Search results

The course and timing of the pass is so accurate that it must be the Chinese Space Station. It looks like it is a few kilometres away from the published path, but exactly parallel to it - this may be the result of the course adjustment, to avoid the Starlink satellite. Honestly, those Starlinks...

That looks convincing enough. You may be right. However the CSS would have disappeared anyway, because of the Earth's shadow; and it seems to disappear just outside the cloud, rather than when it enters the cloud, so that seems to be a coincidence.

Absolutely. This telescope was pointed directly towards the location where a large (56 metre!) satellite entered the Earth's shadow. The rockets were directed towards the same location. A coincidence seems unlikely.

Here's a view from WikiSky, showing the Cygnus Loop in a bit more detail .

Assuming this object is the CSS, it is half the length of the ISS, so must be only six or seven arcminutes long at most. This is far too small to show any diameter, or any details at all on a video clip of this magnification. Any details you can see are entirely an artifact of the camera. I've...

All the lights in that image are crescent shaped, or lop-sided circles with a darkish centre.. This is because they are all slightly out of focus. The crescent shape of the fading object is only due to a reduction in apparent brilliance. When I've seen satellites enter the shadow of the earth...

I can confirm this. My wife worked for the BL until her retirement, and her colleagues say the BL records system is currently in tatters.

Ha! I was already writing science fiction in 1970 (at the age of 14) and one of the things I imagined was an Internet-like electronic media channel. However my foresight was limited by lack of imagination, and I thought it would be just a way to access news from round the world. Never imagined...

The 'Security Police' involved on the first night were Fred ‘Skip’ Buran, John Burroughs, Ed Cabansag, J. D. Chandler, and Jim Penniston. As far as I can tell, these individuals were not involved on the third night. The party on the third night included Halt, Nevels, Englund and Ball. If any...

But no compass. (edit, it does appear they took one, but may not have used it much in the dark). What is a 'trained SP investigator', and what would they be trained in? Security policemen?

Quite plausible. However I note that (in Dr Clarke's timeline) the guy who reported 'they're back' actually stated this on Friday night; site’ (unimpressed) 2130 SPs arrive...

No, but Sirius was south of Halt, and gradually losing altitude, as described in the tape. At 0400 it was approximately the same height off the horizon as Halt stated ('five to ten degrees' ) . Note that any object that hangs around in the sky for at least three quarters of an hour, gradually...

So it has gone completely now, it seems. The last time I was in that part of the country it was to visit the archaeological site at Sutton Hoo, but we drove past the Rendlesham forest.

Bear in mind that the lighthouse was not a point source; indeed, it was a complex source issuing from a Fresnel lens.

Airy disks are quite variable, and depend on the focus and optics of the device; but some do have darker circles in the centre.

I think they are probably the same effect, appearing on different types of electronic imaging devices.

Those look like Airy disks. The instrument Halt was using to look at the lighthouse was a Starscope photomultiplier, which produces a lot of artifacts, including flares and glare. According to Ridpath, a very bright light could burn out the centre of the image as well, making it look dark.

The only problem I have with the hypothesis that this object was suspended from the wire seen in the photo, is that a freely suspended wire hanging from two points will form a smooth catenary curve, but if you hang a weight from the midpoint it changes to a flattened 'Y' shape'. I'm not really...

Yes, perhaps so. A thin layer of mist would be enough to show the beam quite clearly. Judging from this photo, the loom would have reached around almost to the location of the observers, so it would have shone over their heads briefly before winking out.

Yes, Orford Ness will have had a beam. It still has, but much less bright than in 1980. When the beam is visible but you can't see the light itself, that is called the 'loom', and it can be very difficult to tell where it is coming from or going too. Here's an interesting image about...