Is it for real? Australian catches close-up footage of meteor fireball

[Michael B-C]

I know its been suggested that being speechless is a normal response but I have to admit I'm skeptical. We have no context for the random nature of the start of the film e.g. capturing a beach bench etc on a windy day; very random. Then the film suggests that something suddenly draws the cameraman's attention to the skies. There is then close to a 12 second gap before the light of the object begins to break through the clouds. There doesn't appear to be any reason for the camera move - no change in sound etc to suggest a motivation. If you did suspect something was happening up there would you make no comment even to your self (although not everyone talks out loud I grant you)? Then there is no vocalized shock at the sudden arrival of the object or the explosion as it breaks up. Again, I appreciate not everyone is naturally vocal but I suspect being present with such a rare and dangerous phenomenon would surely prompt some kind of an involuntary response - including diving for cover - from almost anyone. I get the momentary freeze impulse but it still feels suspect to me - all too calm. But I remain open to the possibility. If it is, its a 1 in a million+ film to capture it all.

 

[Laura]

I know its been suggested that being speechless is a normal response but I have to admit I'm skeptical. We have no context for the random nature of the start of the film e.g. capturing a beach bench etc on a windy day; very random. Then the film suggests that something suddenly draws the cameraman's attention to the skies. There is then close to a 12 second gap before the light of the object begins to break through the clouds. There doesn't appear to be any reason for the camera move - no change in sound etc to suggest a motivation. If you did suspect something was happening up there would you make no comment even to your self (although not everyone talks out loud I grant you)? Then there is no vocalized shock at the sudden arrival of the object or the explosion as it breaks up. Again, I appreciate not everyone is naturally vocal but I suspect being present with such a rare and dangerous phenomenon would surely prompt some kind of an involuntary response - including diving for cover - from almost anyone. I get the momentary freeze impulse but it still feels suspect to me - all too calm. But I remain open to the possibility. If it is, its a 1 in a million+ film to capture it all.

I think you are reading way more into it than is evident from the video. There is no evidence that anything caught the guy's attention and he sat on the bench and the camera pretty much maintained it's perspective. It happened in something like 7 seconds... so yeah, you are putting demands on the situation that are not warranted.

I think it is still 50-50 that it is authentic.

 

[Michael B-C]

With you Laura. I was too busy thinking about the sound to notice he actually sat down on the bench! I've also bothered to read the guys comments on Youtube and he seems genuine when he says 'Scary stuff, i was literally lost for words'. Still extraordinary that it happen within seconds of sitting down - but that's how life can work.

 

[Laura]

With you Laura. I was too busy thinking about the sound to notice he actually sat down on the bench! I've also bothered to read the guys comments on Youtube and he seems genuine when he says 'Scary stuff, i was literally lost for words'. Still extraordinary that it happen within seconds of sitting down - but that's how life can work.

I've watched the video about 20 times. I also watched a number of other fireball/meteorite videos just to get a good feeling - and to see if possibly there was some copying going on. So, I leave it open that it could be fake, but I'm leaning toward authentic. All the folks who just KNOW what cameras will or will not do and what human beings will or will not do may not have spent as much time contemplating the realities as speculating on the theories.

 

[Mal7]

This can be seen as the point of light overwhelming the image, then the rest of the scene darkens relative to the source of bright light as the hardware compensates. It is then followed by a further adjustment if the light source is removed or fades suddenly, the whole scene will appear dark and then readjust brighter.

You can see the guys camera do this. At the start where he points towards the sun before sitting down - the camera is adjusting the overall brightness of the image down (darkening) as he sits down. The path/clouds are much darker by comparison, and the camera readjusts after a second to balance the input.
Having looped this, you can see the camera adjusts in these periods after about half a second.

Where it does not balance is with the flash of the meteor. The entire scene brightens. This should not happen.
Given the light from the meteor lasts many seconds and then fades abruptly you should see balancing in both direction - firstly as it gets brighter, the brightness of everything else in the image gets turned down. Then one it's gone, everything should appear dark for half a second or so.

What I do see happening is the entire scene brightening, which suggests a photoshop style image filter and poor knowledge of cameras.

Maybe the camera had a fixed aperture/exposure setting? To me, the sky looks uniformly dark throughout the video, except when it lightens due to the meteor. When he sits on the chair, the camera turns away from a brighter part of the sky (facing the sun) to a darker part of the sky. If it was a fixed aperture, one would expect the whole scene to brighten when the meteor appears.

Something else I wonder about though is whether, as the whole scene brightens with the passage of the meteor, should one be expecting to see some shadows cast in front of the plants at 0:22-0:30?

In this video of the February 2013 Russian meteor, for example, the meteor produces shadows in front of the power poles at 0:37 - 0:42:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-3NNZpiSXo

But anyway, we already know that this kind of event does happen, so in that respect, whether this particular video is genuine or a hoax isn't really OSIT such a big issue.

 

[Keit]

Could mean nothing, could mean something, but I couldn't find any reports about this meteorite on the following two places:
http://thelatestworldwidemeteorreports.blogspot.com
http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com
This source is probably far from being comprehensive, but still has a big collection of updated items.

 

[United Gnosis]

Photography has been a big hobby of mine for over 10 years, as well as having been director of photography for a newspaper for a year. Not a claim to fame, but as a geek in general I know at least about cameras as the average photography geek.

Just to say that, considering the functional design for a body cam, it most likely uses a fixed focal length wide-angle, devoid of lens hood. The lens flare appearing in the image before the object actually entering the field of view is also consistent with what I'd expect of a wide-angle without hood. Remember that the field of view of the captor is not all that the lens sees, but only the center part of the image where exposition is well-balanced across the surface. The object is already in view of the lens and projecting glare before it enters the captor's field of view, so the video is consistent on that point.

Also, as for the brightness compensation function of the camera, without access to the firmware to analyze its algorithms, everything is pure conjecture: yet you cannot throw it away for an apparent lack of compensation; i'd expect a wide angle body cam not to be spot- or center-weighed, but rather to have a matrix-style evaluation of the whole surface. Also, compensation could be time-weighted, to avoid things such as one person in a corner shining a light and losing exposure across the rest of the image.

In fact, the general "brightening" of the image (very obvious on the bushes, for instance) is consistent with the loss of contrast that happens around a seriously overexposed source of light in the image.

I'm not saying it's necessarily true; just that both the glare and lack of exposure compensation are not absolute telltale signs of fraud.

Source: 200k photos taken on DSLRs, from 11mm to 500+ (35mm)

Also, as for the claim it's a hype trick for the camera: who better, statistically speaking, to get bodycam footage of a meteor than somebody who tests bodycams for a living? Synchronicity can work in subtle ways, and that seat must have looked like such a comfy spot to get some footage of the bay and (gorgeous) sky...

 

[Laura]

Meanwhile, along comes this item:

Fireball '2nd only to Chelyabinsk meteor' explodes unseen over Atlantic
Published time: 23 Feb, 2016
https://www.rt.com/news/333345-fireball-meteor-explodes-atlantic/

The largest meteor since the one that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 burned up over the open ocean some 1,000 kilometers from the Brazilian coast on February 6, NASA reports.

An extraterrestrial body allegedly the size of a large living room, about 5 to 7 meters across, released energy equivalent to 13,000 tons of TNT, which is 40 times less than the Chelyabinsk phenomenon. The object entered the atmosphere before exploding at approximately 30km above the Atlantic. It couldn`t be observed from the ground as it fell too far away from any populated area...

The data on the explosion, which became publicly available only two weeks after the incident occurred, is still too scarce to draw any extensive conclusions about its scale and the method NASA had employed to detect the meteor. Plait suggests the scientists might use either seismic monitors to spot the sound wave from the explosion or atmospheric microphones which caught an infrasound from the blast.

On average, 100 tons of meteor debris fall onto the Earth every day, Plait notes, however, they cause little to no damage. Many of the pieces are too small to cause any impact. The majority of the bigger objects disintegrate at speeds of 10 to 100 km per second, at which rocky debris burn up before reaching the ground.

“The increase in surface area means more heating and glowing, then those pieces break up and get smaller, and you get a runaway cascade,” explains the researcher. If the process of disintegration goes too quickly, then people can observe an “explosion,” which is in fact a result of conversion of the kinetic energy into light and heat.

Events of the scale similar to the February 6 explosion occur several times per year, but people are mostly unaware of them as the debris lands in the ocean.

AND, recall the Indian guy killed by a meteorite right around the same time.

I think things are definitely interesting out there.

 

[Gawan]

Maybe these are also precursors for the big asteroid that comes closer to earth in March?