140 years of UFO sightings

Originally posted by lightchild
If it was a long exposure shot, wouldn't the stars have trails too?

I would have thought you need quite a long exposure for the moon to appear to have moved that much. How long do you think it would take?

What do you think it is?

I was actually thinking that too. I wouldn't say its just the moon, but who knows for sure. We know what night it was taken, can we look to see if there was even a full, or close to full moon that night?

An object closer to you will look to be moving faster then an object that is further away: this is a simple concept that visually is harder to get.
On December 2 1950 the Moon was at its last quarter: i dunno whether those guys of project Grudge did investigate on this detail: anyway this is a rendition of how the photo was taken, given that it was a long exposure shot and that the moon was "closing its cycle"

Besides, keep in mind that:

A) The photographer didn't notice anything odd while setting the apparatus
B) The photographer was unable to reveal the camera settings
C) Nothing but the photo is corroborating the sighting

I don't want to "debunk" this one in any way, i love the cold cases, but i think that it was a long exposure shot of the Moon.
Just my two cents
Whoops!
Source:
www.life-cycles-destiny.com...

[edit on 13/11/2008 by internos]

reply to post by dodgygeeza

Yeah that cigar is very interesting. It reminds me so much of the tubes seen in the Nuremberg woodcut which carried the spheres.

reply to post by internos


Thank you for an informative reply, I especially like the graphic.
Another * for you.

Here is part II another 28 pictures.

140 years of UFO sightings - Part II

A second gallery of UFO pics has gone up at the Telegraph now
140 years of UFO sightings part 2

Originally posted by internos
I don't want to "debunk" this one in any way, i love the cold cases, but i think that it was a long exposure shot of the Moon.

I also thought about a long exposure immediately, but this was not shot anywhere near the equator. The Moon crescent is never so horizontal in New York. Second problem a long exposure would not look so crenelated... Some dark clouds would have to pass in front of the Moon, many of them actually and the light would be more diffused around the Moon seen through a cloud.

About all these pictures, I had a dream last night, as a result of staring at UFO videos too late . I dreamed of seeing a flying saucer close up, and being unable to take a picture with my digital camera. The shutter button was dead. UFOs were known in the old cases to kill car engines, even their lights, but not cameras (mechanical + chemical process, nothing was electrical). Why isn't there any recent UFO case with a malfunctioning digital camera? Either we don't hear about them because without a picture the witness does not report the case or UFO technology has evolved and stopped interfering with our electrical systems?

reply to post by nablator


Eh, actually not so horizontal:

plus, old long exposure shots look like a series of single frames put all together: but as said, i am not sure.

reply to post by internos

Thanks Internos but I still don't get it. Old cameras did not have any special device that would open /close 50 times during a long exposure. The picture does not make any sense to me - except as a long exposure of a pulsating UFO.

[edit on 2008-11-14 by nablator]

reply to post by nablator


Eh, now i was thinking about your last reply, i think i got what you meant for horizontal: perhaps you meant straight, right? Yes, that's a good observation. Well, to rule out the possibility for the cameras available at the time to take such a long exposure shot, would put to rest the explanation: but since the assessment by Project Grudge was made the same year, how come that they were even able to mention something that still didn't exist? And how come that the stars are visible so clearly despite the visual pollution and the reflections are resolved in bright strikes? These are all indications of a long exposure shot, in my humble opinion.
Now, to compare a shot taken presently wouldn't be the best thing to do, but it does make the point: The Moon + Venus + hand shaking:

it doesn't look very different, apart the shacking.

Another possible explanation would be a multiple exposure, with shots not very distant each other:


and Blue Book archive is not available, btw but i think there was nothing but what already posted here, regerding this case.
Anyway, as said, i'm not sure, and i'm aware that it's hard to accept as explanation, and the point that you made ARE valid

In the other hand, looking at Stellarium, and simulating half an hour between 17:30 and 18:00, i got a movement very different from the one of the photo (i will add some screen capture)

Sun and Moon Data for One Day
The following information is provided for New York, New York (longitude W73.9, latitude N40.7):

Monday
20 March 1950 Eastern Standard Time

SUN
Begin civil twilight 5:33 a.m.
Sunrise 6:00 a.m.
Sun transit 12:03 p.m.
Sunset 6:07 p.m.
End civil twilight 6:35 p.m.

MOON
Moonset 7:19 p.m. on preceding day
Moonrise 6:47 a.m.
Moon transit 1:28 p.m.
Moonset 8:20 p.m.
Moonrise 7:08 a.m. on following day

Phase of the Moon on 20 March: waxing crescent with 4% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

New Moon on 18 March 1950 at 10:20 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Here is it: in according to Stellarium, this should have been the Moon's motion that day at that time, between 17:30 (1) and 18:00 (2):

as you can see, it's the opposite than the expected, and (not) a small missing detail: where is the Sun? The photo was NOT taken in New York on March 20 1950 between 17:30 and 18:00, IMHO.
So, basically, some possible explanations are:
1) Stellarium is wrong
2) The photograper was a liar
3) The guys of Project Grudge were some heck of investigators since they did NOT notice this inconsistency
4) The photographer was drunk
5) The guys of Project Grudge were drunk
6) I am drunk
7) Something else i'm missing right now

Sadly, all we have is just the picture


[edit on 14/11/2008 by internos]

140 years of UFO sightings - Part III

27 more pictures

140 years of UFO sightings - Part III

From Part III, I saw my favorite picture, it's a great shot of a flying triangle.



I think the Belgium Flying Triangle sightings in the 1990's are very convincing.
Due to the large numbers of credible witnesses, the tracking by the air force and the large area they were seen over.

reply to post by lightchild


Here are some informations regarding that story:
Flying Triangle, Belgium UFO wave, Petit-Rechain, april 1990


The photo by itselfs says nothing, but the whole case is compelling:
mass sightings, multiple witnesses, media coverage, military jets that chased UFOs, UFOs spotted by radars making manoeuvres impossible for the (known) terrestrial aircraft, at impossible (for us) speed/accelerations and so on.

1) Object witnessed at Eupen, Wavre, Leige and Brussels
2) Reported in over 2,600 statements to police
3) Photographed by many people on both Video and Camera
4) Detected and Confirmed by radar stations on the ground
5) Detected, Confirmed and photographed on aircraft radar screens
6) Pursued for over an hour by two F-16s.

Glons radar confirmed the sighting of an unidentified object at an altitude of 3,000 meters. Semmerzake radar confirmed the Glons detection and passed its confirmation onto the Air Force. The radar scans were compared with the previous Eupen radar sightings (see Eupen Case) by Semmerzake and Glons and were found to be identical.
Several police patrols had witnessed the same phenomenon before. It was a massive triangular shape with the same lighting configuration as seen at Eupen four months earlier.

Colonel Wilfred De Brouwer, Chief of the operations section of the Air Force, said: "That because of the frequency or requests for radar confirmation at Glons and Semmerzake - and as a number of private visual observations had been confirmed by the police - it was decided that as these parameters had been met, a patrol of F-16 aircraft should be sent to intercept an unidentified object somewhere to the south of Brussels"

As a consequence, two F-16 aircraft of the Belgian Air Force - registration
numbers 349 and 350 = flown by a Captain and a Flight-Lieutenant, both highly qualified pilots, took off from Bevekom.
Within a few minutes - guided by the Glons radar - both pilots had detected a positive oval-shaped object on their on-board radar at a height of 3,000 meters, but in the darkness saw nothing. This oval configuration, however, caused the pilots some concern. It reacted in an intelligent and disturbing way when they attempted to 'lock-on' with their on-board radar.

Changing shape instantly, it assumed a distinct 'diamond image' on their radar screens and - increasing its speed to 1,000km/h - took immediate and violent evasive action.

This is what has been disclosed by the military, it wasn't a single witness
making wild claimings

Photographs of the actual on-board radar of the F-16s recorded a descent of this object from 3,000m to 1,200 in 2 seconds, a descent rate of 1,800km/h. The same photographs show an unbelievable acceleration rate of 280km/h to 1,800km/h in a few seconds. According to Professor Leon Brening - a non-linear dynamic theorist at the Free University of Brussels - this would represent an acceleration of 46g and would be beyond the possibility of any human pilot to endure.
It was noted that in spite of these speeds and acceleration times there was a marked absence of any sonic boom. The movements of this object were described by the pilots and radar operators as 'wildly erratic and step-like', and a zigzag course was taken over the city of Brussels with the two F-16s in pursuit. Visual contact was not possible against the lighting of the city.
This same procedure was repeated several times, with this object - whenever an attempt at radar 'lock-on' was made - pursuing a violently erratic course at impossible speed and losing its pursuers.

Colonel De Brouwer added "Immediatley after the operation, the pilots said they had never seen anything like it. Certainly the flight pattern and echo on their screens was in no way that of a conventional aircraft"
The Belgian Minister of Defence in the Belgian parliament stated that "The
Government did not know what they were".

I think that the explanation (as said based on ZERO evidences) that it was a military craft does not make sense, especially if we look at the data:

Acceleration data


Radar data


Colonel W. De Brouwer, Belgian Air Force, with the radar videos of one of the F-16s at the press conference of July 11th


Blow-up of the image on the bottom screen above.
The 990K is the speed of the object in knots.
990K = 1830 kilometers per hour = 1.5 Mach.


Clearly, some radical manuvers are occurring:

Speed changes of up to 410 knots in one second.
Heading changes of up to 70 degrees in one second.
Altitude changes of up to 3000 feet per second (1,777 knots) maintained for one second or less and typical ascent / descent rates of 1000 feet per second (592 knots).
That these manuvers are radical can be seen by comparing them to some
representative figures for commonly available fighter aircraft. For instance, the F-4 Phantom is known be able to turn at only 11.5 degrees per second, less than 1/6 as fast as the observed UFO profile.

The nature of these manuvers and their coincidence in time is also visible in this graph, which only shows the value of the changes:



Text file of the radar contacts of one of the F-16s
www.geocities.com...

Sources, more infos and references:

www.ufoevidence.org...
www.ufoevidence.org...
ufos.about.com...
www.ufoevidence.org...
www.geocities.com...
ufologie.net...
/ypsaz9

Original article related to the pics (recovered)
/2hrdam

There's a good documentary somewhere, i'll post it here when i'll find it

reply to post by internos


Another * for you for writing such a long detailed post about the subject in 10 minutes.

I have this new conspiracy theory that internos is not an individual but the name of a secret team of experts and writers

Edit for grammar.

[edit on 14/11/2008 by lightchild]

reply to post by nablator


Bonjour

Why isn't there any recent UFO case with a malfunctioning digital camera? Either we don't hear about them because without a picture the witness does not report the case or UFO technology has evolved and stopped interfering with our electrical systems?

On sky watches I have had fully two sets of fully charged batteries go flat, video cameras that stop working and then restart after the UFO has disappeared. So it does happen.

But the usual thing is you see something amazing and when you watch the recording of it all you see is a flickering dot.

It seems that image number 15 in the part III collection of UFO photos probably is a hoax. This is a cropped version of the photo:



The story behind the photo is that it was taken by Eric Thomason in Maslin Beach, Australia in 1993.

He also took these photos of the "UFO" and also another object:





Eric Thomason told his story in an interview with UFO-Sweden's magazine UFO-Aktuellt in 1996:

In March 1993, Eric decided to try to document the old mine using his son's camera, a Kodak S50 with a Fuji 100 ASA-film. Despite having never owned a camera of his own and having virtually no experiencing photographing, Eric set off in order to try to capture the beautiful colors of the open-cast mine from as many angles as possible. And, s photo contest in the magazine "Southern Times-Messenger" about the best image of a sunrise over land also helped him in his decision. He thought he would be able to capture the sunrise on film from Ochre Point, a cliff 60 meters high from where hang-gliders used to take off - but the sun was hidden behind a dense layer of clouds.

Wednesday, March 10, didn't appear to be much better. It was a cool morning, only 14 degrees Celsius, and a stubborn wind came from the west. From the top of the grassy cliff, Eric was forced to accept that there wasn't going to be a sunrise that morning either. A persistent layer of clouds blocked out the sun, and the time was 06:00 AM when Eric instead turned to face the ocean to the west.

- It was then that I saw a movement on the surface on the water, and something looking like the tower on an atomic submarine emerged, Eric tells UFO-Sweden. When the object rose from the water I was able to see how three legs were pointing out from the hull. I was also able to see how it was spinning, and how the three legs were pulled in.

Before the legs were pulled in, Eric managed to take his first photograph of the object, and he estimates the distance to the object at the time being about 400 meters. It then dawned on him how exposed his position was. Standing on top of the Ochre Point with the sun right behind him made him an easy target to spot for a possible crew.

- I had heard of people being abducted by UFOs, so I climbed down a slope nearby. From there I could see how the light-grey object came flying somewhat south of me, and came to a halt over the mine. At that very moment I spotted yet another object, north of the first one. That's when I snapped my second picture, but since the light from the sunrise was straight into my view-finder I moved a little to the left.

The main object has turned its bottom to the photographer and a second object has appeared a little farther away.

While taking photographs from his hideout five meters below the top of the cliff, the new object moved towards the larger one, came to a halt, and then continued upwards, into a deepening in the larger object.

- I could see three lights on the exterior of the larger object and how it shone around the opening. Shortly after I'd taken the fourth and last photograph the larger object rose straight up and disappeared over me. When that happened, I could feel water dripping from the craft down on me.

In a report form to the Australian UFO-group Australian Flying Saucer Research Society, Eric estimates the size of the object to be 40 meters, and the distance (when he first saw it rise from the ocean) to be 2 kilometers. While talking to him on the phone, Eric tells me how it never got closer to him than 400 meters.

When the incident was over, Eric returned home. However, despite his amazing encounter he decided to remain quiet about it, even to his wife. He first wanted to have the film developed in order to find out if there indeed were any photographs of it. But he was not in a hurry. Before he handed in the film for development he made sure to use up the entire film. And not until May, 1994, when he had watched a UFO show on TV, did he bring forward the photographs.

But there are some strange circumstanses which needs to be taken into consideration regarding this story:

- He didn't even tell his wife about the sighting, which must have been amazing, if it was real.

- As stated in the article, he waited until 1994 before he showed the photos to anyone - after he had watched an UFO show on TV...

- Eric Thomason claims he set his alarm clock to 05:45 in order to catch the sunrise, which took place around 06:00. During these 15 minutes he supposedly got out of bed, put on several layers of warm clothing, brought his camera, fetched the dog at the back of the house and walk to Ochre Point, which takes about 5 minutes. He also climbed the 60 meters tall cliff, waited for the failed sunrise, and then walked on to another site close by in order to look out over the ocean. Then, at 06:00 sharp. he took his first photograph of the object.

- The bright blue sky in one of the photographs suggests the images were taken later in the day.

- After the the article was printed in UFO-Sweden's magazine UFO-Aktuellt in 1996, several readers pointed out that the Maslin Beach UFO had many similarities with a part of the ventilation system built for private boats.

www.ufocasebook.com...



[edit on 14/11/08 by ziggystar60]

reply to post by internos


I have a possible terrestrial explanation for this.

You need 2+ stealth aircraft at different altitudes and some distance apart.

On each is a piece of EW kit with an RF delay line incoporated into it. In essence it captures an inbound radar pulse and then circulates around an RF circuit a number of times before retransmitting it back at the original transmitter.

It is amplified/attenutated to the correct amplitude before transmission, and since it is transmitting a copy of the original pulse it retains any modulation encrypted into the pulse, making it seem like the original pulse.

Anyway, suppose you are undertaking a training operation at night, and you know that although your aircraft is invisible to radar it isn't invisible to the eye, so when your listening stations start picking up calls to/from the police re strange flying objects you initiate your piece of EW kit.

You have the first stealth aircraft capture and retransmit the pulse with maybe one cycle through the delay line, making it seem that your plane is maybe 10 miles away from where it is - but obviously close to where the sightings reports are coming from.

You keep this up until you know that aircraft have been scrambled, for example, and then just as they are getting ready to lock on you send a pulse maybe 3 times through the delay line, making it appear that you've just shot off 20 or 30 miles in no time flat.

After this pulse you turn off the kit and you are now radar invisible again. At exactly the same point (its done electronically say), the second aircraft switches on, and hey presto it looks like you've travelled 50 miles & climbed 2000ft in a second and a half.

The more aircraft you have the more erratic it can appear, and by doing this you can have an enemy air force chasing their tails all night long.

It would be assumed that any further reports of sightings coming from the original location will be from stragglers reporting what was there, when in actual fact they are reporting what is there.

Also note that there would be no sonic boom since nothing broke the sound barrier.

reply to post by lightchild


Thanks for the links. Starred and Flagged.

Originally posted by internos
perhaps you meant straight, right? Yes, that's a good observation.

I mean it looks like the Moon seen from Egypt. Hmm... I may be wrong about this. Will look it up. Could be a way to rule out the Moon even if the date / time is wrong.

Well, to rule out the possibility for the cameras available at the time to take such a long exposure shot, would put to rest the explanation: but since the assessment by Project Grudge was made the same year, how come that they were even able to mention something that still didn't exist?

Of course a long shot was possible. It's as old as photography.

Another possible explanation would be a multiple exposure, with shots not very distant each other

This could be it. Or passing clouds changing the brightness many times.

So, basically, some possible explanations are:
1) Stellarium is wrong
2) The photograper was a liar
3) The guys of Project Grudge were some heck of investigators since they did NOT notice this inconsistency
4) The photographer was drunk
5) The guys of Project Grudge were drunk
6) I am drunk
7) Something else i'm missing right now

Man you're the best!
The time seems wrong. Oh well.

Obviously we know they didn't photoshop pictures in 1870.
But of course they could have been photoshopped after that.
Its always very hard to say with just a picture.