You asserted above:
“I've stated, very clearly, several times, that the figure could be accurate.
This is just plain false. What you have stated clearly was QUOTE: “And without that knowledge we cannot draw any firm conclusion.”
Exactly. It could be accurate, and it could be inaccurate.
Note the first part of that sentence. We'd need to see the original error analysis to know for sure.
Do we have that?
Oh dear.
Okay, so maybe I haven't said it explicitly several times, but I have stated it explicitly at least once before the post you're responding to above, and have repeated several times that I am not calling their abilities into question. I questioned why there was no error quoted, criticised Macabee's analysis, and noted some possible sources of error. See below for details.
You stated:
” I merely pointed out mistakes in Macabee's maths and analysis and possible sources of error for the measurements.”
Again utterly false. SHOW me where you have done what you say you have done. You cannot because you have not.
Liar. You know very well that I have done that, because you responded to it by trying to brush it off.
.....Snipped to get to the bits about Macabee's analysis.....
2. The calculations he does to find the resolution of the camera are inaccurate, it's more like 3.5 arcseconds, which corresponds to a diameter of 9 pixels, not 12, giving a total pixel value for the image of about 65. Even if we take his 12 pixel diameter, that only gives about 115 pixels for the whole image, not the 140 he claims.
That's Macabee's bad maths, he rounds off before the end of the calculation, and can't even get the area of a circle correct!
3. His estimate of the image size being 12 pixels diameter is based on the object being 150,000 ft away, but that would only be the case if it were directly above one of the observing stations, something that is extremely unlikely, particularly as the report states that the object was "between the base and Tularosa Peak". This reduces the pixel number for the observation, probably down to less than about 50. It is of course impossible to know, because we have no details of this other than the conclusions, which lack an error estimate.
Macabee completely ignores the obvious, that the object wasn't directly above an observing station, so its distance from the camera is more than the altitude of 150,000 ft. That means the angular size would be smaller, making his estimate even less accurate. And it was pretty bloody poor to start with, more than a factor of 2 wrong!
4. Let's assume for a moment that the objects were directly above one of the observing stations. This means that the other observing station which contributed an azimuth angle was at least 90 miles away, so the only reliable size data would have come from a single station.
Not too big a problem, assuming the altitude calculation is correct.
5. Although we are told where the object was located, we aren't told which observation posts made the relevant observations, they are only identified in the document as P10 and M7, designations which appear nowhere else. So we have no way of knowing the distance between the observation post and the objects they were observing.
I would assume that the observations were made by the two posts nearest to the object, but we can't be certain. If not then the extra distance introduces a larger error.
6. Filming an unknown object is not the same as filming a rocket. You know what time the rocket launched at, so it's possible to independently synchronise the images. This isn't possible with an unidentified object, so there are possible errors in the timing, which would lead to errors in the altitude estimate.
Possible errors in timing. Possible. Which they may have been unaware of. That's not to say that they were sloppy, or bad at their jobs, just that they may have been unaware of a small error in timing, due to imaging things that they weren't trained to image and weren't experienced at imaging. Given that we are told that these objects were moving at very high speed even a small error in timing could produce a fairly large error in the altitude measurement. An error that they would be unaware of. Through no fault of their own.
