HD video of UFO Stalking Chilean Jets Over Santiago Air Base

This appears to be a news report discussing the El Bosque 'UFO' film, and it has some still photos I'd not seen until now: video.

I wonder if anyone would be kind enough to translate the important parts of the audio?

I know it certainly won't seal the deal for anyone who is extremely skeptical, but at around 2:10 into the video, note the caption the journalists use. Google translate shows it ("cefaa dice que no se trata de insectos") as meaning "CEFAA says that it is not insects". So perhaps the audio dialogue around that time is addressing the insect issue, and given how polarizing this insect theory is here on ATS, perhaps what's being said there could be informative?

Something else I discovered: The CEFAA “External Committee of Advisors” apparently includes “eight top scientists from the Chilean Commission of Nuclear Energy, Aerospace Medicine at Santiago University, astronomers from the Metropolitan and Catholic Universities, a plasma physicist from Santiago University, a geographer and expert in satellite imagery from Chile State University, and two psychologists.” That is from General Bermudez, and is taken from Billy Cox's article over at Devoid, here.

Perhaps withholding judgment is the wisest approach at this point? Tentative conclusions with discussions and disagreement are inevitable, but I'd think that the standing and qualifications of those professionals who are vouching for this video (and who claim to have refuted the insect theory) would at least be a barrier to the kind of ridicule I'm seeing meted out by a few of the more skeptical members?

By the way why wouldn't an astronomer make a great video analyst. At the least astronomer's should have great experience measuring speeds of objects travelling at extreme velocities with nothing but video evidence or camera still shots.

Astronomers should see many comets or the like, high level Astronomers for any government very likely watch for dangerous space debris of any kind to determine velocity, how close they will come to earth, impact site (if it will enter orbit) and so on.

How else could any astronomer make determinations like that other than videos or still camera shots. They were trying to cover all of their bases with as many credable specialists as possible it seems.

Originally posted by robhines
Am also wondering how they managed to do a "heat study" if it's just footage taken from a normal video. Not sure how that could make sense at all really and it's making me wonder about the whole thing. If nobody can explain how they managed to do that then it doesn't make much sense to me either now.

Digital cameras are infact sensitive to the IR spectrum. They have to employ IR filters to block it out, but the filters don't block all of it and different cameras use different filters some better than others. So there is going to be some information about the IR spectrum in the different videos.

Originally posted by UFOGlobe

Take a look at the caption of this image:

"Astronomer Luis Barrera highlighted heat on top and in the band below during his analysis. The black area is some kind of energy, and the neutral blue represents solid mass, according to Barrera."

Riiiiiiiggghhhht. I smell BS.

Yup, there is something seriously wrong with this. An astronomer would know that simple image manipulation says nothing about heat signatures. From what I have gathered Luis Barrera is a real astronomer at UMCE in Chile. Weird.

reply to post by cripmeister


It's definitely strange and I don't know how they came to that conclusion, but would a bug look like that or is that a pure photoshop job?

UFOGlobe said:
"Take a look at the caption of this image:
[Astronomer Luis Barrera highlighted heat on top and in the band below during his analysis....]

Riiiiiiiggghhhht. I smell BS."

cripmeister replied:
"Yup, there is something seriously wrong with this. An astronomer would know that simple image manipulation says nothing about heat signatures...."

Alternatively, maybe professional scientists actually DO know more than a few careless skeptics on the ATS UFO forums? That'd be my bet.

So guess how long it took me to find the following?

"Digital camera sensors are inherently sensitive to infrared light.... Several Sony cameras have the so-called Night Shot facility, which physically moves the blocking filter away from the light path, which makes the cameras very sensitive to infrared light."

Found in under 2 minutes, after googling "infrared photography." And it's only about $130 (U.S.) for some of these cameras.

It seems a few of you 'skeptics' here are skeptical in only one direction.

Why not apply your skeptic ambitions to, say, the body of the Condon Report?

"Infrared photography" with filters is a completely different thing than actual thermal imaging. The thermal spectrum is located far below the near-infrared used by photographers to achieve interesting effects and that is used for cheap "nightvision" things (that digital camera/CCD sensors tend to pick up to some extent). A good example of near-infrared are the wavelengths used by little IR LEDs on remote controls that cameras tend to pick up whilst being invisible to the naked eye. Such LEDs can, if they are powerful enough, be used as "invisible" illumination for simple "nightvision" functionality (as commonly found in digital cameras, webcams and what not. But we're not talking thermal nightvision here, again.

However, you cannot really isolate data like that afterwards. If you for example take a photo of a remote control LED, it shows, right. Now it is represented like the other pixels in the image. There is no way to distinguish it as being an IR source. Well, unless there are no other comparable sources of light and you _knew_ that near-infrared was present - which basically means the same thing as applying a filter that blocks out other wavelengths _before_ the exposure (as is the procedure in infrared photography).
Why do professional photographers even bother with buying expensive filters if they could, by this logic, access the very same information afterwards?

It doesn't work that way.

I applied a simple gradient to the natural color image provided above, this is what it looked like:
i40.tinypic.com...
And that is just one single color change, no other alterations. Try it for yourself in Photoshop or GIMP or whatever using a typical "thermal imaging"-looking gradient. It looks A LOT like the alleged "thermal" photography that has been posted, in fact I think it's pretty safe to say that there is nothing in this "thermal" photography except the very same pixels getting a new set of colors for the cool looks of it.

Real thermal imaging requires sensors adequately suited for the task. That is where you get the real blue-red things. Aircraft captured on proper equipment like that look way different (as their actual heat sources stand out quite strikingly, like their engines, exhaust and what not). This just looks like a bad joke to me.

reply to post by entoman


Obviously, we can not see the IR spectrum. So when we see IR in digital photos and video it is because the camera has generated a "false color" in the visible spectrum for the IR it detects. So when you manipulate a color scheme in Photoshop or whatever you are simply again falsifying the color scheme to highlight something.

So if you knew what the false color scheme of a given camera was for IR, then highlighting that by changing the color scheme might look like nothing more than what you've done in your post. The difference is simply knowing where the IR signature is present.

reply to post by lost_shaman


@Lost-shaman

In one of your previous posts you gave a link to a photo analysis report regarding another case by Dr. Richard F. Haines, NARCAP. I looked at that rapport and noticed that Dr. Haines also writes about evidence of heat found in regular photos.

www.narcap.org...

On the first page he writes:

Luminance stretching disclosed a light colored halo around and generally above most of the UAP images which may represent heat radiating (and rising) from the core of the UAP.

On page 25 he elaborates:

Luminance stretched images in the green and blue hues for these same figures show a less pronounced halo, suggesting that the halo exists in the longer (red) (heat?) wavelengths. Evidence of Rising Heat? When the lighter regions surrounding the luminance stretched images are carefully examined in all eleven photographs it becomes apparent that this lighter region is found more often at the upper sides and top of the UAP and to a much lesser degree (or not at all) at the bottom of the UAP in seven of the eleven images (58%). I assert that this lighter region represents heat that is rising from the surface of the UAP. Figures 22 through 24 illustrate this effect for red sensitive pixels only.

Looks like regular photo manipulation is regularly used in detection of heat.

On the other hand, I came to trust elevenaugust's knowledge and judgment who wrote in this tread:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

There's no way simply by looking at a JPEG (and moreover at frames from a video) and playing around with curves and colors to make any "heat study". What we get here are only artificial artifacts.

I really would like to understand, and I believe many others too, this heat analysis issue. The pictures in the other case were 300 ppi, but here we have a video, where each frame is only 72 ppi, therefore contains a lot more JPG artifacts that would give false colors.

Seems Dr. Haines used Photoshop for this analysis but in the presentation, according to the article in Open Minds " Gen. Bermúdez stated in his IUFOC lecture that... First we gave it to the astronomers, who used their own software..."

It would be helpful to know what was that other software that the astronomers were using.

Originally posted by stiver
In one of your previous posts you gave a link to a photo analysis report regarding another case by Dr. Richard F. Haines, NARCAP. I looked at that rapport and noticed that Dr. Haines also writes about evidence of heat found in regular photos....

Thanks for your trust, Stiver.

About Haines studies, well, on the same CEFAA page of this "Jets Over Santiago" case there's another interesting case and study from Haines (Caso "El Yeso") about this photo:



And Haine's conclusion (roughly translated from Spanish):

The UFO must have been found above the reddish cloud partially obscured by it. Its height can not be calculated accurately. If the photographer had noticed the reddish UFO in Figure 2, would not have tried to get more pictures of this? Why then, she focused the UFO in the visual field of the camera in the following pictures? By not doing so supports his claim that she did not see it. In summary, although this could not be positively UFO identified, had a high number of intriguing details that deserve further investigation.

I have hard time believing that Haines didn't immediately recognize a simple flare here and conduct its analysis trying to prove it.

So about the "heat study", I have serious doubts.

Originally posted by elevenaugust

I have hard time believing that Haines didn't immediately recognize a simple flare here and conduct its analysis trying to prove it.

So about the "heat study", I have serious doubts.

edit on 18-3-2012 by elevenaugust because: (no reason given)

Does not look like an "obvious" flare to me and in any case Haines' credentials are unmistakable real in this field. Yours are?

Double post!!

Regarding the heat signature and infrared claims.

I managed to contact the astronomer cited as doing the heat/infrared analysis (Luis Barrera) in the early hours of this morning and surprise, surprise, he was apparently grossly misquoted.

I’ve tried to track & document the source of confusion on my Blog, it’s still a bit convoluted but it should be fairly easy to follow and hopefully understand.

The relevant details obtained were as follows:

This has been the main bone of contention for those trying to follow the case as essentially it is alleged that by manipulating the images during photo-analysis that a heat signature, energy source and consistency of mass can be determined. This sounded highly implausible but as Kean & Blumenthal credited this to Luis Barrera I emailed him to see if he could confirm the accuracy of the claim, and if so then to expand on the technique employed. However and admittedly as somewhat suspected it transpired that the statement was wildly inaccurate as Luis Barrera promptly replied with the following:

I have never concluded that "The black area is some kind of energy, and the neutral blue represents solid mass.”

During the analysis of those videos, the main idea was the study of asymmetries in order to detect mass loss around the "object" (which is typically observed in small bodies falling to the earth).

On the other hand, such asymmetries can be used to compare it with the expected pattern of insect or birds flying in the field of view.

During our short email exchange Luis also said that:

On the other hand, such asymmetries (can be) were used to compare it with the expected pattern of insect or birds flying in the field of view. We have spent about one year in this case using different frames, where the shape of the "object" remain quite similar in the different videos, so that the hypothesis of birds, bugs or insects were analyzed in detail.

Fortunately in some videos it is possible to observe birds, which showed the expected pattern of changing asymmetries due to the flap of the wings. But this is not the case of the target!!

As you can see by the above comment the analysis was a great deal more thorough than what was being suggested on various discussion forums, as well of course as apparently dismissing the bird theory in its entirety. This being accomplished by using previously identified examples of birds in flight (contained within the same videos) as a comparative tool.

I realised at this point that any further questions would perhaps be misconstrued as overstaying my welcome but as I was still unsure as to how the analysis actually functioned I hazarded one final question:

I always favoured the insect theory. Admittedly this is mainly as I’ve seen quite a bit of footage that bore more than a passing resemblance to screen-captures of the released video. Namely that the -out of focus- rapid motion of the translucent wings coupled with severe motion-blur often resembles a ‘classic domed saucer’ shape (with the wings creating the domed illusion).

Would the equipment you were using be sensitive enough to detect the fluctuations in the asymmetry of an insect wing analysed frame-by-frame at 30fps and also not being the (optimal) focal point which lay far beyond the target (if target was considerably closer than previously calculated)?

Or would the relative speed & close proximity of the insect in relation to the camera cause it to appear in alternate frames as more of a solid object?

However, and as expected I have received no reply, this is completely understandable and should in no way be regarded as being uncooperative because this was around 3:30am (this) Sunday morning UK time which translates to just after midnight on the Chilean clock!! So as such I am greatly appreciative of the time already afforded to me by Luis Barrera, and especially at such an unsociable hour as he is undoubtedly a very busy man.

More info at:

blog.ufo-blog.com...


Cheers.

Originally posted by jclmavg

Originally posted by elevenaugust

I have hard time believing that Haines didn't immediately recognize a simple flare here and conduct its analysis trying to prove it.

So about the "heat study", I have serious doubts.

edit on 18-3-2012 by elevenaugust because: (no reason given)

Does not look like an "obvious" flare to me and in any case Haines' credentials are unmistakable real in this field. Yours are?

edit on 18-3-2012 by jclmavg because: (no reason given)

Appeal to authority and ad hominem, can't wait to see what comes next. By flare I think elevenaugust was referring to lens flare, read about it here.

reply to post by elevenaugust


Yes Elevenaugust, that is an obvious lens flare. The very bright light source seems to be on the lower half of the image, and the angle that the light is hitting the camera would create a lens flare in the exact spot the "UFO" is in. I find it quite hard to believe he didn't know it was a lens flare.

As for the rest of his writings about detecting IR in normal images... that is a bunch of nonsense too.

Cameras have IR filters that cut out IR light. Depending on the quality of the camera and the quality of the IR filter very small amounts of IR in a specific wavelength do actually make it into the camera. However, these small amounts of infrared radiation are mixed with visible light radiation when they both hit the same image sensor, and the IR information is completely lost. At that point all you have is 3 bytes of pixel data, Red, Green, Blue, per pixel.

So if R=237, B=29, G=38 on a single pixel, there is NOTHING you can do to extract IR information from these values. There is no way to distinguish what portions of each value are from visible light and what was from IR light.

On top of that, video compression could also completely change the color values. A lot of digital cameras have built in video compression, and as I explained in a later post how compression works, the amount of unique colors in the video's color table are reduced to compress that video's data. So the color data could be completely artificial. It also depends on the format the video was saved as digitally. Different formats use different compression.

After looking at the astronomers other work, I think it safe to conclude he is not very knowledgeable with computer graphics and image forensics.

In this following example it appears the astronomer is using biliner or bicubic interpolation to scale images to a higher resolution before analyzing the images. Biliner or Bicubic interpolation creates artificial pixel data that didn't exist in the original image. Here is an example from his report:

Figure 2a. Bandera 080 Full Color Enlargement of UAP. (Integrated Red, Green, Blue Hues)

If you look closely at the image, you will see pixels grouped into small squares. This is caused by the interpolation. The image you see is completely artificial at this point. None of the pixel data was from the original camera. This is actually a common amateur mistake in image analysis. However, that didn't stop him from continuing his "analysis".

After he amateurishly contaminated his evidence, he then added a simple "posterize" filter to the contaminated image above:

Figure 2b Bandera 080 Posterized in 12 Levels.

I am sorry, but adding simple "posterize" filters to images using photoshop is not a valid image analysis technique. Especially after you have previously scaled the image using bilinear or bicubic interpolation! The data at this point is completely artificial and computer generated! None of the images above are of any value. The only data he is analyzing now is data he made himself using image manipulation.

I think this information proves that the astronomer is not qualified to do any image analysis. I think everyone should question is techniques, because they are highly inaccurate and misleading.

Source:
www.narcap.org...

reply to post by DrDil


That doesn't explain his previous analyses though. Specifically this one:
www.narcap.org...

Here is a quote from him:

Evidence of Rising Heat?

When the lighter regions surrounding the luminance stretched images are carefully examined in all eleven photographs it becomes apparent that this lighter region is found more often at the upper sides and top of the UAP and to a much lesser degree (or not at all) at the bottom of the UAP in seven of the eleven images (58%). I assert that this lighter region represents heat that is rising from the surface of the UAP. Figures 22 through 24 illustrate this effect for red sensitive pixels only.

He is claiming he can extract heat data from RGB values....

Originally posted by UFOGlobe
reply to post by DrDil

 

That doesn't explain his previous analyses though. Specifically this one:
www.narcap.org...

Here is a quote from him:

Evidence of Rising Heat?

When the lighter regions surrounding the luminance stretched images are carefully examined in all eleven photographs it becomes apparent that this lighter region is found more often at the upper sides and top of the UAP and to a much lesser degree (or not at all) at the bottom of the UAP in seven of the eleven images (58%). I assert that this lighter region represents heat that is rising from the surface of the UAP. Figures 22 through 24 illustrate this effect for red sensitive pixels only.

He is claiming he can extract heat data from RGB values....

edit on 18-3-2012 by UFOGlobe because: (no reason given)

Hi UFOGlobe,

The pdf you linked to isn’t by the astronomer Luis Barrera (CEFAA) but it’s authored by Richard Haines (Dr. Richard F. Haines, NARCAP Chief Scientist.,). Whilst I haven’t read it properly I did notice that in appendix 1 Haines writes the following:

Even though these were JPEG compressed images there was no evidence found for any particular pixel distortion surrounding either the airplanes or the UAP in the blue sky background.

My general impression of the UAP shown in image 081 was that of a large dark bird in flight. If these three images were taken over a brief period of seconds then the three (3) UAP images will provide photo analysts with much useful differential information between them.

Richard Haines

This sort of strikes me as strange but without having a proper look at the images then I’m in no position to comment (yet). Good work on this thread so far and whilst I don’t think it’s NOT a Blurfo I would advocate trying not to debunk every author & aspect, well, at least until you realise who it is you’re debunking!!

Originally posted by UFOGlobe

[snip]

I think this information proves that the astronomer is not qualified to do any image analysis. I think everyone should question is techniques, because they are highly inaccurate and misleading.

Source: www.narcap.org...

I just searched for the name of the astronomer, ‘Luis’ and it isn’t contained in the PDF at all.


Cheers.

@Elevenaugust and UFOglobe, thank you for the explanations. This is very helpful and most educational.

@UFOglobe, I just want to point that this pdf document is a rapport by Richard F. Haines. Is it possible that you've confused the names of the astronomer Barrera and the code name for this case - Bandera? Quote from page 2 of the pdf file: "We agreed to refer to the incident as Bandera." -

Now, after reading the correspondence of DrDil with Barrera, and looking at the way Haines uses Photoshop tricks to pull some sort of evidence of a "energy," I begin to suspect not a "thermal signature" but more of a "Haines signature" in the conclusions about the El Bosque controversial picture. This is of course only a presumption but there is a lot of similarity in the conclusions.

@DrDil, applause and a star for you!

I'm going to better explain the whole interpolation thing, and why the methods of analysis on previous CEFAA cases are nonsense.



The above 25x25 image contains 13 pixels of different RGB values that I made. Pretend this pixel data was cropped directly from a RAW image I took from a camera. This will be our "UFO".

There are multiple ways to enlarge this image to get a better view of the "UFO" to analyze it. The incorrect way which the CEFAA used in previous analyses is to use bicubic or bilinear interpolation.

This is bicubic:


This is bilinear:


Now, as you can see, those original 13 pixels are now 100s of pixels... Where did all those pixels come from? I only originally made 13 pixels, and the interpolation took those 13 pixels and created 100s of pixels. The two images are now artificial, they are computer generated. They now show pixels that never existed. This is what the CEFAA did in his previous analyses. They also used this method of scaling on the "heat" images of the UFO in the OP.

To make matters worse, the CEFAA also used a "posertize filter with 12 levels" AFTER using the incorrect interpolation.

Here I added a "posterize" fliter with 12 levels to the bilinear image:


Posterize is known as an "artistic effect" and nothing more. As you can see above, all it did was change the pixels into something completely computer generated. The original 13 pixels that I made were transformed into 100s of pixels with the interpolation, then the posterize effect further transformed the pixels into something they never were to begin with.

The techniques used by the CEFAA are common amateur mistakes. Their analyses are complete nonsense. This throws all their recent analyses into question.

The proper way to enlarge an image for analysis is to use nearest-neighbor interpolation. Here is an example:


As you can see above, the original 13 pixels are still visible, just enlarged. No data was created or destroyed.

Now look at this image:


It is obvious to me that whoever made the above "infrared" image did NOT use nearest-neighbor interpolation to enlarge it. The pixel data is not the same. They used bicubic or bilinear interpolation which as explained creates artificial data.

And, as pointed out by "entoman", they added a simple color-gradient map (an "artistic effect") to make it look like it is infrared.

i40.tinypic.com...

Something is not right here at all... This all seems like a bunch of nonsense.

reply to post by stiver


Crap, you are right. I did confuse Barrera and Haines together. That is because they both used the same technique, and they both were involved in this case.

Third, we did our own internal study; we also asked the opinion of Dr. [Richard] Haines and Bruce Maccabee. Maccabee agreed with our astronomers and Richard [Haines] said that there is an unknown aerial phenomenon.

www.ufocasebook.com...

In Kean's article Barrera was said to have made the "heat study". In that NARCAP, CEFAA, Bandera case I guess Haines did a similar "heat study".

Honest mistake. Either way, they BOTH seem to be making amateur mistakes during their analysis. So I will just refer to the CEFAA as a whole from now on.