eburacum
Papo-furado
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2005
- Messages
- 5,816
Here's an interesting analysis of the other video, which does not seem to be associated with the Nimitz incident at all, and in fact has not been given any kind of provenance or context. This video appears to be a distant plane seen from a rapidly turning Hornet, equipped with a camera in gimbals that rotates in the opposite direction to the turn in order to maintain infra-red lock. The term 'gimbal' seems to give this clip its official name.
https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal...ounter-with-unknown-object.t9333/#post-216259
The camera was turning sideways as the plane turned in the opposite direction; this was a consequence of the camera's attempts to keep the source in lock.
Something else I noticed on that video is the small dot floating off to the left; I thought it might be a star, which would prove that the IR source was more-or-less stationary; but instead it appears to be a computer-generated 'true north' indicator, which is even better. This object is almost certainly very distant and moving slowly compared to the aircraft.
https://www.metabunk.org/nyt-gimbal...ounter-with-unknown-object.t9333/#post-216259
The camera was turning sideways as the plane turned in the opposite direction; this was a consequence of the camera's attempts to keep the source in lock.
Something else I noticed on that video is the small dot floating off to the left; I thought it might be a star, which would prove that the IR source was more-or-less stationary; but instead it appears to be a computer-generated 'true north' indicator, which is even better. This object is almost certainly very distant and moving slowly compared to the aircraft.
2) The small dot which moves from left to right in a circular motion is almost certainly a "North Indicator". This is also consistent with the above (and with the video, the symbology is always white regardless of the IR Polarity (White Hot/Black Hot) mode); the camera would initially need to be turned about 54 degrees to the right in order to be looking north, towards the end of the video segment, when the camera is looking due north, the aircraft is also almost flying true north. The object is therefore always within a few degrees of true North of the aircraft.
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