An actual UFO
 

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ima...ystery_nsl.gif


This image records a mysterious streak that appeared over the Hawaiian Islands on December 17th.

It is noteworthy because it has been duly recorded and verified by scientific methodology. There is, as yet, no explanation available for what caused this event. I am interested in things that are recorded by scientific means as I do not find human witnesses alone to be trustworthy reporters of events.

In addition, because there is no current explanation for this event, we have an opportunity to form hypotheses and research the moments in question toward solving an atmospheric - or cosmic mystery.

See the link and the text below the image for additional links and details:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050208.html

"
A Mysterious Streak Above Hawaii
Credit: Night Sky Live Collaboration
Explanation: What in heavens-above was that? Not everything seen on the night sky is understood. The Night Sky Live (NSL) project keeps its global array of continuously updating web cameras (CONCAMs) always watching the night sky. On the night of 2004 December 17, the fisheye CONCAM perched on top of an active volcano in Haleakala, Hawaii, saw something moving across the night sky that remains mysterious. The NSL team might have disregarded the above streak as unconfirmed, but the Mauna Kea CONCAM on the next Hawaiian island recorded the same thing. The NSL team might then have disregarded the streak as a satellite, but no record of it was found in the heavens-above.com site that usually documents bright satellite events. If you think you have a reasonable explanation for the streak, please contribute to the on-line discussion. Current candidates include a known satellite that was somehow missed by heavens-above, a recently launched rocket, and a passing space rock. Volunteers are solicited by the NSL project to help monitor the operability of each NSL CONCAM, including looking for interesting anomalies such as this. Disclosure: Robert Nemiroff collaborates on both the NSL and APOD projects.
"

I'm pretty excited about this find of yours, ART. I haven't seen this anywhere else.

I, too, remain skeptical about extraterrestrial visits. Although I realize the humans who claim to have been passed over, visited, or abducted by aliens probably mean well and are fine upstanding credible people, it still boggles the mind that the aliens have managed to completely escape scientific detection.

I am a follower of Paul Drake's formula that considers alien intervention on this planet to be of merely anthropological origin, similar to English researchers discovering a new tribe in South America. The reason for studying such a tribe is that they are new, fascinating, and rare.

According to Drake, those same anthropological guidelines should apply to alien visitation; the only reason aliens would have for putting out the expenses to fly here in large numbers is that what we have on this planet is rare and fascinating to them. However, his equation shows that if indeed what we have on Earth is rare, then our chances of being stumbled across become almost zero. The only way to raise our chances of being discovered and investigated in large numbers is to concede that what we have on Earth is not all that rare and unique, and therefore unlikely to attract much attention throughout the Cosmos (thereby once again reducing the odds that we're being visited).

With all of that in mind, here's to hoping they've finally found something out there!

Could have been a large boulder/rock skipping off the atmosphere instead of heading in and burning up completely. I wish i could get the animation to play again on the pic, it played a couple times loading the page now i cant get it to go again.

While i would like aliens to land one day (if friendly) but I dont see it changing my life much. They probably wouldn't be very likely to share tech with us, and even if they were it would take decades for it to filter down to me with the way the governments on earth like to work. It's not like we're alone in the universe, there's plenty of life around here to play with.

It restarts every time you load the page.
If you go to the actual link:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050208.html

it reloads and replays every time you hit "View -> Refresh."

I redid the animation so it will play continuously.
Here you go:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ystery_nsl.gif

I wonder about the 'direction' of the streak. I know nothing of astronomy, but I would believe that certain things always move in the same direction. How would the movement of this object compare to a (a) satellite, (b) meteor, or (c) comet?

I also wonder about speed estimates. Obviously, we would need to know the distance to the object to calculate it, but someone could probably come up with some good ranges of estimates.

The "smear length" also shortens as the animation plays. What can that tell us?

I suspect that is a result of the fish-eye lens they are using.

I'd venture that it's either a loss of velocity or if it's a re-entry flame, that the tail has decreased with the resultant loss of material to combust.

wide angle lenses stretch the perspective at the edges. Objects in the centre of the field of view tend to look further away.

Also, the contellations are also rotating, this tells us that the frames are timelapsed over a period of several minutes.

This can't be a re-entry event. The streak is by something emitting or reflecting light and the length of each streak makes me go with my first thought of a decrease in vleocity.

There's also the chance that it is moving with the same speed but changing direction either toward or away from the camera.

Update 2/9/05
 

On yesterday's Coast to Coast AM, host George Noory interviewed Seth Shostak of SETI. His findings are that the object appears to be approx. 1300 miles in altitude. It transected 35 degrees of the sky in 20 minutes, meaning it venured 5000 miles in the duration of the image capture. His best guess at this time is that it represents a fuel discharge (excess fuel dump) from a Centaur rocket that launched a DISH Network satellite into geosynchronous orbit.

However, also interviewed was planetary scientist David Grinspoon who stated it is currently a genuine mystery. He finds the satellite theory credible, but he said "it's not an open and shut case."
........
There is an ongoing discussion of this phenomenon here:

http://bb.nightskylive.net/asterisk/viewtopic.php?t=291

Update 2/9
 

The "fuel dump" hypothesis is currently under attack. For one thing, the fuel was dumped over the east coast US - not over Hawaii...

The thing that intruiges me is that the gif that you put on there shows that a minimum of 20 minutes elapsed, and the length of the "streak" appears to change, possibly suggesting a change in velocity.

I am very interested in the resulting explanation...

Very interesting. Keep us updated, ARTelevision.

For a better call i think the gif would have to be expanded more. I would like to see what happens after where it stops. (thank you for redoing the gif btw, i use firefox and the ifs dont restart when i refresh or visit the other page)

It just too hard to tell by the picture. If it was a movie or longer in length it would be a different story.

Under attack? You'd think that tidbit would shoot the theory down by itself.

This is pretty cool! I'm not a follower/believer as I've never seen anything 'real' to prove or disprove anything about 'aliens' or visitors or what-have-you's. But this is pretty cool, Thanks for sharing Art :) Now to go check out the links!!

I. Want. To. Believe.

Well, the exact moment of release may have been in the right spot for the event to occur. But folks are also saying that it should show some expansion over time if it was fuel.

No scientific explanation yet. What folks are doing is proposing hypotheses and others are attempting to poke holes in their theories. Scientific method, and all that, you know...

warrreagle...that's a pretty interesting formula...I heard of a similar formula from a reknowned astronomer that came to speak at our highschool, for all I know it could be the same guy. He created an equation to find ballpark how many intelligent life forms were in the universe...with things like stars, orbits, temperatures, and many other variables, and he used fairly conservative values that most astronomers could agree on. One important variable that he left open to interpretation was time that intelligent civilizations lasted. For the cynics that thought the world was going to end soon, he plugged in a number like 50,000 years, and the answer came out to exactly 1. Granted, he probably had time to find out the best mix of conservative values that came out to 1, but still, pretty interesting. Then, assuming the human race may last longer, he plugged in a number like 1 million, and the number of intelligent civilizations became hundreds of thousands. From there, he proposed that if most intelligent civilizations last a million years, and we have only lasted around 50,000, we are most certainly one of the dumbest. So either we are the smartest and we are alone, or we are the dumbest and are not alone. I'm sure his theory is not without flaw, but I found it pretty intriguing.