JAL 1628: The Star Bench, Visualised · Signals from the Periphery

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THE NIGHT

Subject

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Value

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State

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JAL 1628 · THE STAR BENCH
17 Nov 1986 · 55 minutes over Alaska
visual and radar, priced separately
the amber lights are testimony, staged and labelled
the sky is computed and audited vs JPL Horizons
'a few primary hits... never a good track'
fly the evening · read the calls · check the sky

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Evidence

fact ⇄ what kind of claim · live

Jupiter -2.5 low southeast, Mars 19° right, a 98% moon dead astern

GMST + Standish + Meeus, audited against JPL Horizons in the tune script

EXACT

The reported clock drift 11 → 10 → 9 → 7-8 tracks the aircraft's own turns

relative bearing = azimuth − heading; headings solved from the route's geography

EXACT

The 360: 30° bank at 500 kt = 6.3 NM radius, 4.8 min; the tape agrees to seconds

R = v²/(g·tanφ), no free parameter anywhere on this bench

EXACT

'Twice an aircraft carrier' is a distance assumption wearing a size costume

S = d × θ; the crew's own distances span 500 ft to 8 NM, a factor of ninety

EXACT

The chronology, the quotes, the FAA finding, Callahan, the January retraction

Maccabee's tape reconstruction and Klass's analysis, cross-read, disagreements kept

REPORTED

'A few primary hits... never a good track': the controller's own summary

the FAA's split-return finding and Maccabee's objections carried side by side

REPORTED

The amber lights, the terrain, the aircraft model, the path between fixes

testimony staged at the reported clock positions; no measured position exists

MODELLED

What three professional witnesses and one unexplained first act amount to

the one question this bench refuses to close for you

READING

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The evening

Clock17:05:00 AKST

17:05 to 17:57, thirty times real speed. 17:09 radar contact, 17:17 the arrays, 17:23 the pale light, 17:30 the silhouette, 17:37 the 360, 17:50 United 69.

Sceptical annotationshalo the planets, label each phase's reading

The silhouette

Assumed distance8.0 NM

No instrument measured one. 500 ft written, 1 NM radioed, 7-8 NM on the radar: slide the dial and watch the claimed giant change size while the testimony stands still.

Display

Labels

Readout · live

Jupiter, from the deck

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Mars

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Moon

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Heading T / M

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2 carriers / a 747, at dial

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Horizon dip

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What is exact vs modelled here

Exact: the entire sky (GMST, the J2000 catalogue, Jupiter and Mars from Standish elements, the Moon with topocentric parallax, all audited against JPL Horizons), the heading geometry that turns azimuths into clock positions, the horizon dip, the turn physics, and the size-distance arithmetic. Reported: the whole chronology, every quote, every radar event, the FAA finding, the sceptical case and its rebuttals. Modelled: the amber lights (testimony staged at the reported clock positions), the terrain, the aircraft, the path between the fix times. There is no fitted constant anywhere on this bench.

The model, in full

The sky solves GMST (IAU 1982, checked at the J2000 anchor), transforms the J2000 bright-star catalogue to alt-az at the aircraft's own interpolated lat/lon, places Jupiter and Mars from Standish mean elements with the standard magnitude laws, and the Moon from a truncated Meeus series with a parallax correction: all of it audited against JPL Horizons to a third of a degree in scripts/jal-1628-tune.mjs. Headings are solved from the reported route fixes by great-circle bearing and land on the tape's own 215/255/240 sequence. The turn is priced by R = v²/(g·tanφ). Relative bearing is azimuth minus heading; a clock position is thirty degrees an hour.

Where this instrument takes liberties

The amber lights are drawn at the record's own clock calls with staged distances, because no position was ever measured; the silhouette is the captain's sketch rendered as a wireframe, deliberately not a solid. The terrain and village lights are set dressing. The 747 is LB&SCR E2's CC BY 4.0 Sketchfab model of a JAL 747SR with the landing gear removed: the SR passenger variant standing in for the case's -246F freighter, window band and all. The flight path between the reported fixes is interpolated. The two sceptical mechanisms (ice-crystal cloud, the Jupiter identification) are carried as candidates with their objections attached, never as findings.

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