Here's a little hint to go by: If you see a video on YouTube that is showing off that kind of imagery from STEREO (not SOHO, but if they are showing imagery from SOHO the next bit applies too), get ready to ignore it, because there are bound to be so many errors spewing forth from it that you'll be a confused wreck in no time.
But, seeing as it's been a while since I bothered with YouTube, and seeing as this is popular on the bastion of credibility, godlikeproductions and beforeitsnews (sarcasm: these sites are full of conspiracy theory nonsense), it's worth a debunking. This is going to be long…
The opening is incredibly wishy washy in wording, and then blam! An apparent lie about video footage. Only the STEREO craft are able to view behind the Sun, and they do not have the means to record video. While the author/director/whatever could have been referring to a movie that simply shows you a bunch of still images in a sequence, why would it be necessary - in an edited video - to reveal that you can't get something to work? It makes no sense, and the first time I heard it, it smacked of saying "you'll have to trust us when we say we've got something, but we'll never show it".
Nobody risks their jobs and their lives in getting data from STEREO out there. In fact, you're able to get access to the data at pretty much the same time as NASA do - NASA themselves have to wait for other people to process the data from their own satellites. How do I know this? I did the shockingly simply thing of e-mailing them and asking some questions. Anyway, the whole threat of death for revealing information is classic conspiracy theorist bull. It's essentially trying to make the author into a hero for in turn 'risking his life' getting it out the people, like some kind of digital Robin Hood, despite the data being freely available to anyone with Internet access.
NASA do not regenerate millions of photos on a daily basis. As I've just said, they don't even process them themselves, and there aren't even millions of images taken, the satellites simply aren't capable of such a feat, even if you've got 4 of them now looking at the Sun. The whole idea of a 35 day regeneration process is laughable, especially considering, as we've said before, anyone with the Internet can access the data at near the same time as NASA themselves.
"This" is NOT a raw photo (3:04 if you want a timecode). That's what you'll get after the images have been retrieved from the satellite and processed. If you've got the right software, you can look at the .fits files instead, which is a filetype designed for scientific data. The only time I've seen a .fits file in a YouTube video was in one (or maybe two) of mine, when I was debunking yet another wild claim. Proponents like pretty pictures, and they like to pick out the tiniest bit of nothing to focus in on.
Case in point, is what we're meant to look at (or squint at) over at 3:17ish. This is not an object. If it were a physical object behind the sun, the Sun would light it up in the same way it does every other planet, which in turn would appear like a bright starlike spot within this imagery. If it were a physical object, it would NOT look like a crescent moon - being lit from the wrong side I might add - just hanging in the image.
Unfortunately, the date stamp is cropped off the images, as is often the case with proponents videos, so we can't put it up against something as simple as a map. Because however it doesn't show the characteristics of a physical object from that instruments point of view, we can rule out it being a physical object, simple as that. Most likely an image artifact, it could even be something on the lens or within the instrument that keeps getting recorded, but it's not an object behind the Sun.
I don't know who they keep supposedly talking to, I doubt it's anyone from a logical place to ask - you know, like someone from the STEREO mission team, or as I asked aeons ago, someone from the team who process the images. Note the wording he used. He said they backed off from asking NASA, and then gave ideas as to what he thought they might have said. Surely if he asked NASA, he'd be able to quote what they said to him, no? Maybe I should email the guys who process the images after finishing this rambling novel of an email and see what they say.
"The object seems to be coming in from the far right side of our Sun." Relative to what, exactly? These guys aren't even prepared to tell you which satellite these images come from (luckily, I know that they're from the COR2 instrument of STEREO-A - it'd be easy to work out if they didn't crop off this piece of info from the top of every single image they use…). Seeing as we know exactly where STEREO-A is, and exactly where it's instruments are pointing, as well as being able to get a second or third angle from other satellites, we can estimate where an object would be (not in this case of course, because we aren't looking at an object).
If it stays roughly in the same position, we can make one of two conclusions. It happens to orbit the Sun in such a way that STEREO-A always has it in the same place in it's imagery, or, like a fleck of dirt on your camera lens, it's always in the same place because it's slap bang in front of STEREO-A. If we've ruled out that it's an object, I think you can see which is the stronger conclusion. We're looking at something on or in STEREO-A's COR2 instrument, not something behind the Sun.
"But this is missing" is bull too, I've just stuck in a random date for last month and lo and behold, it still appears. Perhaps their 35 day regeneration cycle hasn't caught it yet, dun dun dun… shame my random date was the 3rd of March, well over 35 days ago. I do hope you're getting the idea of what I think of this video by now.
What good are charts of satellite positions if you crop of the date? Oh yeah! They're useless! This means nothing. The reason dates are handy is that they allow us to see what objects were where and when, even allowing us to work out what background stars in view or what constellations the satellites are looking at. No dates, no easy method to double check and no easy method to debunk.
The UCLA I guess it's a CCTV camera or time lapse camera does show a date, thankfully, and we can use programs like Stellarium to plug in the location of that camera as best we can, roll back time to May 27th and see what was in view. Alarmingly, the full timecode of that camera appears to be May 27th 03 04:28:24 and so on. If it's from 2003, the STEREO satellites hadn't even launched yet. If it's from 2008, you'll be closer, but we can still see what was in the sky at the time (which appears to be the Moon in both cases…).
Then they have the balls to suggest it's as simple as doing the research. I do get annoyed when people selectively research things, rather than objectively do so.
What are we left with at the end of the video? Nonsense. Proof of nonsense. Proof of ignorance. Proof that conspiracy theorists will go to great lengths to try to get their points across, and will succeed in getting people like you concerned, when all it takes is a few minutes and some basic understanding of the satellites - handily explained on the website you can freely pull images from, no less - in order to show the claims as bunk.
Knowing you contacted Mr Elenin, I'm off to contact the guys at the NRL to give you that added piece of mind. I've written enough myself, really. Stick around.
david (guest) 25 Apr 2011 12:33
