Methinks reading too much into the chicken entrails and not...

Methinks reading too much into the chicken entrails and not sizing up the chicken !

Just some perspective - above and beyond the mulitude of technical vairiables on how the flow test is being conducted. We are looking at heat signatures taken a gizzilian kilometers away in space and proceeded goodness knows how and delivered to a desktop PC where it is measured by a chunky line drawn across a screen !

Not disparaging the information at all - just saying keep the context.

A few quick points on sensors.
(1) Order of magnitude. This satellite i would say is 400km from earth picking up an IR signature 50-75m wide . The smallest error in the IR sensor , electronic conversion , and pixelisation will have an outsized impact on a signature so relatively small.
(2) The sensor itself - how big is the tranducing face? massive impact on accuracy.
(3) Calibration - that thing has been up there for years presumably - physical calibration not been done. To point 1 above - the smallest creeping error will have an outsized impact on a tiny terrestrial measurement.
(4) Deliberate data distortion . Unfortunately it’s a fact that satellite data almot always has an deliberate element of data ‘distortion’ . Nuff said.
(5) Environmental distortion . IR radiation is relatively free from environmental distortion in the space between source and sensor- but it will be there. When you look at the formula for calculation of distance it is based on time travelled and speed of light. (no formulas today folks) . It takes milliseconds for EMR to travel 400odd km (speed of light) so the timiest distortion in the time travelled interval has an outsized impact on the ‘distanc.

e’ measures. I will not even get on a vertical time / distance on calc transposed to a horizontal pane ( flare width).

So- the satellite info is good and interesting , and probably/possibly acurate-ish. But don’t be in the least bit surprised if translation of flare size is out by 10m - 20m or more at any given time. This holds true for even relative comparison over time.

Also not sure how flare size correlates to fas flow !

So in short - on thing for sure - the flare shows is a good sized chicken here,!

good luck to holders