Mystery rocket launch near Seattle

https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2018/06/was-there-unannounced-missile-launch-on.html

Above post is from Cliff Mass, one of the atmospheric sciences professors at the University of Washington. A weather webcam on long exposure picked up a rocket launch, but isn't sure if it's military or commercial. Given that the flight was at 3:56am on Sunday morning, flew from the direction of a naval air station, looks like it's burning awfully high in the sky, and I don't know of any hobby launch sites with FAA waivers at all, let alone anything like this, it seems likely that it's military. Any guesses on what it might be? Would there be a NOTAM issued about this kind of launch if the Navy was planning it?

Did the cleaning crew bump the "do not push" red button?

It's just the long exposure that makes it like a rocket or missle. A missile would have travelled miles during the twenty-second exposure. So, there wouldn't be a missile-like object visible in the image at the top of the streak.

-- Roger

jadebox said:

It's just the long exposure that makes it like a rocket or missle. A missile would have travelled miles during the twenty-second exposure. So, there wouldn't be a missile-like object visible in the image at the top of the streak.

-- Roger

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This makes sense, but if the (supposed) missile were to launch during the last second or two of the exposure it seems like it would look like that.

RocketFeller said:

This makes sense, but if the (supposed) missile were to launch during the last second or two of the exposure it seems like it would look like that.

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If the rocket was there for only a couple of seconds, it wouldn't have been exposed long enough to be visible in the image.

I am pretty sure it's an aircraft reflecting the rising sun. You can see the horizon starting to light up at the bottom of the photo.

Looks like an airplane flying southbound.

it looks more horizontal than verticle. seems if it was a missile, there would be someone from oak harbor that would have said something

Launching rockets from Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island is not new! In the mid 60's numerous rockets were flown from an area just West of the Seaplane Base in Oak Harbor Bay. I personally witnesses multiple launches. All of launches never exceeded one thousand feet in height, and yes, they were mine!! :smile: They were part of the science clubs rocket program. Two thousand feet of mud flats, when the tide was out, to fly over and no trees. Unfortunately, all but one of those rockets were lost when the high school science wing burned. The surviving rocket was my Centuri Payloader which I had at home for a paint job. I flew it into the 80's when the ejection charge failed to fire and it came in ballistic.

Well someone had to celebrate World Gin Day.

qquake2k said:

I'm certainly not an expert on such things, but it doesn't look horizontal to me. I also don't see any wings. And finally, what kind of airplane produces a plume like that?

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The trail from it doesn't look like any natural airliner contrails around the flight levels 30k-40k ft that I have ever observed. My dad's an ATP and I've seen a lot of contrails from planes but never from any with long exposure. Natural airline contrails from turbine engines have a spacing interval visible from ground. I don't know if any camera distortion is at play. If a naval warship was using a military operational area it would not need any NOTAM as only general aviation traffic usually ventures into it with clearance and some areas are restricted no fly areas. Theoretically a naval warship could engage a target with long range anti ship or cruise missiles for hundreds to thousands of miles from US or international waters if target is deemed a threat. My navy buddies are so old they remember doing 5" deck gun auto loader drills and were horrified of the destroyer johnas Ingram losing an artillery shell on a navy gun range back in the 70's. They had nightmares of "Shell lost cease fire." So occasionally the navy loses artillery and missiles while even practicing but it is rare.

As far as a missile I can't see any smoke plume from the launch point. But the image is so long term exposed and possible far away???? I don't know.

Flyfalcons said:

Looks like an airplane flying southbound.

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And perhaps the time exposure of the photo stretched the fuselage to appear missile like in the zoomed photo. What is pissing my eyes off is the time exposure is so long and the details are vague. When you naturally see a contrail in person, you see more details to it. There might be a gap but it's not visible in the picture. For twin engine airliners you see a gap between contrails for left and right turbines for wing mounted engines on b737-777 or A320 type airframes. I've never seen contrails at sunrise or sunset but I'm guessing they are cloud enough like that they can reflect rays of light similar. And if people want to argue it's a rocket or missile then I'm all like where is the smoke trail from launch?????? What I don't have much experience of is seeing the long time photo exposure of either missiles or contrails. This camera is distorting it somehow.

qquake2k said:

I'm certainly not an expert on such things, but it doesn't look horizontal to me. I also don't see any wings. And finally, what kind of airplane produces a plume like that?

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An airplane, leaving a contrail, flying from over the horizon to directly over your head does not look horizontal.

I was close. It appears to have been a helicopter, not a jet as I thought:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...nch-over-whidbey-island-photo-from-washington

Summary: It appears that the streak was made by the lights of an air ambulance.

(Dang, right after I posted and the page refreshed I read Roger's post above. So I wrote mine before I read that. So close, but not quite right, so I edited most of it out. - Tony)

Wow, pretty cool that so many folks got to wondering what in the heck it was and figured it out. As usual, the truth is a lot more boring than conjecture.


Tony

Upper area cropped, enlarged, and contrast/brightness tweaked.



That's no sunlit airliner fuselage. It's an unlit rocket proportioned white-ish(?) body, with far too much massively bright trail directly behind the back end to be a sunlit "contrail".

Here's a low-sun-angle image of an airliner with sunlit contrails. Contrail from each engine visible. Since the above image shows the shape of the "vehicle", if it was an airliner it would show multiple contrails (if it was a "side" view of an airliner flying towards the camera..... it would have to be banked at 90 degrees to the horizon doing knife-edge flying to seemingly merge the contrails edge-on in such a perspective).




Further Googling found this possible explanation. Though that does not seem to explain why there would be such a shaped white-ish looking body image in the photo, rather than a very short curved body if it was the vehicle they conclude that it is. :

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...nch-over-whidbey-island-photo-from-washington

georgegassaway said:

Upper area cropped, enlarged, and contrast/brightness tweaked.

That's no sunlit airliner fuselage. It's an unlit rocket proportioned white-ish(?) body, with far too much massively bright trail directly behind the back end to be a sunlit "contrail".

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Uh, no. A 20-second exposure is going to do strange things when you have bright, moving objects contrasting with a dark background.

It is not a rocket. It is most likely a helicopter, or rather the lights of a helicopter blurred out by the long exposure. See the link I posted above.

Photos of rockets taken before dawn or after dusk don't look like that. You either get a streak of light if you take a long exposure or a dot if you take a short exposure. It would be difficult to see the rocket at all (unless it is close enough to sunrise or sunset that it gets illuminated above some altitude or you have an atomic powered flash attachment).

In this case, the photo is a single, twenty-second exposure. Even if illuminated the rocket would be a very long blur. If, as was suggested, the rocket was launched after the exposure started so that only a few seconds of the flight was captured, the rocket would not have been exposed long enough to even show up.

Andrew_ASC said:

I don't know.

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*gasp*

Perhaps it is MH370.

solved: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...nch-over-whidbey-island-photo-from-washington

georgegassaway said:

]
Further Googling found this possible explanation. Though that does not seem to explain why there would be such a shaped white-ish looking body image in the photo, rather than a very short curved body if it was the vehicle they conclude that it is. :

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...nch-over-whidbey-island-photo-from-washington

Click to expand...

It isn't the body of the helicopter you are seeing at the top of the story. It is an elongated, blurred image of a light on the front of it. The photo was taken in the dark. It is a long exposure, so moving lights appear as streaks.