| Links | |
| Books |
|
|
The following spreadsheet shows ranges of and the bands of potentially valid object altitude, speed and size, based on the following:
The object was at an elevation of 60 degrees when the shadow crossed the road.
The object was at an elevation of 7 degrees when it first became visible to the witness.
The angular size of the object was 18 degrees (measured estimate - seven inches at two feet).
The open sky visible was 30 degrees.
The time to cross that sky was 12.5 seconds.
The object could never be higher than 290 feet AGL (ground level being the river bed) or it would have been observable by the party guests.
The object could not be lower than 100 feet above the ridge line (170 feet AGL) (with some slack allowed if not a mundane object).
The rows in green are those which meet all of those constraints. This means the following (with allowance for the inherent imprecision of the measurements and the apparent precision of the spreadsheet):
At shadow passage, the object is no more than about 200 feet distant from the shadow crossing, 244 degrees TN. It is between 200 and 300 feet above the riverbed, tens of feet abovc the ridges.
At first observance, the object is between less than a quarter and more than a third of a mile distant at 325 TN. It is between 150 and somewhat more than 200 feet above the riverbed. It is between 300 and 500 feet across. It is travelling somewhere between 35 and 75 mph.
If the object maintained level altitude throughout the sighting (suggested by the witnesses), then a 200 foot AGL altitude is the best compromise, pointing at the 200 and 2400 foot distance bands.
The shadow crosses the road 0.15 mi ahead of the vehicle. This fixes the position of the object at that time as roughly perpendicular to the road and 200 feet to the left.
We now know that the object becomes visible at a distance of about 0.32 mi ahead of the vehicle several seconds (est. 6) later. Ignoring vehicle motion (pretending the car is stationary), the object has traveled about 0.15 mi in those seconds. The following shows the speeds and the distances covered in 6, 8, 10, and 15 seconds, to allow for the possibility of error in the estimates:
With the vehicle in motion at 30 mph, the vehicle travels the distance shown in the top line of the matrix for each of the times. This must be added to the distance traveled by the object for the true distance traveled (the appearance measurement is relative to the witness location at that time). This means the distance traveled by the object is between 0.20 and 0.28 mi. Once again, the value calculated converges on the higher end of the speed scale, as suggested by the first spreadsheet. Perhaps the best compromise is a likely speed of 70-75 mph for a shadow to appearance time of 10 secs.
The physical distance traveled from appearance to disappearance is about 0.25 mi. This would require an additional 10-15 secs, which is in agreement with the witness estimated sighting duration from the interview.
This site is an archive of the content of the MUFON CT website from the late 1990s. The current MUFON CT organization should be contacted through the MUFON web site.