Debris Field Expansion Caught On Radar.

Included for educational purposes under "fair use".

The following images and appear to be ground based weather radar images.

Click for full size image.(39.9K)

The first frame. Note the single diagonal line in the lower center. The extension of the line past what is clearly a point target is one clue that this is a weather radar image.

Weather radar is designed to ignore objects below a certain size, but the larger aircraft sometimes slip through the filter. The point object itself is likely a large aircraft.

Note that the weather images overlaying the map are composed of blocks of such diagonal lines.

Click for full size image.(47.1K)

In this image, there is a bloom corresponding to the location where Flight 800 has exploded.

The cloud of debris now exceeds the minimum size for the filters on the weather radar and is being displayed.

It's important to recall that the radar system draws diagonal lines across point targets, so the apparent size of the debris bloom on the display is far larger than the real world size of the cloud of debris.

Click for full size image.(24.1K)

In this third and final image, the debris cloud has taken on a non-uniform shape suggestive of the two major groups of debris that fell out of the sky.

Again, the actual size of the debris cloud is artificially enhanced by the display system.

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