(meteorobs) Incidently, FYI about Sandia movie imaging...

[Chris Peterson]

Ignore the Sandia data. The best image of the event is from Tom's system, 
which is just a direct video capture, 30fps. There is no uncertainty about 
the timing.

If you make a light curve from his data, and then from the partial captures 
on the other two cameras, you can line up the different segments using 
fragmentation events for synchronization. This allows the height and range 
to be estimated. This was certainly an upper atmosphere, meteor-like event. 
Whether the ablating body was natural or artificial is uncertain. I haven't 
worked out a good value for velocity, as I'm missing some important altitude 
calibration data from all the cameras.

In any case, though, this was an ablating body, not an aircraft.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry" <ycsentinel at att.net>
To: <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 3:45 AM
Subject: (meteorobs) Incidently, FYI about Sandia movie imaging...


> Early on, Sandia Labs had the practice of sharing & publishing their
> captures at 1/2 speed using the Sentinel system to help bring out detail.
>
> This practice would make their recently published airplane event (that was
> included as part of the Sept. 21st fireball) appear to be 20 seconds which
> was being questioned following the early announcements of a very long
> fireball.
>
> The 3rd generation Sentinel system, and the systems before, time out 
> around
> 12 seconds so 1/2 speed would make this false meteoroid (aircraft) a 10
> second event and within the normal  time-out period. Not 20 seconds in
> duration.
>
> I do not have any recent information or reason to believe their system has
> been changed to the newer Wsentinel system which does not have this 
> time-out
> limitation.
>
> Small point.... but it may clear up possible future misconceptions in 
> Sandia
> event time lengths.
>
> YCSentinel