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[BrianEnigma]

Re: [PUZZLE] #172, Lower Right Purple Hex: Freefall (E3)

[HitsHerMark]

Showing the image to somebody I know who's big into the Telecommunications industry, he said that the red and light blue/white dots close into the planet could be Iridium or GlobalStar satellites.

[Scott]

J-track is awesome been a fFan fFor years, if only cos it's a fFun toy.
I wish i'd seen this card sooner, being a satellite buff.
Anyway, I observe the exact answer to the exact question being asked:

[Kalt]

Seej: ^J^ and my reasoning had a few more quirks I neglected to mention, which is why I still feel it makes sense.

The card does not state that the satellites have to be orbitting the Earth; we're definitely aware that the planets orbit the Sun. What I was trying to state was that only the outer limit of each constellation of satellites would determine its position in orbit; the outer limit of Saturn's ring is much farther out than that of Jupiter, which is farther out than Mars. If the picture of Earth follows the same logic, only its outer edge matters--And its outer edge is just within the orbit of Mars, and outside the orbit of Venus and Mercury. For this reasoning to be in effect, the Sun must be in the center of the card, and not shown (Which makes sense, because the Sun's circular movement is negligible in the puzzle card's context, and so showing it at all would imply it had an orbit).

In other words, in the tentative solution we put forth, the planets' orbits are not relative to the Earth, but to the Sun. The picture of the Earth is there to be misleading, when really, we can treat it just like another constellation of satellites.


This is just one potential solution we're putting forth. ^J^ and I feel that the other main solution asserted in this thread, with artificial satellites and their relative positions to Earth, is also a very viable solution. I just feel our solution works a little too well just to let go; perhaps it was intended for this puzzle to have multiple solutions?

Wishful thinking, maybe, but potentially possible.

-Kalt

[Mima]

Kalt, sorry to put a negative to your solution, but night and day are shown by a shadow on the surface of the earth, how could this be possible if the sun was in the middle of the picture, surely either we would have to be seeing full day or full night?

[Seej]

The original text from the puzzle was:

[HitsHerMark]

The card mentions "constilation satelights", and the yellow dots indicate movement. So I'd have to agree that those dots indicate the movement of constilations in the sky.

[Leeravitz]

Sorry. Am I being dense here, but from a distance, it looks to me like the different satellite groupings are demarcated pretty clearly. There are lots and lots of red satellites, blue satellites and yellow satellites. The red ones are tightly clustered in a near earth orbit, the blue ones are slightly wider spread and somewhat further out, the yellow ones are miles away and all over the place. There does, indeed, seem to be only one significant orbit for both the green and the purple dot.

I see no reason to believe that separate points of light of the same colour are *not* intended to represent separate satellites (however approximately). I can see that there is an argument for suggesting that, overall, the points represent a wider, singular orbit at different stages, but, frankly, that interpretation does seem to ignore the specificity of the question.

[tanner]

a set of satellites such as iridium or gps ect are known as constellations even tho they dont resemble steller constellations

[sixsidedsquare]

i'd say the green one is closer to TRMM or SWAS

[kierenj]

*guesses* the answer is 'no'

[sixsidedsquare]

now that'd just be cheeky

[Mima]

Summary of current suggestions:
Blue - Intelsat/VSAT/Astrolink
Yellow - GPS BIIA
Red - Iridium/Cosmos/Teledesic/GlobalStar
Green - International Space Station/Halley Telescope/ERBS/TRMM/SWAS
Purple - International Space Station/Halley Telescope/XTE/HST

Kalt thinks that time/date is:

[NovacaineX]

I'm pretty sure the only way to get the answer is to use the software i posted earlier which is named Freefall. I am installing it now that i am at home on my mac, I'll post what i can.

EDIT: Hmm.. I set the date to sometime in december, and the light looks about right. The time appears to be around 11am est. But there are literally thousands of sattelites in this program. This is gonna take alot of narrowing down.

EDIT2:

1 down, 4 to go.

Green is officially TRMM.

Heres a screenshot

[Mima]