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Thanks for the YT link. It's not very convincing without knowing the original source of the vid to make a comparison with. I think it's probably fair to say the YT poster grabbed it from somewhere. Then too, the YT poster has other conspiracy-type vids about people claimed to be reptilians, various aliens, etc. That's a really big problem with images like this.
Once again, like the pics in the OP, there's no real scale to relate to. It's also unknown that the object in this vid is the same as in original pics in this thread. That said, the object could still be much closer than it appears. It could still be birds, bugs, a reflection on the lens, or any number of other things. One problem in this vid (apart from be extremely short) is that you see nothing, then you're shown something (a line), then you see nothing again. The mystery object is so blurred that you can't tell what it's suppose to be, other than a whitish line. What's up with that?
I would assume you've had some opinions regarding the object(s) but haven't yet said. Other people have already given some plausible explanations. So, what do you think it is?
We have no idea the length of the bird nor how wide a field of view it flew through but a bird could most certainly could have created this. The closer to the camera the faster it will fly through filed of view. There's also other factors such as zoom etc.
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It's crucial to represent the speed as the length of time it takes to travel its own length. This speed designation remains constant, regardless of how large an object is or how far it is from the camera.
A car traveling 60 mph is going 90 feet per second. No matter how far you are from the car, if it is ten feet long, it will go nine car-lengths per second. If the frame width is five car lengths, we know that it went 45 feet while it was in the viewfinder. At 60 mph, that would take a half a second, or 9 frames on a Super-8 rolling at 18 frames per second. If the car appears in only 3 frames, we can conclude that it is going 180 miles an hour.
We can tell by the elongated shape that if it's a bird that it is clearly not a sparrow. The profile of the bird leaves only the possibility of a large, slim wader, such as an egret or ibis or stork. There are no birds of such slim profile that are smaller than a 20-inch cattle egret (not present in winter). So we must assume it s between two and four feet in length in flight. So if it's a bird, we know its approximate length.
What you're missing is that there is know known object that big that flies. What are we talking about here, something a thousands of feet across? A whole mile?
It's crucial to represent the speed as the length of time it takes to travel its own length. This speed designation remains constant, regardless of how large an object is or how far it is from the camera.
A car traveling 60 mph is going 90 feet per second. No matter how far you are from the car, if it is ten feet long, it will go nine car-lengths per second. If the frame width is five car lengths, we know that it went 45 feet while it was in the viewfinder. At 60 mph, that would take a half a second, or 9 frames on a Super-8 rolling at 18 frames per second. If the car appears in only 3 frames, we can conclude that it is going 180 miles an hour.
I understand exactly how you would calculate this but we know neither the length of the object or the length it travels through the field of view so you cannot make any concrete determinations as to how fast it was moving.
In addition to that if you look at the original frames posted (I'm assuming these are accurate from the timline) the second and third frame are identical, the fourth and sixth frame are identical. Last but not least the second and third frames are composites of the fourth, fifth and sixth frames. The video most likely is 30FPS converted from 18FPS so you would need the original footage to determine how many frames it is captured in. Based on what is posted in the OP there is no more than three frames it appears in.
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We can tell by the elongated shape that if it's a bird that it is clearly not a sparrow.
Realistically you can't tell me if this some bird flying in front or a kids toy that got tossed in front of the camera, trying to argue about species is bit unrealistic.
Last edited by thecoalman; 03-14-2012 at 04:05 AM..
I understand exactly how you would calculate this but we know neither the length of the object or the length it travels through the field of view so you cannot make any concrete determinations as to how fast it was moving. .
You're right. If we knew the length of the object, this whole discussion would not take place.
My point is that certain known objects can be dismissed from consideration, because we know that they cannot travel their own length in the time interval that has been established.
We are not starting out with a known object and estimating its speed. We are starting out with an object of known speed in relation to its size, and searching for an object that can do that, eliminating those that can't.
A large bird travels in flight 40 feet per second. If the bird is 2-4 feet long, that would be its own length in 1/10 to 1/20 of a second, quite consistent with one length per frame on Super-8 at 18 frames per second. So the observed speed on the film is consistent with a large bird.
However, there is enough resolution in the image to discount any known large white bird of Florida. Features on all such birds that are not white are large and conspicuous enough to appear in the image. There is enough resolution to see clearly that the upper part of the object is well lit and appears white, while the lower part is shaded and dark. The coloration of the bill and legs would be visible, if present, and they would be large and yellow-orange on Great Egrets. All other possible bird species would have some conspicuous black markings.
The video I linked to in post #15 is no longer available. It can be seen here:
"A large bird travels in flight 40 feet per second. If the bird is 2-4 feet long, that would be its own length in 1/10 to 1/20 of a second, quite consistent with one length per frame on Super-8 at 18 frames per second. So the observed speed on the film is consistent with a large bird."
You KNEW when you wrote that, that I was going to ask this question...
"A large bird travels in flight 40 feet per second. If the bird is 2-4 feet long, that would be its own length in 1/10 to 1/20 of a second, quite consistent with one length per frame on Super-8 at 18 frames per second. So the observed speed on the film is consistent with a large bird."
You KNEW when you wrote that, that I was going to ask this question...
So, what is the velocity of an unladen swallow?
Swallows are dark colored, and their aspect ratio in flight is more like 4:1, not the elongated 10:1 proportion of the object in the film.
But there is something else relevant about our analysis. The stills we are seeing are the film transferred to video, and then we're seeing the stop-frame of the video. We don't know how much blurring of the action is on the original frames of the Super-8 footage, which would depend on the exposure time of each frame.
Here is video footage of a pigeon flying into the path of a Randy Johnson pitch,
If you stop-action, there is an elongated blur that doesn't look at all like a pigeon.
Based on this baseball video of the pigeon, it is possible that a bird would look like the object in the Challenger video. And now I am much less certain that it is not a bird. But I would still need to know how faithfully the digital video represents the image on the chemical film that was originally used, or whether the appearance of the thing would be greatly altered simply by the process of converting the Super 8 to digital.
The aspect of the bird is still about 5:1 in the pigeon video, but it is blurred beyond any detailed recognition. But in spite of the blur, the squared-off tail can still be resolved.
Here is a Great Egret in flight. It's mostly out of focus, but even when blurred, it still does not have its apparentl length greatly exaggerated.
Super-8 is quite grainy when enlarged. Slower speed films less so, and Kodachrome and Ektachrome are good, but I would still have expected some grain structure. That I don't see it blaring out, indicates to me that there was some image enhancement in the conversion. There were dirt specs, so we are almost certainly dealing with Super-8 film.
There are only three relevant frames, I've done a gif animation of those plus a lead-in and lead-out frame, and slowed it down. The movement of the bird wings becomes quite apparent as the bird flies from left to right.
It took it roughly .13 seconds to cross the field of view in the clip.
Super - 8 specs:
Perf pitch is 4.234 MM
Reel length is a nominal 50'
50 feet = 15 240 millimeters = 3,600 frames
Length of the complete segment is 3 min 13 seconds
at 18 fps 50' = 200 seconds = 3 min 20 sec
at 24 fps 50' = 150 seconds = 2 min 30 sec
We can surmise that either about 7 seconds were trimmed from the beginning or end or the camera was running a little faster than 18fps, or the conversion process affected the time of the clip.
With some additional information on where the camera was, we could likely figure out not only the exact speed, but the effective focal length of the lens, since we can find the size of steam and exhaust ball at the launch from other photos.
We could then determine the exact speed of flight to somewhat limit the list of birds. We could also compare wing flapping patterns and speeds to further narrow the choices. Determination of the weight could be a little more iffy, but a fairly good estimate could be made.
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What am I missing here? 
You KNEW when you wrote that, that I was going to ask this question... 
