Sunday, July 09, 2006

Mother ship over Phoenix . . . next to plane???

The give-away is the dots of light. When a camera takes a photo in the dark of night, the shutter stays open for a significant time. When an airplane passes through the camera field of view, the steady-on lights of the plane create a smeared "bar" of light. However, the flashing or strobing navigation and safety lights create a repeating dot pattern in the photo. The reason the smear in this photo is fairly short is because of the rather bright lights of the city below. The camera shutter stayed open too long to "stop" the plane's motion, but not long enough to produce a streak across the entire sky.


I like Kyle King because he doesn't "want to believe." His blog is consistently provoking and proves that skepticism by no means entails an atrophied sense of wonder.

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