Starfish Prime Image Sequence
Added 2024-06-26 05:05:26 +0000 UTCEight images in sequence of Fishbowl's Starfish Prime showing the evolution of its debris cloud and aurorae. The "great white fingers" as they're described are visible from the second through fifth images as the large, arcing protrusion from the top of the flash reaching several hundred kilometers above the Pacific Ocean. It's difficult to judge the exact distance of the aircraft from Johnston Atoll (I'm sure some director's report has its location somewhere), but it looks to be a C-135 or some variant thereof likely flying at ~40,000 feet. The raw magnitude and extent of this test's effects continue to hold it as one of my favorites.
Comments
Thatβs a good point about having included baker, and I completely agree fishbowl deserves its own video. Yeah that super dramatic sequence at the end was perfect, I got goosebumps during that. Thanks for introducing me to a BANGER song that now my whole family enjoys lmao.
shortie
2024-06-28 13:09:03 +0000 UTCYou are absolutely correct that the debris cloud of Starfish Prime is not a mushroom cloud in the slightest. However, ironically to your first point, sitting in awe of it is precisely why I included it. Fishbowl has always intrigued me, as most upper-atmospheric things do, so naturally when I began working on a video about nuclear explosions and their clouds, I began to research it a little further. Despite a detonation altitude of 400 km, the fireball, debris cloud, and aurorae of Starfish Prime has always seemed massive in these photos, and after doing some rough photogrammetric measuring, I was left in... well... awe. I remember sitting back in my dorm room chair for a good 5-10 minutes just staring at the third photo in this sequence, because what I was staring at was a cloud arcing probably 700-800 km up into the thermosphere. Granted, it's only barely a cloud. It's really thin wisps of atomized bomb debris and water vapor that would probably be invisible if not for its ionization of the air around it, but its scale is nonetheless impressive, and I felt it was worth sharing because of that. After all, I did discuss the Baker cloud, and that's not a mushroom cloud either. I really wanted to convey that exact feeling of awe that I felt after getting the numbers, hence the big, dramatic, instrumental sequence at the end. I know many people probably think I should've elaborated on Starfish Prime a bit in the video, but in hindsight I'm glad I didn't. Fishbowl is a topic that deserves its own video.
Jackson Douma
2024-06-28 11:30:22 +0000 UTCyou ever just sit in awe of the things humans have created? I thought it was interesting that these were listed in a video talking about mushroom clouds when they're just streaks, aren't they? I mean yeah they were the tallest reaction that we know of and maybe they were mentioned because they were also a thermonuclear reaction? Still, I'm genuinely curious why Starfish Prime was mentioned in your mushroom cloud video when the "clouds" aren't mushrooms clouds.
shortie
2024-06-27 15:53:50 +0000 UTC
