Re: Unidentified object in a cloud chamber

* bz:
* Jon W Mooney:

I filmed a peculiar "ghost" in an aquarium cloud chamber that my 17 yo
son built.

The movie is http://www.jwmooney.com/cloud1tcmooney.mpg It is 5.4 Mb

The first few times I viewed it, I thought the glow was a reflection of
my camera in the aquarium glass. There is a reflection of my younger
son's arm at the end of the film.

Then I noticed the alpha trails in the middle of the chamber. Finally,
I noticed that there is at least one alpha trail at every point where
the direction of this thing changes.

I drew a map of what I think I see http://www.jwmooney.com/map.pdf

[snip]

I have looked at your video, frame by frame, doing contrast enhancement on
it, and I can't see even your alpha trails (do see some faint white areas
but nothing like I have seen in cloud chambers). Did the video lose
something in translation???

I see the "ghost" reflection that Jon mentions -- it's in the first half
of the video. It looks like a reflection of light that's seemingly
moving because of change of viewpoint, i.e., probably not something
within the cloud chamber but rather a stationary light source outside
the chamber. It's virtually undetectable in still frames, but clear as
a moving phenomenon, which I think goes to the show that the human eye
is good at detecting movement -- to do this scientifically it should
probably be detected by machine, but are there video-oriented image
processing programs that can do the same as the eye, compensating for
the camera movement and accentuating frame-to-frame differences?

I don't see any "alpha trails", whatever they could be.

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Unidentified object in a cloud chamber
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