Looking for explanation of "UFO" claim

[Glenn McCreery]

<p>Here is a possible answer to the bright highlight on one edge and a less bright highlight on the opposite side. If the object is a transparent disc, such as a glass disc, and the illumination is from about 120 degrees to the camera view there will be a direct reflection on the side of illumination and a less bright internal reflection (plus internal refraction at the glass-water interfaces) on the other side. I do not have a glass disc, but here is a hand-held photo of a roundish glass of water held up to a ceiling light. You can get an idea of the effect. Adjusting the glass position just slightly changes the relative brightness and positions of the reflections.</p><div></div>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>There seems to be a lot of guesswork going on about the conditions under which these pictures were taken. As I said before, we need more detail of how they were taken.</p>

<p>The light on the clouds is clearly coming from frame left and above, with shadows falling to the right and below. Therefore the highlight, refraction, or whatever seems perfectly consistent with a real silvery or refractive oblate spheroid in front of the camera, <em>lit from the left</em>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"The problem with the balloon hypothesis, or anything moving at similar speed, is that the objects appear as such in only one frame in the sequence. They're not there a second before or a second afterwards."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>There you go. Apparently inventing circumstances to make it more mysterious.<br /> Quote from linked "USA Today" report - "About noon on Nov. 4, his cameras captured five photos of something flying through the skies of Montana that is hard for some to explain."<br /> That's not describing a single frame where the object was there and gone in a second. And nowhere does it mention a frame rate.</p>

<p>Corroborating "horses mouth" details of the setup, timing and surroundings are needed - not conjecture, guesswork and obfustication. So please state the source of this additional information that keeps cropping up, seemingly out of nowhere.</p>

<p>Edit: The clouds are Cirro-Cumulus, occurring at fairly high altitude. A weather, or any other type of balloon caught in the wind at that height could move very swiftly. It could even be a silver Frisbee thrown over the camera by some prankster.</p>

[younger1]

<p><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=2403817">Rodeo Joe</a>, you shouldn't assume. I'm not in the habit of stating conjecture as fact. It would be more helpful if you just ask.<br>

<br />Here's the sequence on Dr. O'Connor's website:<br>

<br />http://cropcirclesresearchfoundation.org/update-another-invitation-to-the-star-visitors/<br /><br />I see no persuasive evidence of a light source on the left. My preferred explanation at the moment is that the flare caused an internal reflection that was doubled in the smaller "object." That maybe it's not just a coincidence that these things look like lenses.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>I'll be convinced when I see a picture of an alien stepping out from the UFO. </p>

[Glenn McCreery]

I agree with Rodeo that the lighting is from the left, not the right, and that the brighter highlight would be facing the light

source, consistent with my photo. It would be nice to have more information about the camera and lens and f number.

Depth of field, assuming infinity focus, would put a near distance limit on the near object and therefore it's minimum

possible size.

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>The light on the clouds is clearly coming from frame left and above, with shadows falling to the right and below. Therefore the highlight, refraction, or whatever seems perfectly consistent with a real silvery or refractive oblate spheroid in front of the camera, <em>lit from the left</em>.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Did you look at the full frame version of this shot, not the cropped one?</p>

<p>The light source (sun) is on the right side of the frame, but the main highlight on the disc is on the left. </p>

<p>Here's the link to the full frame version... http://cropcirclesresearchfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-04-12-00-21-M-5_20.jpg</p>

[younger1]

<p>I looked for info re the camera's specs but didn't see anything useful. The manual is here: http://images.reconyx.com/file/HyperFireManual.pdf</p>

[Glenn McCreery]

<p>OK Tim, you got me. The sun is indeed on the upper right. I will have to rethink my possible explanation. When I search for Reconyx lens I find this statement "Only Available Directly from RECONYX. 15.8mm lens provides 2X magnification when compared to our standard lens". So, the standard lens is about 8mm focal length and, although I find no mention of f number, the depth-of-field should be rather large. Photos of birds with distant backgrounds are all in focus in their literature. Guessing at an f number of f:2.8 and a circle of confusion of 0.015 in., the hyperfocal distance is about 5 ft., and everything from about 2 1/2 ft. to infinity will be in focus. (using my "Simple DoF" App on my iPad). The only thing that this DOF calculation eliminates is water drops and other very small close-by objects.</p>

[younger1]

<p><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=566342">Glenn McCreery</a>, thank you for tracking that down! I obviously didn't use the right search terms.</p>

[donald_miller5]

I heard an interview with o e skeptic once. He said that there are so many events including tragedies where someone co

Es up with a good genuine photo just by happenstance. But in all these supposed sightings sightings of UFOs no one has

ever produced a valid photo. Additionally there are so many amateur astronomers gazing every night and none have ever

published any sightings.

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>OK. It would really have helped to link to the full sequence of frames a lot earlier in this discussion, rather than isolate one small section of one frame. Crop-circle nuttery isn't something I normally follow closely and would never have found that website otherwise.</p>

<p>Given the large flare smear from right - presumably from a trans-illuminated cloud or the sun, the "UFO" could easily be an internal lens reflection triggered when the flare reached a certain point in the lens. But this poses the question; why is that flare streak there in the first place? Since a clean lens shouldn't flare like that. In fact it looks more like a light leak in the camera, behind the lens. A shaft of light hitting the sensor could reflect back to the lens to be re-reflected and re-focused as a spot, or two.</p>

<p>There's also the issue that the camera was unmanned. Meaning there's no human eye-witness to the "event", and no-one to verify whether anything real was visible in front of the camera. Unmanned cameras leave themselves open to trickery and hoaxes too. I mean, if you knew that some eccentric left unguarded cameras around looking for UFOs, you would, wouldn't you?</p>

<p>A couple of chrome hubcaps thrown past the camera could easily explain the phenomenon.</p>

[donald_miller5]

<p>Strange, I always thought these aliens turn to Detroit for their designs over the years. 1954 Nash Rambler?</p><div></div>

[younger1]

<p>The streamlined Tatras in the 1930s were pretty cool. This is the 87 from 1936.<br>

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Tatra_87-old.jpg</p>

[don_culligan]

<p>All I can say is it is not mine, I traded it in last year</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>I believe I might now have a very mundane and credible explanation. I got to thinking why the cropped image looked as if the lighting was on the left, and remembered an optical illusion where if concave is replaced with convex, and vice-versa, then the eye can be fooled into thinking that the lighting is reversed, rather than the subject being "inside out". A classic case is the interior of a death-mask looking like a mirror image of the outside if shown in two dimensions. A good animated illustration is here:

<p>So I had that in mind, but wondered what could be a ready source of an inverted dome shape. Glenn's glass of water pictures clicked the final piece into place. Of course! A water droplet - not falling through the air, but landed on a sheet of glass. That would put the highlight opposite the light source, and could be almost any shape imaginable.</p>

<p>Below is a quite hurried experiment to verify whether it would be possible to duplicate the "UFO" picture. What you're looking at in the full frame is a picture of a sheet of slightly greasy glass sprayed with water. The water droplets are on the side away from the camera and facing the light source. Lighting was from a small flash, since the sun wouldn't co-operate today. You can see that the flare pattern is similar to that in the UFO shot, and that the water droplets reflect the highlight just at the edge of the flare extent. Inset are the closest my water droplets came to showing the shape in the original image. Except one of my droplets went one better by resembling the classic domed/triangular UFO shape.</p>

<p>I believe that coated or self-cleaning glass would encourage deeper and more sharply outlined droplets to form. The oblate shape could be formed by a side-wind.</p>

<p>The only remaining part of the puzzle to be resolved is the "time stamp" on successive frames, but that's obviously been added in post because of the Reconyx logo and the fact that the same surround is superimposed on the cropped image.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[Didier Lamy]

<p>Here is the thing at 200% after playing with contrasts etc.. It looks to me that it is included in a rectangular shape that has been fused with the background.</p><div></div>

[donald_miller5]

<p>I was not impressed with the first photo nor could I understand why one would want to first rule out UFO. The above posts to me clearly argue that ruling out a ufo should be the last thing considered. To me the only credible UFO is when it refers to unidentified fa_ting object</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>Didier, I believe the rectangular "surround" is simply a JPEG artefact. The compression algorithm for JPEG files includes "palletising" the colours. The image is divided into 8x8 pixel squares that are each assigned a narrow colour palette. The reduced colour palette is an approximation to the more accurate RGB colours of the original. So if the contrast of a JPEG image file is increased then those colour inaccuracies are also exaggerated and a series of 8x8 pixel squares becomes apparent. In-camera image sharpening will also produce jagged artefacts around the edge of an object when JPEG compressed.</p>

<p>In short, I see nothing sinister or suggestive of cut 'n' paste in your contrast enhanced crop. Just a lousy choice of file format for archival use or as "evidence".</p>

<p>I do have to wonder about the artificial frame that's been added to all the images though.</p>

[Didier Lamy]

<p>Joe, I agree that the little squares are artefacts, but I see at least 3 corners of a rectangle in which the saucer is centered, see the photo below. Coincidence, or cut and paste ?</p><div></div>

[younger1]

<p>eye of the beholder</p>

<p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-9hrPBMqJNsk/VoRQ6JKSQ4I/AAAAAAAAIqY/tox2QgkWtlk/s512-Ic42/2015-12-30_164346.jpg" alt="" /></p>

[donald_miller5]

<p>If it is an artifact then sxhouldn't there be more? The symmetry around is too perfect.</p>

[frode]

<p>This image can be of anything. The only thing I am willing claim about this photo is that it will be hard, maybe impossible to find out what it is. That is the whole point. This is a good example of someone supporting a claim of what has been photographed by referring to that one cannot disprove that the photo supports the claim. Circulus in probando.<br>

<br>

<br>

;-)<br /><br>

Cheers,<br /></p>

[donald_miller5]

And that being the case disqualifies it from any discussion from any analysis base on scientific method. Then again we can have adiscussion based

on non scientific discussion. I defy anyone

to prove that it is not an image of a paparticle with linear distortion in the cern accelerator$

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>I agree that forensic examination of any of the images posted here is futile - including mine. They've all been through the JPEG mill at least twice; maybe more. I'm pretty sure that the crappy camera used to initially capture the images only stores them as JPEGs at a fairly high compression ratio (first compression in camera). Then the cropped image will have been re-saved as a JPEG (2nd compression). Any further processing will then have been saved as a JPEG for posting here. That makes the image at least 2nd or 3rd generation JPEG "ruined", and any close examination is totally pointless.</p>

<p>Below is one of my own "UFO" water droplets, twice JPEG saved, re-sized and contrast enhanced. I can see loads of suspicious-looking rectangles, but I assure you that no part of that image has been cut and pasted. It's purely JPEG artefact garbage.</p>

<p>I'm satisfied that the "UFOs" could easily have been just a couple of water droplets landing on a glass protective cover for the camera. Case closed as far as I'm concerned.</p><div></div>

[q.g._de_bakker]

I already told you (last year, it was) that it is the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's rendition of God save the Queen, Donald. It is futile to put forward hypotheticals such as paparticles.