UFO over O'Hare

baron said:
I literally don't know what else to say.
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Lets try this....emphasis mine

I have no difficult in understanding the reasoning by which this mechanic derived his conclusion.
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OK...are you saying that you understand why the mechanic would reason in an uncritical manner? Because I can understand that...it makes sense.

But if you're saying that you understand his actual reasoning, then you lose me because I simply don't understand that "type" of reasoning...it doesn't make sense.

What I'm asking (if it's the latter) is just how do about go about "understanding" uncritical reasoning??
 
meg said:
Why not? If that thing is one of those round air vent things you see on many building rooftops, a reflection of it might even be seen to spin.
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Not knowing where the observers were in relation to concourse C, itis even possible that the object they saw was the round thingie directly.
Fog plays heck with depth perception--and a 1900 foot ceiling is not a hard boundary.
A thing to remember--without something to focus on, when looking at the sky (esp. clear blue or consistent grey/gray)the eyes tend to focus about 8-10 feet out. That is what makes it so hard to find an airplane you hear going overhead. I learned the trick at NASA (Dryden) of dipping the eyes to the horizon, then back up. Gives you a point of focus and keeps it jst long enough to spot the whatever before unfocusing...
 
R.A.F. said:
OK...are you saying that you understand why the mechanic would reason in an uncritical manner? Because I can understand that...it makes sense.

But if you're saying that you understand his actual reasoning, then you lose me because I simply don't understand that "type" of reasoning...it doesn't make sense.

What I'm asking (if it's the latter) is just how do about go about "understanding" uncritical reasoning??
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I'll try once more, with a simple analogy from my experience. Somebody once told me they had seen a hummingbird in their garden. I said that hummingbirds don't live in the UK. They said nevertheless, they saw one. It was a couple of inches long, they said, had a long beak, hovered completely stationary for long periods and moved quickly from one flower to the next.

Now I happen to know that what they saw was a hummingbird hawk moth. It is large for a British moth, brightly coloured, has a long proboscis that looks at first glance like a beak, and it hovers and darts very much like a hummingbird. Hence its name.

The guy in question had therefore made an observation and based on that, come to a conclusion. I fully understood how he came by his conclusion despite the fact his reasoning was flawed and his conclusion extremely unlikely.

In the case of the mechanic, the same thing happened. For sure, he postulated an even more outlandish solution to his experience, but this makes no difference to the fact I can see how his reasoning, flawed as it was, caused him to believe it was a non-earthly craft.
 
baron said:
Also, my question (below) remains unanswered...
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The larger the actual size would make it easier to see details and possibly deduce it's origin. Looking at a 747 from 1/3 a mile is impressive and easy to identify. Seeing a 747 from 7-10 miles is not impressive at all and you can't tell what it really is. Since we are talking about small angular sizes here (on the matter of 2-3 degrees or less) and a limited distance (supposedly and upper limit of 1900 feet), we really aren't talking about something too large physically speaking. I have seen estimates of altitude ranging from 700 feet to 1500 feet. This means the object was somewhere on the size of a car, assuming any angular estimates were correct.

However, based on my astronomical experience, estimating angular size is not an easy task even when you have a reference to work with (moon, sun, Pleiades, big dipper pointer stars). Less experienced observers usually get the estimates wrong especially when they are reporting based on their memory. Remember, the sky was overcast and there was no ready reference point. I really think we are talking about something that was essentially a small dot in the sky where details could not be seen.
 
baron said:
I can see how his reasoning, flawed as it was, caused him to believe it was a non-earthly craft.
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See that wasn't too hard was it? If you had simply added the phrase I boldened in one of your earlier posts then we could have avoided this entire exchange. :)
 
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Good points, rwguinn and Astrophotographer as to how hard it is to estimate size and distance.

One thing that keeps coming into my mind is that this happened at approximately 4:30 pm. According to NWS, sunset in Chicago was at 4:38 pm on 11/7, so it was very close to sunset.

I am wondering if the sun low on the horizon might reflect off the round thingee and cast a shadow above on the low clouds? Kind of a Brocken spectre sort of thing.

This shadow would then disappear in a few minutes, either when the sun moved, or when other lights came on around the concourse.

Perhaps it wasn't even the light of the sun, but light from below. Looking at pictures of the inside of the concourse, it looks like that's a big long glass ceiling. Maybe that light could cast a shadow upward onto the low clouds, which then disappeared as other lights came on at sunset.
 
All indications are that the conditions which caused this sighting were very rare so an explanation has to account for that. Among the people who reported it were commercial pilots who would tell you that they've been in all weather conditions at the airport and have seen everything that airport lights do and have never seen this. Given this I lean more towards it being a weird weather event and maybe a combination of that with something more mundane like the position of the sun.

meg said:
Good points, rwguinn and Astrophotographer as to how hard it is to estimate size and distance.

One thing that keeps coming into my mind is that this happened at approximately 4:30 pm. According to NWS, sunset in Chicago was at 4:38 pm on 11/7, so it was very close to sunset.

I am wondering if the sun low on the horizon might reflect off the round thingee and cast a shadow above on the low clouds? Kind of a Brocken spectre sort of thing.

This shadow would then disappear in a few minutes, either when the sun moved, or when other lights came on around the concourse.

Perhaps it wasn't even the light of the sun, but light from below. Looking at pictures of the inside of the concourse, it looks like that's a big long glass ceiling. Maybe that light could cast a shadow upward onto the low clouds, which then disappeared as other lights came on at sunset.
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baron said:
OK, I will try one last time.

Someone sees an object in the sky. He doesn't know for sure how far away it is nor how big it is. He therefore estimates to the best of his ability. He uses factors such as the cloud ceiling, strength and direction of natural illumination, atmospheric hazing and his natural ability to grossly judge distance using the focus of his eyes. When the object moves through the cloud ceiling he is able to further refine his estimates based on its apparent speed and time until it disappeared.

He therefore concludes that the object, to the best of his judgement, was x' in diameter and y' above the ground.

What exactly is the problem here?

What's the alternative? "I saw something. I don't know what it was, nor am I qualified to offer any information about it. It could have been an inch wide or two miles. It hovered between ten feet and half a mile from the ground. It may have been solid or vapourous. It may not have existed at all except in my own mind."

Or maybe that's exactly what some people want to hear. Such an account would be that much easier to ridicule, wouldn't it?
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You are trying to solve an equation with two unknowns.

No one can judge both the size and the distance of an unknown object.
 
Temperature Inversion Reflection

At the woo site uforesearcher.com a poster named Meg may have found the solution. She was apologizing to the forum Administrator for sounding like a naysayer. She provided an aerial photo of concourse C-17, and noted that local TV weatherman Tom Skilling reported in the Chicago Tribune that there would be a temperature inversion over the area at the time.

Below I’ve posted an even closer photo from Terraserver. C-17 is the vacant slot immediately to the right of the large oval object affixed to the roof of the concourse. Witnesses had reported a gray elliptical object. As Meg suggested, it's entirely possible that the temperature inversion over the field reflected the image of this oval object in the manner of a mirage directly back to observers on the ground. This could explain why the witnesses were confined to such a small area, while those outside of it saw nothing at all. As the inversion fluctuated, so would the perceived altitude of the reflected image of the object.

c17.jpg
 
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Notrump said:
At the woo site uforesearcher.com a poster named Meg may have found the solution. She was apologizing to the forum Administrator for sounding like a naysayer. She provided an aerial photo of concourse C-17, and noted that local TV weatherman Tom Skilling reported in the Chicago Tribune that there would be a temperature inversion over the area at the time.
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I don't know. I understand that temperature inversions could cause unusual visual effects on objects near the horizon but almost straight overhead seems like a stretch to me. It could be possible I guess but seems unlikely. I am leaning towards something more physical like an errant balloon.
 
firecoins said:
your obviously taking yourself a way bit too seriously my man. take a deep breath and relax. chill out. This is a UFO report. All you can do is read the article. Unless you have more info than the article which I don't, stop making unreasionable demands.
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You think that it's unreasonable to want to examine the facts. This leaves any hypothesis you could posit in the dust of woo theory.

Show me the facts, then we'll talk.

-Fnord of Dyscordia-
 
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O'Hare Mirage

First, my apologies to Meg for not noticing that she is the same person who served as a clever undercover mole at uforesearch.com. I should have read all of the posts in this thread before I passed along her conjecture from the woo site that an oval structure over the O’Hare concourse may have appeared in a mirage. Her hypothesis may have merit and I applaud the work she did to develop it.

Meg also mentioned a report by Chicago TV weatherman Tom Skilling, who happens to be a friend of mine. Tom is similarly fascinated by the O’Hare incident and he commends Meg for her efforts. He suggested that I contact Penn State Professor Emeritus Craig Bohen who is an expert in atmospheric optics. I’m sending him an e-mail and will let you know his response. Tom leans toward Meg’s theory, but would like an explanation of the high speed of the object and the hole in the cloud. I suspect that the rapid movement of the image may have been due to fluctuation of the temperature inversion. The apparent hole in the cloud could have simply been the original object later seeming at a much greater distance but with a change in color or brightness due to the setting Sun. The professor may have better ideas. Here’s a link to his webpage.

http://www.met.psu.edu/dept/faculty/Bohren.htm

A poster on another message board suggested a site that presents a radio interview with a witness. He thought it was of interest because the witness described the edge of the object as wavering like a highway on a hot day. Here is the link to the webpage where you can find that interview. You’ll get a kick out of it.

http://www.rense.com/

The host, guest UFO expert and O’Hare witness are all pure woo and convinced of a government cover-up. Yet the witness’s description fits quite well with the idea of a mirage. Many years ago I was briefly an assistant air traffic controller. Yes, we received occasional UFO reports from pilots. Neither the controllers nor the pilots jumped to the conclusion that they were extraterrestrial in the couple of cases in which I was present. And never were we told not to reveal this information to friends or the media. Perhaps Meg can relate her ATC experiences in this regard. Actually, most of my working life was in the television news business. Again, never were we asked by anyone in authority to quash a story simply because it involved a UFO. Yet UFO woos are convinced that the government and the media have been in a giant conspiracy to suppress UFO information for nearly sixty years.
 
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Excellent, Notrump!

No apologies necessary to me at all. It's been a little hard to follow this thread, as there've been a few different conversations going on at once. That's so cool that you're a friend of Tom Skilling! After reading his weather blog, I was wishing there was a way I could talk to him about this. I am wondering if he had any reply to the rebuttal to the mirage theory that said that mirages only form when the object is below the horizon, and that it wouldn't be possible for a mirage to form that looked like it was directly overhead, - as at least one witness reported that he was looking straight up.

I'm also wondering if he had any comment on the brocken spectre/shadow on a cloud theory. - And I'm wondering if he has any pictures or information about what the sunset was like that day. I think it might be important that this happened right around sunset, as right around that time there would be all sorts of lights just coming on. Could one light have created the shadow, which was cancelled out when more lights went on?

I'm curious about the alleged rapid movement of the thing, too. Although I'm especially interested in finding the exact words of the witness. I suspect that there might be some inferring going on there. For example, a witness looked away for one minute, then looked back and it was gone, and he reconstructs this in his mind as the thing "shot up". Or maybe a reporter just chose that way of stating it, because he couldn't come up with a more logical explanation.

As to the "hole left behind", here's a quote from Skilling's forecast for that day:
Though haze and cloudiness will be extensive, precipitation is to remain downstate, and computer models predict drying above a thick low cloud deck—a process expected to scour several sun-blocking mid and high level cloud decks out of Chicago skies. Thus, even though low clouds may hang on, the effect of eliminating clouds above may be to allow skies to brighten. And, air may sink just enough to open holes in the low overcast over at least sections of the metro area this afternoon.
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So it could be that the vision/shadow/thing was projected over a "hole in the clouds" that was already forming, and when it was gone that's what they saw.

I've also wondered if the image just seemed to shrink rapidly, which a brain might interpret as shooting up higher into the sky.

Here's another thought: If it was a mirage, caused by light bending, what would it look like right when the light started to unbend? Might it appear to shoot straight up?

Unusual things happening around that time, that day, at that place:

1 Sunset. Daylight was fading and artificial lights were turning on.

2 Temperature inversion trapping clouds (and smoke and pollution) down low all day.

3 Humid atmosphere. Here is a picture of what Chicago woke to that morning. (From Skilling's weblog) It burned off by late morning, but I see that the temperature and dewpoint around 4:30 were within 5.1 degrees of each other, meaning that small pockets of fog might have been forming around that time.

4 Between 3:51 and 4:51pm visibility went from 2.5 miles to 4 miles. Something was changing right around that time.

5 Winds were calm at the time, but started picking up the next hour. Something was changing right around that time.

6 This is an airport with lots of big jets taking off and landing, meaning interesting engine-made winds and air movements. I don't know it as fact, but I think it is quite possible that fragment of a wingtip vortex might create a small lenticular cloud which could just hang there for a few minutes, then blow apart or shrink or dissipate.

7 This is an airport with lots of big jets rolling all around that concourse with big bright lights on them. Could some big aircraft light on the other side of the concourse been shining on the round thingee (or some other thingee) creating a shadow reflected on the low clouds which moved when the aircraft moved?

8 It was election day. I don't know if this is relevent, but who knows? I would guess that there might be more balloons escaping on election day than other days.

So, I can think of at least eight things that might or might not be factors that combine in creating a shadowy disc shaped image of an unknown size at an unknown altitude in the air.

I'm very much looking forward to what Dr. Bohren has to say about this all. Are you going to contact him? If so, I hope you'll share his replies here.


Where were you an ATA, Notrump? I was at ZKC. I too have a few stories about pilots asking if we were seeing things on radar, or pilots saying they saw something unusual over the radio. One thing I would like to note is that there is a very specific meaning to the word "report" to the FAA, and calling up the tower to ask if anybody was seeing this thing is not a "report". When I was a controller, if a pilot were to state that he/she was seeing something unusual, we would have to specifically ask them "Do you want to file a report?" Only if they said "Yes. I am filing a report." would we start the process, which involved calling over the supervisor, who would start the ball rolling pulling all the radar tapes, radio tapes, and landline tapes, which would be locked up and kept whole as evidence. Copies would later be made and transcribed. We'd be pulled off the sector to make a written report of the incident. Union reps were called, investigators were called in. All sorts of stuff would happen then. This was not a small thing. It was treated with the same level of seriousness as a separation error or an accident.

My understanding was that the airlines treated "reports" with the same seriousness. And pilots were not quick to file reports. The would only do it if they were genuinely convinced that something real happened and the safety of their aircraft might have been compromised. It generally is not good for one's aviation career to be found that one sees things that no one else can see, so pilots take "filing a report" very seriously.

United has said that there were no official reports made, and that there's nothing on their operation logbooks about the incident. The FAA made similar remarks. So that says something to me. It says that even though some people might have witnessed something and they called the tower and asked the controllers if they saw it too, no official reports were made about the incident, because nobody considered it to be that serious.

Please do let me know what Dr. Bohren makes of the whole thing. While I'm sure that none of us will be able to "solve" the mystery after the fact, I'm enjoying learning about and contemplating all the fascinating phenomena that can happen in unusual atmospheric conditions, and I'm sure his reply will be very interesting.
 
Professor Bohren's Analysis

Meg –

Your eight points all appear well considered and quite relevant. A poster at another message board says he’s eager for this to be analyzed on the TV show “Mythbusters”. Wouldn’t that be great if we eventually come close to solving this. Meanwhile, I have received Professor Bohren’s analysis dismissing the mirage conjecture:


I do not find the mirage conjecture reasonable. Mirages are blamed for
everything imaginable by people who know nothing about them. A mirage is
a distorted image appreciably different from the corresponding object,
the result of transmission of light in a nonuniform atmosphere. This
nonuniformity is usually the result of temperature gradients. Mirages do
not shoot up into the sky. Popular science books and textbooks almost
always show mirages highly distorted, giving the false impression that
they can result in appreciable angular displacements. Not so. Consider,
for example, a ship on water that is colder than the air aloft. The
observer is at some distance from the ship (neglect the curvature of
Earth). Without an atmosphere, the ship would be seen at some angle above
the surface. With an atmosphere (and a temperature gradient), the image
of the ship is displaced upwards. This is called a superior mirage, not
because it is better than other mirages but because it results in lifting
of in image above where it would be otherwise. But the angular
displacement is of order 1 degree or so. Thus an image cannot be lifted
into the clouds, even though you will see lots of diagrams that convey
this notion. The huge distortion in the diagrams is necessitated because
if the mirage were drawn to scale, the displacement would hardly be
noticeable.

There do exist wall mirages, that is distorted images as a consequence of
large temperature gradients near solid surfaces. You can see them all the
time in parking lots on hot days. But again, the angular displacements
are small. And you have to look very close to the surface (and along the
surface).

Holes in clouds, however, are not mirages. They are seen from time to
time and are photographed. I have a few photographs of these "fall streak
holes", none of them spectacular. But occasionally someone takes a photo
of a beautiful circular fall streak hole, and this is often followed by
mindless chatter about some unknown physical phenomenon. Rubbish. Fall
streak holes have nothing to do with mirages and the mechanism for
producing them has been understood for years.

I hope that this helps.

Beware of people bearing mirages.

Craig Bohren


In response I’ve asked him to speculate on what the apparition may actually have been. Without credible persons of science offering reasonable possibilities, the ufologists (and much of the public) tend to accept by default bizarre imaginings of extraterrestrial visitations.

If you would like to hear the exact words of a witness, listen to the radio interview that I provided a link to in my previous post.

http://www.rense.com/

You may have to scroll down the webpage to find where to download the O’Hare UFO discussion. The interview is quite extensive. The radio host is pure woo, but he does a fine job as a journalist in drawing out testimony from the witness. For a moment the host even questions the wisdom of extraterrestrials visiting a busy airport.

I was briefly on the “A” side at Chicago Center before washing out at the Oklahoma City academy due to a lack of quickness in telling left from right (west from east). BTW, I once witnessed a fabulous UFO when I was 12. I awoke around midnight one warm spring evening and went to the kitchen for a class of milk. Outside the screen door I saw a brilliant white light hovering motionless about half way above the southern horizon. I knew it could not be Venus, which is never out at midnight. A UFO – Wow! I quickly ran out into the yard with my new telescope. My heart pounded fiercely as I focused on a huge elliptically shaped mother ship surrounded by four tiny scout craft! My great excitement lasted for about 15 seconds - until it dawned on me that I had “discovered” Jupiter and its four great satellites.

-- Curt
 
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