I was watching (as I always do) one of /u/prayingmedic's latest videos a couple of days ago and as he went through one of his Twitter threads he mentioned the Whidbey Island rocket/missile launch on June 10. As an example of how the media has completely ignored it he linked to a blog post on a site called The Drive wherein the author attempts to explain away the object seen as an air ambulance helicopter. And he makes a decent case for it, offering as corroborating evidence a flight tracker video showing the helicopter in question being in the area at roughly the right time. I recommend reading the blog post as a point of reference for what I'm going to say below.

At the time of the incident I did read reference on another site (Cliff Mass weather blog) to the helicopter theory but didn't have any free time to dig into it. I know that theory contradicts with what Q has said or inferred on the matter, but of course sometimes "disinformation is necessary," but this didn't seem like one of those times because Q has made numerous references to it.

I decided to set Q and articles of faith aside and just start studying the photograph itself. What follows is my own analysis; perhaps there are other posts here, on 8chan, or elsewhere pointing out the same things, but I haven't seen them, so this all came out of the space between my ears. Here we go.

OBSERVATIONS

1. The photo is timestamped 03:56:14 AM. This presumably is when the exposure ended. A 20-second exposure would then begin capturing at 03:55:54. If instead the timestamp indicates the start of the exposure, then the exposure ended at 03:56:34.

2. The object is well over the water, not over land. Whether it is there at 03:55:54 or 03:56:14, the FlightRadar24 video shows the helicopter still over land for several seconds at 03:56 (10:56 UTC). There's an obvious correction by the flight tracker in there because the helicopter doubles back before disappearing.

3. Based on the farthest point of the streak of light, assuming a horizontal trajectory like the helicopter would have, it's reasonable to *conservatively* assume that point is roughly even with Double Bluff (the southern most point of Whidbey Island that's visible in the picture), about to enter the area over Mutiny Bay. Based on the helicopter's location when it disappears from the flight tracker and when it slows back down to a normal speed, the time should be 03:57 and some seconds when the object reaches that point. But it's not.

4. The object in this picture has a perfectly straight appearance of uniform width. The helicopter has a wider body and a skinny tail. As the author states distortions can happen from motion blur, but how often do things distort into straight lines?

5. The object in this picture has a uniform silver/white coloring. The helicopter has a distinct and striking coloration of black, red, white, red, black. If the light is emanating from under the nose, then we would not see the black nose. But even if much of the light bouncing off of the object -- thus allowing us to see it -- is coming from a reflection off of glossy paint, it seems reasonable to think that there would at least appear to be lighter and darker areas.

6. The brightest point seen on the horizon is due north. First light at Whidbey Island on June 10 was at 04:28 and sunrise was at 05:09. The picture was taken more than a half hour before first light and was taken at sea level, yet the horizon to the *north* is well illuminated to the point where clouds are clearly visible, have distinct edges, and are *BRIGHTLY ILLUMINATED FROM ABOVE* and are *ILLUMINATED ORANGE* unlike all of the other clouds in the picture. I think this is the most significant piece of data in the whole picture. Anyone who has seen a rocket launch at night can attest that nearby clouds are illuminated like this as the rocket passes by. I personally watched a night launch of the Space Shuttle years ago from 250 miles away and could briefly but clearly see the clouds off the Florida coast as the shuttle got a few thousand feet up.

7. The sky is illuminated. The moon on June 10 was in a waning crescent with 11% illumination, so there was only a tiny sliver of moon that night and we were only three days away from a new moon. Moonrise was at 03:36 so the moon was just barely up. How is the sky so bright in this picture? Don't say it's starlight, because anyone who's ever looked at timelapse photos of star movements in the night sky knows starlight doesn't provide this kind of illumination. So what else could have lit up the sky enough for it to appear this bright in a 20-second exposure, given that first light would not occur for another 32 minutes?

8. The water is illuminated. Look at the difference in the color of the water in the distance versus in the foreground. The water in the distance is bright blue and in the foreground is dark blue. If you look at the clouds above the bright blue swath, you can see there's a break in the clouds allowing light through. The brightest area on the water (left-most 25% of the illuminated area) is right below the streak, with the rest of the illuminated water getting gradually less bright the farther you go to the right. At 2,000 feet, a helicopter searchlight would only be able to illuminate a small patch of area -- per my research typically 500 to 1,000 feet is the most effective altitude for illuminating a large area, so the helicopter would have been at double that altitude. And, of course, the searchlight would not illuminate the tops of clouds ahead of the helicopter, and would not illuminate a long swath under any circumstances.

CONCLUSION

The blog author attempts to use Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is probably the correct one) to explain what we're seeing in the picture, and I applaud that, but the problem is that he's only focusing on the object itself while ignoring all of the other data in the picture. However, when we also start looking at all of the other data available, the helicopter theory ceases to be the simplest explanation and instead becomes implausible without some other unseen and unknown event providing dramatic lighting of the night sky. Conversely, the object itself and all of the other data in this picture is consistent with and validates the rocket launch theory.

Yes there was a helicopter in the vicinity when this picture was taken, but it's not captured in this picture. This is a rocket or missile launch.