U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by mberning on Saturday February 04, 2023 @07:48PM (#34660274)

The ballon was at 60k feet and eye witnesses said it had the same apparent size in the sky as passenger jets flying nearby at 30k feet.

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by wayeq on Saturday February 04, 2023 @09:52PM (#34661246)

if only i paid attention in trigonometry..

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by alanh on Saturday February 04, 2023 @10:18PM (#34661436)

Hmm, do we even need trig? Naively I would imagine that simple proportions would hold — e.g. same visible size @ twice the distance = object is twice as big

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by californical on Saturday February 04, 2023 @10:46PM (#34661615)

4x as big, since we see in two dimensions — you can judge length & height (but not depth).

So if it appears the same size but twice as far away, the the length and height are each 2x. So that would make it the size of ~4 airplanes

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by Miserlou57 on Sunday February 05, 2023 @03:42AM (#34663098)

Not super relevant but I find this to be true when spotting a 747/757/767 vs say a 737

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by d0mine on Sunday February 05, 2023 @12:44PM (#34666873)

the area is 4x but the diameter is just 2x here.

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by ant6n on Sunday February 05, 2023 @05:44PM (#34670543)

Isn’t the object three-dimensional?

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