If the contrail is viewed from any other angle other than straight on, it looks like a “true” contrail. If it is viewed with the plane coming directly at the viewer, particularly in the setting sun, it can look like a missile going up, when it is in fact a horizontal contrail coming toward the viewer.
This makes sense to me. Particularly when I read about people saying that they were amazed that anyone would shoot a missile off so close to LAX. I’m guessing that was exactly where the plane was headed.
ETA - how hard would it be to figure out if there was a jet in that exact location at that time that would fit this explanation?
That looks awfully…robust…for a contrail. Planes fly over me all the time. I see contrails nearly daily and that contrail has more…mass for lack of a better word…than any I ever see.
Not saying it is impossible and that my admittedly amateur observations are in any way authoritative but still looks different to me.
Indeed it looks like the thick and more jagged contrail left by a rocket.
Last saturday conditions were right in these parts for contrail growth. Rather than dissipating over 10 mins or so, they gradually got larger and thicker, until a set of them ended covering much of the sky in a heat retaining veil of cirrus.
Sunset conditions also greatly affect their appearance. That shot at Contrail Science, is practically a dark field image. Of course it looks bigger and bushier than a pale white wisp against an afternoon’s standard whitish blue sky.
Um — wouldn’t the military state outright that a jet contrail can look like a missile under certain circumstances, I’m sure this is not the first time this has come up.
Why am I hearing K saying “The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus” as I read Euphonious post?
If it was a jet, we should be able to pretty easily tell which jet, shouldn’t we? So why haven’t they figured that out yet?
I’ve been following the story all day, waiting for the “real” explanation. The contrail theory sounds the most likely to me. My co-worker was in a tizzy about it all afternoon. He was absolutely certain it was a missile. Of course, he is also absolutely certain that the Deepwater Horizon accident was a terrorist attack, so I felt it wise to wait for another opinion.
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. If they say it was a contrail, they’re covering something up. If they don’t say it was a contrail they must be covering something up.
Not really. If they say it was a contrail from this jet, XXXXX, that was out over the ocean at the time doing blahblahblah, that’s an explanation. Just saying “it was some jet” isn’t giving an explanation.
Who’s jet? Ours? From where? Who was the pilot? Where was he going? Why was he all alone? Did he make a turn?
If someone could say “that was Americair Flight 8669 en route to Luxembourg”, then we’d have an explanation.
But someone saying “it was a jet” isn’t an explanation.
If it’s an approaching contrail I question the visibility. LAX is generally going to have something like 10 miles of visibility (it was 10 miles when I pulled up the weather before posting this). This compares to an area like PHX which could easily have 100 to 150 miles of visibility.
It does look like a sun reflecting off something toward the end of the video and not a rocket engine light source.
If it was a missile then what did it hit? What did it destroy? Where is the missile body or any of the evidence of a missile??
I’m going with the contrail theory. People often mistake what they are seeing in the sky…mistake the perspective, speed, direction, size and everything else.
I’m sure the military will be along soon with a similar explanation once they eliminate other possibilities and they are confident with their explanation.
Warnings of live missile firings were issued by the military for the area between Naval Air Station Pt. Mugu (near Ventura) and San Nicolas Island of the Channel Islands.
From here.
So I’m gonna guess US & allied live-firing missile exercise, without specific timing so anti-missile forces would be surprised.