Large UFO's orbiting the sun?

[aliensdidit]

So there was a broadcast by a Chinese news channel about these so called UFO's around the sun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpzDS...eature=related

Of course the youtube comments are about China doing UFO disclosure and such.

Could it be asteroids passing the sun? Can anyone check that out?

[Extrasolar]

I just downloaded the last 500 images from the Soho EIT 304 image data and ran it through some video processing. I noticed some pixels that appeared to be orbiting the sun on the lower right side of the frame. There is also a large chunk of "objects" orbiting the lower left side of the sun in the exact same manner. Without knowing exactly which images the Chinese broadcast are looking at, its hard to say. My conclusion is that they are broken or mis-calibrated pixels since most of the anomalies appeared to be rotating in the same manner. You can check out these images and create your own animation online via the soho website:

SOHO Movie Theater

Once you've set up your movie, you can zoom your browser in to get a closer look.

[aliensdidit]

But suppose they arn't proken pixels, what would you say. At the moment the most rational explanaition I can come up with is some sort of asteroid. Or a piece of an asteroid.

[glappkaeft]

But suppose they arn't proken pixels, what would you say. At the moment the most rational explanaition I can come up with is some sort of asteroid. Or a piece of an asteroid.

Then I would say cosmic rays striking the detector. The only rational explanation is that they are artifacts of various kinds although the youtube video is of such poor quality that it's hard to make out anything in all that blur. The SOHO link above makes it obvious that they are one pixel artifacts.

[Van Rijn]

Could it be asteroids passing the sun? Can anyone check that out?

There can be comets, but as I don't see any references in the video to what images they're referring to (no date/time stamps as far as I can tell), I'm not going to try hunt up the specific images.

What I will point out is that image artifacts, as well as sungrazing comets, are common in SOHO and Stereo images. And, there are a lot of YouTube videos by people who didn't google "SOHO artifacts" or "Stereo artifacts".

Here's some info on SOHO image artifacts:

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_01_17/

http://pec.yuku.com/topic/401

And on Stereo image artifacts:

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/artifacts/artifacts.shtml

[neilzero]

I forgot the source, but there are 100 or so known small asteroids (comets if you prefer) closer to the sun than Mercury. If some of them are space craft, there is likely no way to determine that, unless they start their engines to make a course correction. Neil

[glappkaeft]

I forgot the source, but there are 100 or so known small asteroids (comets if you prefer) closer to the sun than Mercury. If some of them are space craft, there is likely no way to determine that, unless they start their engines to make a course correction. Neil

No known object orbit entirely within the orbit of Mercury and 180 or so sometimes cross it's orbit. Another few houndred come close at perhelion. If some of them are gigant space unicorns, there is likley no way to determine that, unless they start to flap their wings to make a course correction.