Possible UFO spotted in Central Austin

reply to post by internos

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Thanks, internos

Jritzmann has offered to validate them which is great!

As for the Canon's settings, you are right, there are manual aperture, etc settings on it, I used the auto ones. Any advice on how to manually adjust them would be greatly appreciated. And we are getting together either tonight or Sat for another go at it.

Note about the videos: Some are outright amazing and the narration on the vids sounds like this: " Do you see that *beep* *beep* ing egg shaped *beep* ufo? It's *beep*ing incredible! *Beep* *Beep*er! Lol.

STM

[edit on 12/11/2008 by seentoomuch]

reply to post by seentoomuch

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I'm glad that you and JKL08 are both on to this, and I know that the natural thing to do is to join forces in one place, but please remember that if you both are in different places and seeing the same thing we can gain much more data about it, even if the cameras cannot catch it, we can get its position if you both get an accurate position of the object.

Sorry I'm late to the party.

As far as camera settings advice, the single most important issue when filming at night is the plague known as auto focus.

Turn it off. Set your focus to infinity. Not doing that will drive the cam to try and focus on light, which it cannot judge distance by, and therefore not focus accurately on.

Most cameras will show a little mountain in the view port when infinite focus is in action.

IF by chance the object comes closer then infinite focus wants to deal with, it's all too easy to turn the lens and focus on it. If it's speeding, youre not going to get a good image at night anyway.

If there's a nightvision setting try and see if it's robust enough to clear your image better. "Super NightVision" may give you a better image, but will cut your frame rate to worthless. Stay away from it unless your camera is again, modern enough to make it count.

Tripod it. Nuff said there.

Try at some point (not at the expense of missing a good portion of a sighting) to get a stationary object in frame with the object.

MARK, where you are standing. Get some chalk and put an X down.

The next day you can measure a close stationary object to your X. This just gives a real world scale to potential lens aberrations and optical distortions that may happen dependent on your camera.

Good luck.

Thanks Jritzmann!

The camera I'm using tonight is a Canon HV20 10X optical with an additional Giottos 52mm prodigital telephoto 2.0X AF High Definition Optics.

Auto focus is now turned off. Manual is set to infinity. Put in HD quality video cassette. Night mode is on, but will turn off if it doesn't work well. Got chalk (my junk drawer has everything you could ever need in it) Got compass. Edit to add: No tripod, I returned it, I'll have to find something to lean up on.

All set, thanks greatly,

STM

[edit on 12/11/2008 by seentoomuch]

reply to post by ArMaP

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Will do, ArMap, great suggestions, wish you were here too.

Last night I tried to figure the height above the horizon, is there a method to do so? Should it be as in 10 o'clock, 7 o'clock, etc?

Also, shall be filming from my house some evenings.

Thanks again,

STM



[edit on 12/11/2008 by seentoomuch]

Does anyone want to U2U me the approximate location this stuff is happening? I'm in north austin and look at the sky constantly and never see anything

reply to post by seentoomuch

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If you have a tripod then, if it is not not moved, you can measure the angle after filming it.

The fastest way (and one that is not that bad, if the object is not too high in the sky) is using you hand while extending the arm, you can replicate the system latter to see what was the angle.

I think that some tripods have a system to measure the angle at which the head is tilted, but they must be expensive, and if the head is moved than we looks the measurement.

Another thing that I remembered while I was writing this is that you can use something as a ruler, depending on you environment. For example, if there is a tall building near the object you can obviously use it as a ruler, but if you are doing this on your backyard or something like that you can put a pole in the ground with some marks on it, just like a ruler, and use it as a guide to know that, while you were standing next to the pole filming, the object was beside the mark "X".

I will try to see if I can get some more precise ways of measuring the position of any target.

STM,I was going over one of the videos we shot tonight,I was following an object and at one point you can see what looks like the large object launching a smaller object that quickly takes off out of the frame.

Thanks for the UTU susan. I can't reply because i don't have enough posts yet. I'll work on that today

Hi internos

All is going well, today JKL is picking up the tapes from the planetarium due to the scientist there sitting on them, the scientist does not know what to do. On one hand the scientist has been contacted by Good Morning American w/plane tickets and hotels being offered, also was contacted by the military. On the other hand he is concerned about his reputation if he steps forward. He has had the tapes for several weeks now which include some of the best footage.

One of the images from the planetarium tapes is the first one in your OP. The bright squiggly line next to the power lines. JKL asks that you "save as" the photo to your pictures and then enlarge it. The ufo is NOT the bright, wavy line. The ufo that they saw is beneath it, it is round and spoked, it is a disk. It is at the very bottom end of the bright line. After contacting the power lines the street lights went out for 4 days. Please have a look if you would until you receive a better copy from jritz.

I have one excellent tape in my possession to send on to jritz, but am waiting to include the planetarium tapes.

And OLDGOAT, where are you, give me a call the next good weather, 'kay?

STM

This sounds VERY interesting. Great post Internos and great job to STM and JKL08.

I've got the popcorn ready to pop, now all I am waiting for is the video.

Forgive me if this is information you already know. I thought I would try to add a little information to all those watching the night skies. Especially for those who are wondering if it is an airplane or a UFO.

www.aerospaceweb.org...

This picture shows the lighting on an average large airplane. Per FAA requirement, we ALWAYS have the following lights on when airborne: Rotating beacon (flashing red light on the top and bottom), position lights (the steady red and green lights on the wing tips) and our strobe lights. Below 18,000 feet, we also turn on our wing illumination lights and fixed landing lights. Once cleared for landing, we turn on our retractable landing lights. The taxi light is only used on the ground.

But going back to the rotating beacons and position lights (the non-white lights). They are on at all times. So, if you see a moving target that doesn't have a flashing red light and (if you're close enough to make them out) a red light on the left wing and a green light on the right wing. It's probably not an airplane.

Happy hunting!

Seentomuch, thank you for your last update:
as we can see, we are not the only ones interested in what is going on there. I DO understand his concerns, he's a scientist. For a scientist, reputation is almost all: there's nothing wrong in this and i honestly admit that i would have thought twice before taking a decision like that.




This is the best i could do: the quality of the screen-capture is very poor, so i apologize in advance if i'm focusing on the wrong object:

reply to post by seentoomuch

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I live in central Austin around Camp Mabry and I’ve had several helicopters that shook my house when they flew over, sometimes in the middle of the night (but nothing lately). There are too many trees for me to see much as far as sightings, but I did have an interesting experience a couple of years ago. I was driving from Lockhart back to Austin by the Austin-Bergstrom Airport. I noticed that a plane was landing on a airstrip next to the highway I was driving on. Long story short I almost had an accident when I realized that the plane was doing a vertical landing. The plane was white and had no military markings. I know that part of the airport is still a base, and it makes me wonder if there is any connection to some of these sightings.

reply to post by Celeste-G

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Now that I would like to see. The only planes I know of that do vertical landings are military.

White with no markings?? I'm curious...

[edit on 12/17/2008 by JoeBarna]

I watched the video but couldnt find the worm shaped frames like on above posts. Which video is it? And in the video the date were changing. Does that mean something?
Keep good work going on

I think, there is another, earlier report regarding this sighting. I hope there is nothing fishy here, but my stupid senses say there is not much here...
www.youtube.com...

reply to post by commodore64

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Come here and see for yourself.

Never had a one liner, won't start now.

STM

reply to post by seentoomuch

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Sorry confused: come where and see what?

Second line of the argument

Okay, latest update:

Weather has been horrible for viewing, scientist is out of town until Wednesday and his office is locked. I have one tape, JKL says he'll give me a couple of others to add to it until we get the planetarium tapes back.

Also, am real excited 'bout this, Willoughby's found an IR filter that will fit my Canon HV20 with 20X zoom, it's german made optics so it should work well, fingers crossed.

It seems as if this is going slow, sorry 'bout that, a lot of stuff going on in the background, nothing fishy, nothing bad, just slows it down.

STM