layer of windshear – typical of rocket plumes, but not contrails.
Also, this is a busy piece of airspace. If the temp and dewpoint were contrailable, we would see dozens of contrails in the sky. But we don’t, even though the evidence from this trail is that the ‘contrails’ should be long lasting. Thus either only one aircraft was working LAX at this time, which is virtually impossible, or it is not a contrail.
As to Virgin Galactic – I know how they launch, but there are many private rocketeers attempting to do the same thing, and even the Virgin rocket motor is still undergoing testing. It is not beyond the realms of possibilities that this is a privateer; but if it was, then some kind of permission should have been agreed for such a launch.
.
[snip – chemtrails]
Note to commenters, we don’t discuss “chemtrails” on this forum. Any further posts on chemtrails will be deleted wholesale. – Anthony
So people think it is plausible that the Chinese launched a missile some 200 odd miles off of the US coast under the guise of scaring the US into taking specific actions or non-actions relative to monetary policy? Am I hearing that right?
If you are the Chinese, why not announce such a display to the widest possible audience in America? Wouldn’t it make the most sense to scare the beejeezus out of the most people possible and announce that they’d better put pressure on the politicians to do things like you, the Chinese, want, or else?
Anthony, I didn’t think my post was discussing “chemtrails”. Perhaps I’m not clear on how that’s defined.
There is a misconception with the visual perspective in the new explanations added to this thread. Those contrails standing upright, as if being launched vertically, occur when the aircraft is coming towards you. The distant plume looks like it is on the horizon, and thus the entire trail looks vertical. A common illusion.
However, this cannot happen when the aircraft comes over your head and goes away from you. And this vehicle is going away. There is no way you can ‘look down’ towards the horizon on a contrail that has passed over your head by 35,000 ft. The visual perspective would be more like a ‘missile’ crashing towards the ground.
The only way you could claim the former illusion, is if you could claim that this vehicle was coming towards you. You might try to argue this, but since the lower trail is below the upper level cloud, this is highly unlikely. The number of times that you get this kind of dense, organised stratoform cloud above a cruising aircraft is very rare indeed. So the overwhelming image, here, is of a vehicle heading away from the viewer.
>>>It is a high flying jet. The darker line beside the white trail
>>proves it. It is a shadow of the contrail being projected against
>>a much lower level overcast of haze. Had me going though, for a while.
The darker line is simply the portion of the trail that is not lit by the setting sun. Some of the trail is lit, the rest is in shadow. Both contrails and rocket trails will display the same imagery.
.
From the following website:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328155/Mystery-missile-fired-California-May-optical-illusion-caused-aircraft.html
Excerpt:
Perhaps no one had a better view of the alleged rocket than KCBS-TV Channel 2 cameraman Gil Leyvas. He was aboard the station’s helicopter shooting footage of sunset over the ocean at 5.15pm when he noticed a spiral-shaped vapor trail and zoomed in to get a better look.
The on-board camera showed a plume twisting up from the horizon and narrowing as it climbed into the sky northwest of Santa Catalina Island, he said.
‘Whatever it was, it was spinning up into the sky kind of like a spiral,’ he said. ‘It was quite a sight to see. It was spectacular.’
And he wasn’t the only one to see it. When Kelly Spear looked out the back window of her San Pedro home to see a rising orange line on the horizon, she thought it might be a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
She said: ‘I told myself it was just a plane, but I really had no idea. We have a pretty expansive view, and I’ve never seen anything like that before.’
Note the last witness: She’s obviously seen jet contrails, but had never seen anything like that before.
Note the description by camera operator in the news helo: Spiraling trail. If that were a commercial jetliner, then the passengers and crew were getting quite a ride!
NBC news just reported that “the Pentagon is satisfied that this was a contrail from an airplane.” I guess the “Area 51” types can really get going now. Ha.
Isn’t natural variability a wonderful thing?
I gotta share these comments from Contrail Science Overflow:
concerned for passengers / Nov 9 2010 9:21 pm
concerned for passengers / Nov 9 2010 10:16 pm
Au contraire:
Someone got video … same time next day:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/10/blogger-solved-california-missile-mystery/
Same contrail.
that is ironman on the works.warmachine perhaps
“in” rather
Ouch. You know, once you see it as a contrail, the rocket illusion disappears. A bit like the famous duck/rabbit illusion…
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duck-Rabbit_illusion.jpg
Should have known an old weatherman like Anthony would have dealt with thousand of frantic reports of anomalous sightings in the sky and trusted his judgement on this one.
http://blog.creativethink.com/2010/05/niftiest-logo-ive-seen-in-a-while.html#comments
That’s the tri-ship trip to the heaven, trying for a new planet, take two.
Some of you guys want remember this, so let me give you a quick reminder of the facts, right.
First there was the whole climate gate debacle, then came the himalaya gate, then it was the HookeyMann gate (Mann schtick bear tried to fix back the MWP just enough so that it wouldn’t show as having been completely disappeared, this was a added bonus gate to already numerous hockeystick gates, what with the dude can’t do statistics), then there was the CRU gate, Amazon gate, Kiwi gate, the numerous gore gates, and, well you get the point or just use google or bing or what not. But wait there’s more, remember the blue hippie gate? No? Yes? Of course that was Hippie Cameron running for his life from his own debate, even before the opposition arrived.
Think about this for a minute. Jones, Gore, Cameron, Schmidt, Hansen, Pachauri, et cetera et al, where did ’em all go?
So do you see now, them contrails are from Panzer Pant Romm’s second try to try and catch up with his heroes, however, apparently he tried to also squeeze both Mann and fired Mrs EPA Hippie into his chemical mechanical machination, with himself this time (hence the second try) into his proudly home built ACME cylindrical rocket propelled tube (comes with real paddles–for true value added services–o_O)
Apparently, per ACME usual, the project didn’t fare to well.
I was watching CNN early this morning (7am-ish Pacific) and they had two experts on this subject. Had I been on my game I would have jotted down their names because (while three other subsequent video’s claiming contrails probable) the video clip is not posted on the CNN website. The significance of the interview was that one of the experts had examined the entire KCBS helicopter footage which he claimed to be in the vicinity of 10 minutes long – probably filmed long after the rocket disappeared from sight. He stated that in the footage there was a ‘clear’ and irrefutable separation of the stage one rocket.
While people are quick to dismiss this as an illusion-induced regular phenomenon, we of all people should not shrug something so important off with flimsy evidence based on our perceptions and/or fears. To be honest I was floored when I saw the interview this morning and if anyone can find it (it had two panelist experts) one of them was John Pike, the other I can’t recall. It wasn’t this one: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/11/09/wian.missile.mystery.cnn?iref=allsearch but I did notice Pike in this one.
It seems to me that this event is Classified and the flimsy argument of an optical illusion causing people to believe a still unidentified aircraft caused what looked like an ICBM Submarine based missile launch is ridiculous. I imagine the Pentagon may have a more official denial (rather than big-maybe’s about contrails) if no other footage of the event turns up. However, where is the so-called long-version of this event which shows the missile/rocket changing stages? Are we really going to shrug this off and sweep it under the rug? Why?
It was a rocket people. Where it came from should be the mystery to solve, not whether or not it was an airplane for goodness sakes. If the ‘contrail’ people are wrong the next event could be ten ‘armed’ missiles headed for our shores and not away from them. Seriously, if we don’t demand answers and lean on our government to protect our country, who will? We need to stop chasing Al Quaida in caves half-way around the world and secure our own countries defenses.
I may be wrong but I need more than references to optical illusions making it look like it’s a missile heading West when it is actually an airplane headed east – and that is not a rocket-fireball-plume but rather the sun reflecting off the plane – blah blah. I mean this with all due respect… I could be wrong but your arguments so far do not overcome even the short-version video clips let alone what appears to be a longer version showing the stage separation. Good supportive evidence but certainly not a slam dunk – especially given the wishy-washy official responses to date.
Hopefully more amateur video footage comes out related to this – or we get access to the long version of the KCBS footage.
REPLY: Yeah, sure, whatever.
I’m convinced it was an airliner contrail now. That “exhaust flame” had me wondering though. A funny way of thinking of this would be that it is a missile (contrail) launched to shoot down the UFO (party balloons) over NYC.
mysearchfortruth.
Go back to the 911 truther’s site. You have no powers here. This is place where rational people contemplate reality, free of sensationalistic nonsense.
“”””” Roger Knights says:
November 10, 2010 at 1:54 pm
But people who have worked at Vandenberg and in the Rocket business, say they launch stuff from that offshore launch site all the time; and they aren’t about to tell us ahead of time.
Au contraire: “””
For clarification:-
I stated what some people who have worked at Vandenberg said; that doesn’t mean this rocket was fired from Vandenberg.
Someone up the page cited the actual wording of an official notification relating to that missile range. They essentially tell us that they may launch a vehicle at any time any day; apparently except for the two minute surrounding midnight on any day. 0001Z to 2359Z, so between 2359Z, and 0001Z next day they don’t do any firings.
And Vandenberg says it wasn’t from their place; and the cameraman identified the location as north of Catalina Island, and 30 miles offshore.
So no they don’t tell us when they will fire one; they do tell us when they WON’T fire one (2359Z to 0001Z).
So yes they do say they will launch rockets; they just don’t say when. There is no reason to tell the general public when they are doing a launch although maybe they do inform some government agencies.
That whole area is a designated firing range so it is always off limits to either private or commerical planes (I presume).
As for the 808 flight blogger. Did he say that HE took HIS video fromt he same LOCATION and ALTITUDE as the helicopter cameraman. If not his “contrail” is meaningless. The news station VIDEO was a movie of the event; not a couple of stills; the blogegr just shows a pair of still photos that could have been taken anywhere; well anywhere one could see a track; smoke or moisture.