[meteorite-list] Photo of Fiery Object Over UK Mystifies Scientists

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:28:27 2004
Message-ID: <200310131545.IAA27589_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_031013.html

Photo of Fiery Object Mystifies Scientists
By Robert Roy Britt
space.com
13 October 2003

A digital picture of a spectacular and apparently explosive event in the sky
fooled a pair of seasoned NASA scientists, has other researchers around the
globe mystified, and made a minor celebrity of a teenage photographer.

Jonathan Burnett, 15, was photographing his friends skateboarding in
Pencoed, Wales when one of them noticed a colorful fireball in the sky.
Burnett snapped a picture, then sent it to NASA scientists and asked if they
knew what it was.

Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, who run NASA's Astronomy Picture of the
Day (APOD), posted the photograph on Oct. 1 and wrote that "a sofa-sized
rock came hurtling into the nearby atmosphere of planet Earth and
disintegrated." They called the picture "one of the more spectacular meteor
images yet recorded."

Problem is, it turns out, there was no meteor.

Rampant speculation

Meanwhile, the image and its caption made the Internet rounds and the story
was picked up by the media. Interview requests for Jonathan came from the
BBC and NBC, among others.

Semi-scientific discussions ensued as experts and amateurs debated the image
in Internet and e-mail forums. Some initially labeled it a fraud. Others
said it might be manmade space junk falling back to Earth, or maybe a
military jet unloading fuel and igniting it with its afterburners.

During the discussion, the APOD scientists changed their caption, saying the
picture likely had something to do with a jet contrail, a consensus that
most other scientists had reached.

A second wider-angle picture, researchers learned, had been taken at the
same time as the first photo. The second image, by Julian Heywood of
Porthcawl, about 10 miles from Jonathan's location, helped form the contrail
hypothesis and ruled out the idea that the first photo might have been
fabricated.

Steve Salter, an aircraft engineer in the UK, suggested the contrail might
have come from the Concorde, whose flight timing would have put it in the
vicinity at the right time. Others deduced the same.

"I think the most likely explanation is that this is an unusual view of the
Concorde's contrail," the APOD's Bonnell told SPACE.com late last week.

But nobody knows what generated the explosive appearance. It might just
involve bright, reflected light rather than any sort of fiery reality.

Marco Langbroek of the Dutch Meteor Society thinks it could be what's known
as a false Sun, when light from the setting Sun is refracted by the ice
particles that make up a high-altitude contrail, which develops out of jet
exhaust.

Better than a UFO

Adding to the confusion, the whole affair unfolded during a stretch of time
when a host of real fireballs were generated by space rocks.

Five separate highly visible meteor events in one 8-day period in late
September were mostly if not entirely unrelated, astronomers believe. In
early September, the public was treated to a set of overblown stories about
an asteroid that, for a time, had miniscule odds of hitting Earth in the
distant future. So awareness was high, in the media and the public, when
Jonathan Burnett's picture was first published.

While the photograph remains vexing, it is certain that everyone -- from the
photographer to the mistaken NASA astronomers to the legions of other
scientists and readers who followed the saga -- got an education.

"This will be well remembered by meteor and impact experts worldwide for
some time I reckon," Langbroek wrote on CCNet, an electronic newsletter that
moderated much of the discussion. He added that the whole affair has many
lessons, chief among them that media and public awareness over the threat of
rocks from space is growing.

"Clearly the UFO's of bygone days have given way to meteorite impacts as the
popular explanation for strange celestial events with both public and
press," Langbroek said.

Critical of NASA

Langbroek had harsh words for the APOD producers, who've been vetting and
posting a picture a day for eight years. The pair has a loyal following and
recently compiled their favorite images into a book.

"It is a bit worrying that apparently, within the team responsible for the
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, nobody seems to have taken the care to
contact an expert meteor astronomer first before declaring this publicly a
certified 'daylight fireball' on their website," Langroek said. "NASA did
not live up to its reputation" as "the major representative" for
professional astronomers worldwide, he said.

Asked to respond, Bonnell said APOD has been "a constant learning
experience" full of pleasant "and some not-so-pleasant" lessons.

"Of course, the bad press is disappointing," Bonnell said. "In the end it is
a really exciting picture and I hope Jon Burnett is not too unhappy or
discouraged that his image turned out to be of the Concorde contrail rather
than a large meteor trail."

Jonathan just wants to know what's in the picture.

"We have lost count of the number of people who have emailed us with various
explanations of what the picture could be of," Paul Burnett, Jonathan's
father, told the BBC. He thought the matter rather funny. "A 15-year-old
schoolboy has baffled scientists around the world with this picture."

Seeking a silver lining

Nemiroff, the co-producer of APOD, encouraged Jonathan in a private e-mail
conversation to make the most of his experience.

"My final advice would be to write up a full report on what you have seen
for school and keep a copy for yourself," Nemiroff suggested. "Ask your
principal/headmaster/science teacher if you could receive some sort of
special science credit for it. When writing up the report, try to discover
for yourself what is the actual cause of the unusual cloud you photographed.
Being a scientist is a lot like being an investigator."

Indeed. And the greatest mysteries are those that elude all manner of
investigation.
Received on Mon 13 Oct 2003 11:45:58 AM PDT