Some video's are doing the rounds, some in respected news media, purporting to be showing the demise of UARS but in reality definitely something else.
This one posted on Space.com is an example. This clearly shows a Chinese lantern balloon, not UARS: you can see the bag and burner.
Another one is here (with thanks to Dan Fischer for pointing me to it): this British video on the website of The Telegraph simply shows an aircraft with contrail. As science writer Dan Fischer remarked in despair about this one on twitter: "don't you people ever watch the sky?!". Indeed, one would expect people recognize aircraft and contrails these days. Yet we see them pop up time and again in the media, as purported footage of "fireballs" and now as "UARS".
There is more of this stuff doing the rounds on the intarwebz currently. So be very careful with purported footage and images of "UARS reentering". A lot is not what it seems.
And here is ... another particularly stupid example where a simple contrail is the falling UARS!
ReplyDelete