Plane Stopped in Midair

Todd Pattist wrote:

DM wrote:

ouch, knew I shouldn't have check back here. Pete, sweetie, you're
overparsing my words.

Debbbie, I'm glad you didn't let Peter get to you. He's one
of the resident "sweeties" here who has been coaxed by the
semi-anonymity of Usenet to ease off the polite social norms
just a bit farther than most.

Nicely put. And while it was good to see the chivalrous rush to defend
the "damsel in distress", Debbie's response to the isolated rude
response sounds like someone who can take care of herself in a usenet
"dust-up"!
--
Alex -- Replace "nospam" with "mail" to reply by email. Checked infrequently.

DM wrote in message ...
Yesterday I saw a cargo jet (a major air express company) come to what
seemed like a dead stop in midair as it was making its ascent. After
about 20 - 30 seconds of hanging without dropping out of the sky, it
continued climbing and apparently did not crash. There's been nothing
about it in the local news but I've still been very concerned. Could
someone here explain how such a thing is possible?

If the plane did get too slow ( a very unlikely possibility) the nose
would drop and the plane would accelerate again. That would assume the
pilots ignored the clax horn, the shaking controls and the indicator
on the airspeed.
I grew up in a military environment and often saw very large planes
(like giant C-5 cargo planes) coming and going. They always looked
like they were stopped in midair. The huge size makes your brain think
they can't be that big and therefor must be closer, smaller, and
moving slower than they really are.

-Roebrt

"Dean Wilkinson" wrote in message ...
Its called parallax. Your motion, the motion of the plane, and the
background were in the right configuration so that the parallax made the
plane appear to be stationary when in fact it was not...

Are you sure? Parallax is when you try to show a student how to make a
coordinated turn and you end up with the ball out to the left because
you aren't looking at the turn coordinator straight on.

-Robert, CFI

That's probably right. An optical illusion. One night in the late 1950s I
was flying back from Las Vegas to Laredo in a T-33. We were around 30,000'.
I was in the front seat and saw a saucer shaped red/orange object way out at
11 o'clock coming straight at me. (around this time there had been numerous
flying saucer reports in Texas). I pointed it out to the pilot in the back
seat and we both became alarmed. It maintained shape and increased in size,
indicating it was moving right towards us.

Just before I might have taken evasive action the "saucer" lost its disk
shape and we could see it was the moon rising between cloud layers. Since
we were looking through lots of atmosphere horizontally, it had a red/orange
color. When it first rose above the lower cloud level it was a small disk.
As it continued to rise we saw more of the moon, still in the disk shape
which produce the illusion it was moving straight towards us. Once more
than half the moon was above the cloud layer we could see it wasn't a disk
at all but the top of a round moon rising.

--

Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler History: http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
-

"DM" wrote in message
...
DM wrote:

snipped

thank you to everyone who replied. I've been considering all the
explanations offered and appreciate the information. I'm pretty close to
accepting the "optical illusion" idea but am not quite there yet. I was
looking hard at that plane because I really didn't want to believe what I
was seeing. If it weren't for the fact that I could read the name of the
carrier on the plane, I'd probably be going for a UFO explanation!

Fly safe everybody.

Debbie

"Todd Pattist" wrote in message
news
Debbbie, I'm glad you didn't let Peter get to you. He's one
of the resident "sweeties" here who has been coaxed by the
semi-anonymity of Usenet to ease off the polite social norms
just a bit farther than most.

Oh please. You haven't got a clue regarding the effect of "semi-anonymity
of Usenet" on me. Get off your damn high horse.

If some crackpot came up to me in person and told me that she'd seen an
airliner stop in mid-air, and oh-my-gosh she sure hopes THAT doesn't happen
too terribly often, and then I explained to her that it was simply an
optical illusion, and then she continued on insisting that
oh-no-I-know-what-I-saw-the-airliner-DID-stop-in-mid-air, I would say
straight to her face exactly what I wrote here.

If you knew me as a friend in person, you would not write something so
foolish.

It's great you have more patience with people scared to death of airplanes
for no reason, but that doesn't mean you have the inside scoop on why I say
the things I do. Frankly I'm sick up putting up with them, and given the
frustration I experience from people like this on a reasonably regular
basis, what I wrote here has been quite mild indeed.

Pete

Parallax is the scientific term for relative displacement of objects
observed at different distances. Parallax is used often by astronomers to
ascertain the distance of objects within our own solar system, and even
nearby stars by observing them from different points in the earth's orbit
around the sun.

I the case of the turn coordinator, the reason the ball appears off center
when observed from the side is due to parallax. This does not mean that
this is the only instance in which the concept of parallax is applied. The
original poster described another circumstance that results from parallax;
i.e. a moving object appearing to be stationary when compared to the
background when the observer is also moving at a rate and in a direction
that allows the parallax to create the illusion that the airplane is
stationary when in fact it is not...

I just wanted to point out to the group that this is a well known phenomenon
that has a scientific term to describe it.

Dean Wilkinson

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
om...
"Dean Wilkinson" wrote in message
...
Its called parallax. Your motion, the motion of the plane, and the
background were in the right configuration so that the parallax made the
plane appear to be stationary when in fact it was not...

Are you sure? Parallax is when you try to show a student how to make a
coordinated turn and you end up with the ball out to the left because
you aren't looking at the turn coordinator straight on.

-Robert, CFI

DM wrote:
*Yesterday I saw a cargo jet (a major air express company) come to
what
seemed like a dead stop in midair as it was making its ascent. After
about 20 - 30 seconds of hanging without dropping out of the sky, it
continued climbing and apparently did not crash. There's been
nothing
about it in the local news but I've still been very concerned. Could
someone here explain how such a thing is possible?

As a daily traveler
near a major metro airport, I'd really like to be reassured that this
is not a common occurrence.

Debbie *

Hi Debbie

The human mind is a funny thing. It sometimes sees what it wants to
see. Your first thought of "Gee, that aircraft is not moving"
compounded by all the other reasons given on other postings is why you
perceived something that was not happening.

I can remember a time when I crewed on a yacht on an ocean race up the
coast of Western Australia. Prior to the start we were advised of the
hazard of a number of naval vessels engaged in exercises in the general
vicinity of the course we were to track.

About 24 hours into the race the crew on watch reported a ship ahead.
(It was broad daylight and excellent visibility) Not long after one of
the crew stated that it was coming toward us. Ten minutes later another
one of the crew claimed "Yes, it looks like a war ship." Ten minutes
later yet another crew member said it was an aircraft carrier. A
further ten minutes and all on board had confirmed it was an aircraft
carrier and in fact we could clearly see the aircraft parked on the
deck.

When a rusting old oil tanker passed about 2 miles abeam we were all
quite shocked at the illusion our own minds had created.

The lesson I learnt from this:
Trust logic - not what you think you see.
Trust your instruments - not what you feel is right
Seeing is NOT believing.

Phil


--
mhquay
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted via OziPilots Online [ http://www.OziPilotsOnline.com.au ]
- A website for Australian Pilots regardless of when, why, or what they fly -

"Todd Pattist" wrote in message
...
To give you your due, I find most of your posts truthful and
accurate. You're not particularly tactful or patient,
however.

You'd be surprised at how patient I am with someone who is willing to admit
that they need information and is asking for it. You would probably NOT be
surprised at how IMpatient I am with someone who claims to need information,
and then starts arguing with a person who attempts to provide that
information.

As a glider pilot I get a lot of questions and people freaking out!. For
instance, when a friend landing a glider in a field due to loss of thermals and
not being able to make it to an airport ( a perfectly common thing in
sailplanes, ive landed in fields 7 times) the person driving on a nearby road
claimed an airplane "crashed" in the field. Soon the NTSB and several police
cars were at the site. The glider was undamaged, the pilot was eating an aplle
under the gliders wing, and the crew arrived 10 minutes later with the trailer
and in 30 more minutes they were all gone.

Just shows how basic (very basic) aviation should be taught in public schools.

See ya

Trace Lewis

In article ,
says...

Dean Wilkinson wrote:

Its called parallax. Your motion, the motion of the plane, and the
background were in the right configuration so that the parallax made the
plane appear to be stationary when in fact it was not...



okay! This is clicking for me, even though I know it may just be another
way of saying "optical illusion". I read this page,



Honestly, I hate to bicker, especially on a subject that has been beaten into
the ground, but I believe this response in incorrect. I don't think this
sighting illusion has anything to do with parallax.

As pilots, all of us learn in our early VFR training, that in scanning the sky
for possible traffic conflicts, the most dngerous "targets" are those that
appear not to be moving. No apparent motion indicates that the target is
heading pretty much straight toward us. The only modification in the visual
profile of an object in this case is a gradual increase in size. This can be
*very* gradual while the target is still some distance away.

The large airplane fools our brain - we don't *expect* it to be so big,
compared with other landmarks, so we guess it is closer than it actually is.
When the profile doesn't increase appreciably in size, compared with how close
we "believe" it to be, our brain concludes it is stationary, or moving very
slowly.

It is a simple illusion, easily explained and understood - yet very beautiful
and impressive to behold!

G Faris