“Not sure how you think you can calculate the speed of the objects when you don’t know how far away they are or how large they are,”

I was referring to the angular velocity, which is fairly similar for all satellites. UARS was lower and faster, but it was also at a lower angular altitude, so we’d expect its angular velocity to be in the same ballpark. I’m using very approximate numbers here.

and then:

” but hey at least you have recognised that its not the UARS sat coming down..”

Whoa! The result isn’t what matters; what matters is the methodology. I’d instantly drop the goose belly hypothesis if somebody came up with compelling evidence for something else. Right now, the UARS hypothesis to explain that video is still viable. The key factor that a lot people don’t seem to realize is that, in special circumstances, a falling satellite really can appear to leave no trail during part of its descent. It all depends on the density of the air it hits, and the extreme upper reaches of the atmosphere can be highly variable in this regard. That’s why they couldn’t predict its fall with any accuracy.

Phew, Ian, I was hoping not to offend anybody, but I understand your reasoning. I did not really understand exactly what a Chinese lantern was, only recalling the adornments as shown in Movies concerning outdoor Oriental festivities etc, and these were definitely attached to wires, posts and trees, making quite colorful decorations.

Here, in Australia, we do not see them in the fashion as depicted in the wedding video. They, like firecrackers, are totally banned, and the only time they are seen is at community displays on a city wide festival such as New Year’s Eve, where the skyrockets are fired from barges in the Harbour, big bridges and tall buildings. And by specialist Pyrotechnicians.

So I have not seen those lanterns ever, but I can understand the wonder and unusual display that would have amused the ancients. They were their “balloons”, that are now a feature of every modern kid’s experience. And the grown-up versions are very interesting too, as Phil found out.

In my childhood home district, on the sad occasion of burying my mother in 1995, days later a Hot-air Balloon was observed passing overhead, as we drove through the streets, when it descended and realising that it had landed near houses, could have been in serious trouble. As it happened it did land … in the front yard of the pleasant little motel style retirement village complex, and right in front of the unit that my late mother had occupied, until a few days before.

Now I personally don’t take that as a “sign” or “omen”, just a co-incidence, but it sure was memorable, and a touching memory of a loving Mother. The balloon did have an incident with a faulty burner/gas tank, no damage was done, nobody was hurt, and after repairs, lifted off again, into the wide blue yonder.

Ivan. (I’m tempted to say, “Thanks Mum”.)

From the NASA release … “NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23 and 1:09 a.m. Sept. 24″

Isn’t this a 106 MINUTE window? For an item with an orbit that was already down to 87 minutes last time I checked?

Now – if you’ve misquoted NASA, then there is a very wide range of areas covered by that time slot. However, if you have some other NASA source, and NASA has produced a typo, then 12:09AM EDT is about the time that the orbit would have crossed the edge of North America — and if it wasn’t found at that point, then it would have been deemed ‘down’ no later than that.

But I think NASA is being clear about these numbers. The release at

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/sep/HQ_11-350_UARS_Re-entry.html

and the final orbit map at

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/591662main_UARS%20Map.pdf

are both consistent with the 106 minute windows.

So – NASA has confirmed that it DID go down between 23:37 and 1:09, and they have confirmed that it is LIKELY it went down in the Pacific.

In the absence of more evidence (which will itself have to be subject to verification!) that’s the most certainty I think we should admit here.

Icesmith,
Not my wedding, not my idea of a good idea, just posted it for comparison…

That the Satellite has already met its demise, exactly where, well nobody has reported finding anything (yet), it still must have been subjected to the laws of physics, whereby after mostly burning-up in the upper atmosphere, due to friction, the remaining, probably insulation, some objects being shielded by something else “taking the heat”, or very light-weight objects and other non-flammable bits may have reached lower, but denser and cooler bands of that atmosphere, where they would have slowed to zero.

At that point, the objects would be just falling to the surface, and the resistance of the air would be the major restriction to the velocity it could achieve. Not unlike the maximum descent of a free-falling parachutist, before he pulls the ripcord. If I remember correctly, that is about 120 mph, approx, 200 kph. It just will not go any faster, unless there is an external influence.

The woman who was reported to have been hit by a piece of insulation in the Eastern USA, a few years ago, was lucky it was only a small piece. If it was larger, and more solid, it would have been a different story. Imagine being hit by a cricket ball/baseball, just dropping out of the sky into the stands, or being hit by the same at the fastest rate ever bowled or pitched, then you would definitely regret it, or maybe not, if it was your demise!

I wonder if some Hollywood writer is not at this moment, working on the first draft of an Airliner being struck by a larger piece of satellite as it flies across the ocean. (Of course, the chances are twice as likely than flying across land!) But it could happen……

Ivan.

“… This is what chinese lanterns look like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqOlTY87n-0&feature=related …”

I checked out this video, and while it was a cute idea, I concluded it was not a good idea at all.

“Hmmm… nice idea, BUT, would you be happy being the cause of a forest fire? What goes up must eventually come down. Can you be certain that it is definitely extinguished?
And if twenty or more guests set their lanterns off, the winds, even gentle breezes, would scatter them after a while, spreading the chance of a fire. Dried grasslands, wheat fields and suburban areas would be in jeopardy.
So, nice idea? No, no, no. Sorry.”

In fact I would not be surprised if it is an illegal activity in some jurisdictions, certainly with the high likelihood of fires, and especially in dry Summer months.

Ivan.

Actually not so good an assumption.

I was basing my prediction simply on the fact that two-thirds of Earth is covered by water plus looking at a globe.

Look much area the Pacific ocean covers – that’s pretty much half the planet if you centre the globe on the strip of land starting at the Bering sea between Alaska and Russia and going south all the way to Antartica. No, the distribution of water (& land) isn’t remotely ressembling uniform. But still 70% of the planets surface is ocean versus 30% land.

Of course, it’s still more likely that you’ll only see water, but more likely wasn’t your claim. Once again, statistics trump hyperbole.

My claim was :

“The view from a randomly generated spot on our globe anywhere is water on every horizon far as the eye can see and no land in sight.”

Which was non-specific as whether it was “more likely” or whether I was guaranteeing anything. What I was meaning (& maybe I could’ve phrased it better) was that if you land at any randomly chosen spot on the planet you are most likely to be landing in water and out of sight of land.

Likewise, you’ll have to extend the exclusion zone to account for large cities with tall buildings.

OTOH, waves can reach reasonable heights and block your view of land too – and there’s the question of fog, precipitation – and darknesss – to consider when assessing visibility of land too! I’ll leave out the question of tides and sea level rise plus whether we count the smoke from distant volcanoes, fires and dust hazes plus mud, reefs and sand flats as sighting land or not!

If you’d like, I can send you an executable file that will generate random coordinates that you can then check in, say, Google Earth. Please note, you’ll need to check a lot of points to satisfy the Law of Large Numbers. Checking only 10 or 20 won’t be sufficient.

That’s a pretty neat & interesting idea – thanks for the offer.

Of course, another experiment is to get a map of the globe, close your eyes, trace along the UARS descent pattern and after a random number of seconds, stop and open your eyes. Variations and tighter methodological approaches to that can be addded as best suits , eg. random number generator, participation of a second person, use of varying sized globes or world maps, etc …

But that raises an additional difficulty for the UARS hypothesis: there SHOULD be some red in those images, if only because they’re so low in the sky. Which suggested to me another hypothesis: goose bellies. There have been a number of cases in which ghostly sets of lights turned out to be flights of geese reflecting ground lights. This would put the lights much closer to the observer, which would eliminate the reddening effect of transmission through lots of atmosphere.

I did a quickie analysis of motion of the lights and saw some big variations in speed of the objects. This, I think, is the single most informative datum we have. Falling satellite pieces would not show that much variation, and they certainly would not show any positive third time derivative in spatial position, as these do. For that matter, Chinese lanterns would also show very little third time derivative. Geese would provide the closest fit to that datum.

I am therefore ranking the hypotheses as follows:

1. Geese: very likely
2. UARS: unlikely
3. Chinese lanterns: unlikely
4. Fake: very unlikely

The Earth’s surface is approximately 70.8% water. Now, since your statement specified any random point, I’m going to assume that you were basing your “predictions” on random numbers from a uniform distribution. That means that any point on the surface of the Earth has the same probability of being THE “randomly generated spot”. After all, there’s no logical reason to have unequal weights for different points on the globe. Immediately that tells us that the actual probability of that “randomly generated spot” being in water is 70.8%. Here I assumed that the Earth was large enough that application of the Law of Large Numbers was appropriate, thus meaning that 70.8% from the water surface area of Earth was also the probability of landing in water. Interesting.

Of course, just being in water does not mean that you can only see water on every horizon, and since the distance to the horizon while in an ocean is about 3.4 miles, that means that randomly generated spot will have to be more than 3.4 miles from any land mass. We can immediately then exclude all the water within 3.4 miles of a coastline. So the probability of seeing only water on every horizon goes down and is significantly less than 70.8%. The probability goes down even further when coastlines aren’t perfectly straight, say when a coastline has a sharp 90° bend or summat. That’s not all: that water “exclusion zone” will have to be extended because, of course, land is not all at sea level. That means the water exclusion zone will have to be extended yet again due to things like hills and mountains. Likewise, you’ll have to extend the exclusion zone to account for large cities with tall buildings.

Alas, it seems that you just can’t land anywhere on Earth and be guaranteed to see only water on every horizon. Of course, it’s still more likely that you’ll only see water, but more likely wasn’t your claim. Once again, statistics trump hyperbole.

If you’d like, I can send you an executable file that will generate random coordinates that you can then check in, say, Google Earth. Please note, you’ll need to check a lot of points to satisfy the Law of Large Numbers. Checking only 10 or 20 won’t be sufficient.

This is what chinese lanterns look like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqOlTY87n-0&feature=related skip to 1:30 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.

Now which looks more like the canadian video?

Been away camping for last few days but had heard of the “falling rogue satellite and the risk it poses” on the news – their words not mine – & said to my brother and folks that it’ll probably come down over the ocean somewhere and burn up without many if any folks even seeing it. Now, sure enough, that seems to be what’s happened.

Pretty safe prediction really given that ocean is two-thirds of our planet’s surface. The view from a randomly generated spot on our globe anywhere is water on every horizon far as the eye can see and no land in sight. Seems Earth is really rather mis-named ..

In the late innings, critical thought is still far behind. If it doesn’t score quickly, the game will be lost.

How about the possibility that what was seen in the video is merely a swarm of Chinese lanterns floating on the breeze?

I think these are chinese lanterns set off deliberately to create the story (not by the taker of the video perhaps, no accusations of that kind from me).

Also if the higer lights are closer, they would seem to overtake the lower ones (further away) due to their changing perspective relative to the camera, is logical really.

If this video was taken by day you would not have thought it strange at all I think.

In my mind this way of looking at it is the skeptic mind reserving judgement. Not the other way around. We can believe everything we are told and filter later or do it the scientific way and quickly derive at what is right.

There are times I can remember I nearly crashed my car thinking I saw something incredible….only to find out it was some chinese lantarns. The damn things are hard to identify at night high up in the sky. I am wondering if NASA would have taken responsibility for one of these burning somebodies house down as they are a direct result of their satelite re-entry news?

The best argument in favor of the hoax hypothesis is that the trajectory projection I saw suggests that UARS would have tracked a bit north of Calgary, but this video plainly shows it passing well to the south of Calgary.

Various news outlets are claiming that the local police have not gotten any reports of something hitting the ground nearby, which most people seem to interpret as evidence that the video is a hoax, but in fact the video suggests that the impact site would be east or ESE of Calgary, at a range of maybe 100 miles, which would put the impact zone along an empty, unirrigated section of prairie between Brooks and Medicine Hat.

The only other debunking I have seen on the Internet is a bunch of yahoos claiming that the video shows streetlights. I would very much like to think that I am not a nutcase and accept the NASA version, but so far, the evidence seems to me to favor the Okotoks hypothesis.

The video from Canada looks quite realistic to me. The fragments are in the right location, they’re moving the right direction at about the right speed, higher ones seem to overtake lower ones, they disappear after a period of time — all the basics check out. Sure, it’s shaky, but if you just track the objects themselves, it’s pretty clear that these objects are in the sky and moving.

Thanks for the info! I remembered reading one of Phil’s posts and how the satellite was falling slowly, but wasn’t sure how slow was slow.

As for the second sentence: it’s all thanks to this blog. A few years ago I wouldn’t know the difference between Jupiter and a satellite, so I can see how some people could mistake the two based on ignorance alone. My getting a Galileoscope late last year has helped me learn more about what I’m looking at, and Stellarium has helped me pinpoint what I see and give me labels. (Thank FSM for good computer programming!) Phil and others have helped me understand more about what’s up in the sky technology-wise. The stuff I’ve learned has made me wonder why in the world I didn’t know it before. (And wishing I paid more attention to science at school)

My only problem is that I don’t know *enough* about astronomy. But then, that’s why I keep coming back here