Daylight Photographs Revealed of UFO Over Vancouver Island

Originally posted by elevenaugust

Next step is to find what cause these probably light reflection and where it is located.

...to be continued...

From comparison with topo maps I think the main ridge that is behind the lights, is maybe the ridge between Juan de Fuca Highway and Eden Valley Road. Its elevation along the top is about 1300 to 1500 feet, placing the lights about 900 foot elevation.

To me it looks like there might be some logging roads up there, but most of the houses or buildings look to be lower down in the valley, with maybe a couple right on the ridge.

I'll be interested to see what you find.

I'm still open to the possibility that the lights, while stationary, were possibly in the air between the photographer and the hills and mountains west of Port Angeles.

I agree with Bluestreak. It is definitely possible to calculate the minimum size of this object based on the known distances involved. It's when you have an object in the air with no reference to how far or how big it is that distance and size cannot be determined. The angular size (like holding a dime or a pea at arm's length) is important to determine. As for height, a crude measurement can be made by holding your fist (or one, two or three fingers, or a twig) at arm's length and then using a protractor later to get approximate degrees above the horizon.

Apparent speed of an object can be estimated by using reference points (trees, mountain tops etc) and counting off seconds to a second reference point.

These simple methods require presence of mind to implement when confronted with an unknown object but give some rough estimates when reporting a sighting.

Military

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


No it certainly wasn't the hills or mountains, this was right in the city, in East Van. When I saws the title of this post I immediately clicked on it cause I thought for sure it was the same thing that I saw and wow, it was! It looked exactly like this picture. I'm not saying it was a UFO, I dont know what it is, but this is the same thing I saw.

The only other time I saw something like this was in Victoria, about close to 15 years ago. There was 5 of us that saw it, it was real close too, completely silent, we could see the details on the ship, the lights, windows, etc it was crazy. It was something I had never seen before but to be honest it didnt seem like alien technology, that is to say, it didnt seem like it was from space. It seemed to be built by people.

My theory, and actually most peoples theories on the island, are that they come across the water from Washington state.

Hope that helps!

Originally posted by wrdwzrd
reply to post by Corruption Exposed

 

No it certainly wasn't the hills or mountains, this was right in the city, in East Van. When I saws the title of this post I immediately clicked on it cause I thought for sure it was the same thing that I saw and wow, it was! It looked exactly like this picture. I'm not saying it was a UFO, I dont know what it is, but this is the same thing I saw.

The only other time I saw something like this was in Victoria, about close to 15 years ago. There was 5 of us that saw it, it was real close too, completely silent, we could see the details on the ship, the lights, windows, etc it was crazy. It was something I had never seen before but to be honest it didnt seem like alien technology, that is to say, it didnt seem like it was from space. It seemed to be built by people.

My theory, and actually most peoples theories on the island, are that they come across the water from Washington state.

Hope that helps!

The very fact you observed your UFO on a different day and from a different location suggests the possibility it was a completely different UFO. What makes you so certain it was the same one? (if I am interpreting your posts correctly)

reply to post by bluestreak53

Thanks!

In the following, I'll try to give a good estimation of both the altitude of the lights and their possible location.

1- Location of the lights

First step is to find photos were the olympic mountains crest are clearly visible from Victoria. After almost one hour of research, I finally succeed in finding some.
The original format of these three photos can be found in this Flickr album; they were taken last month.







The mountains crest that can be seen on the last photo above match 100% with that of our "UFO" photo:



Next step is to determine the lights location (pixels coordinates) on this photo:





It's [945,401].

Now that we have these coordinates, how can we determine the location, provided that these lights are on the coast, on the hillside?

Fortunately, the three photos from the Flickr album can be composited together to give a good overview of the whole Olympic mountains crest:


[scroll to the rightmost part to see the coordinates of the lights]

Next step is to find an acceptable reference point that can be found on the US coast on the photos.
As nothing clear can be seen on these, a quick search on "Port-Angeles seen from Victoria" gives me some interesting results. In the photo below, for example, (taken from the ferry that goes from Port-Angeles to Victoria) Port-Angeles is directly located under the topmost mountains crest:



So we can take as a reference point the point "A", which is formed at the junction of the perpendicular line drawn from the mountain higher point to the sea level and the line that mark this sea level.
This mountain higher point is visible as well on one (the leftmost) of our photo taken from Flickr.
Also, we know that there's approximately 33.000m on a straight line between Victoria and Port-Angeles.

So, we can easily determine the angular size and the estimated length of the straigth line that join point "A" to the rightmost part of the photo:



Finally, let's proceed the same way for the two other photo in the composition below:



....were we can have now a complete estimation of both the angular size of the length of the total distance between point "A" and point "B" (the point with the coordinates [945,401] where the lights are located.

So the lights are located approximately 12.600m (7.83 miles) away to the right of Port-Angeles...

....to be continued!

2- Altitude of the lights

To calculate this altitude, let's take again our photo from Flickr with the reported coordinates of the lights.

[945,401] is located 0.3040° above the sea level and a straight line drawn between Victoria and the US coastal point along this line gives for the distance 40.420m (+/- 25 miles).



So the light are approximately 214m (700ft) above the sea level.

Next step is to define a good range of possibilities about the exact location of the lights.

....to be continued.

reply to post by elevenaugust


elevenaugust, you're doing an interesting work. However you calculated that the size of the object is something between 205m-320m and it's 214m above the sea level. So the size of object in the picture should be also approximately the same with its seperation from the sea level is it not? However in the pictures the object looks smaller than the distance between it and the water. Please clarify for us laymen

Originally posted by bilb_o
reply to post by elevenaugust

 

elevenaugust, you're doing an interesting work. However you calculated that the size of the object is something between 205m-320m and it's 214m above the sea level. So the size of object in the picture should be also approximately the same with its seperation from the sea level is it not? However in the pictures the object looks smaller than the distance between it and the water. Please clarify for us laymen

Thanks, and yes, it's a good question and, after checking it, my calculations of the object size is wrong. I've done a mistake using wrong data on the wrong photo (my mistake!!).
Thanks a lot for having checking it!

If my calculation of its position above the sea level is right (and it is probably as this time I used the right photo!), it should have in fact a size of 21/22m (if located 40.420m away - if located 50.000m away for example, it will have then a size of roughly 26/27m)

Ok, now let's try to better define where exactly could be these lights!

The photos were taken from Victoria's beach (Dallas Road Waterfront Trail, close to the fences) and Mount Angeles - Port-Angeles - Victoria beach are exactly on the same line:



I previously found that the distance between Port-Angeles and the lights was about 12600m.

So, to compensate a possible marging error in my calculations, let's take the range 12000m to 13000m for this distance and the minimum distance between the photographer and the lights (direct distance between Victoria and Port-Angeles) 33000m, and proceed like this:

- Draw the circle with Port-Angeles as its center and with a radius of 12000m
- Draw the circle with Port-Angeles as its center and with a radius of 13000m
- Choose as the max. altitude possible 400m (0.25 miles)

Then, the possible locations for these lights to be are in the hatched areas:



I quickly fly over the area with Google Earth and found nothing special. There are only two roads that are around 700ft: the Dan Kelly Rd and the State Forest Rd. There are scattered houses all over there.
The GE images are 8 years old, so maybe there's a new house with a sunroom somewhere around there or maybe a truck was standing there.

The only way to know if it's something motionless would be to do some shots exactly one year later, same date, same hour, same minute... and see if the reflection occurs again, provided that it is a sunny day.

Warm air. Cold water. Perfect setup for a superior mirage.



charliesweatherforecasts.blogspot.com...

The light(s) may not be on the hillside at all.

reply to post by bluestreak53


I have no idea if it is literally the exact same object but it looked exactly like the thing captured in the Victoria photo. What it is, I have no idea....

Originally posted by wrdwzrd
reply to post by bluestreak53

 

I have no idea if it is literally the exact same object but it looked exactly like the thing captured in the Victoria photo. What it is, I have no idea....

Usually people who have an impressive UFO sighting are anxious to provide details.

1) Where were you? What time was it?
2) What direction was the UFO? What angle above the horizon?
3) Did the UFO move? What direction?
4) How long was it visible?
5) Was anyone else with you? Did anyone else notice the UFO?
6) Describe the UFO? Was it just 3 lights/reflections or did you see a structure? What shape was it? What was its surface texture and colour?

We should remember that CFB Esquimalt does plenty of training drills in those waters with their sea king choppers. I've seen many rescue drills from shore and from the HMCS Algonquin.

reply to post by elevenaugust


Thanks for posting that excellent analysis.

My focus was on trying to find a landform matching the hill/mountain which appears behind the UFO in the image.

Checking the topo maps, I think I may have located a match which lies very close to your identified area of interest.

Here is the image I used for reference.


Here is a google map with topo overlay of the hill I think matches the contours. The ridge altitude varies from 1300 to 1500 feet elevation.


The deep pink line shows the my estimate for the approximate alignment of the lights in the image.
Here is another image without the topo overlay.



There are some buildings which might match the alignment along the road in the valley. I doubt they'd be visible as they are probably obscured by land in the foreground, unless they might be reflected in a mirage, as Phage suggests might be happening.

I'll include one last image to show the overview of the sightline from Victoria.

reply to post by elevenaugust


Hi Some nice work you have done there but you had a little bit of data missing from the exif he also used digital zoom 2.531x at 72mm that camera is 12x optical but digital zoom was used also.

Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon PowerShot S2 IS
Image Date: 2012-09-14 15:00:24 -0700
Focal Length: 72.0mm
Digital Zoom: 2.531x
Aperture: f/7.1
Exposure Time: 0.0010 s (1/1000)
Exposure Bias: none
Metering Mode: Center Weight
White Balance: Auto
Flash Fired: No (enforced)
Orientation: Normal
GPS Coordinate: undefined, undefined
Software: PaintShop Pro 14.00

reply to post by bluestreak53

Thanks and great work as well.

The mirage hypothesis is interesting, (thanks Phage!) and, if it's the case here, the [real] lights were probably standing on the waterfront (or not too far away on the water), as they aren't visible.
Anyway, I guess that it also depends of the thickness of the two layers involved here.

At this point, my best guess would be a standing boat close to the coast.

Weather conditions for the closest airport (CMS Port-Angeles) for the 14 September 2012 at 3pm: T: 22°C/71.6°F - Dew point: 7.2°C/45°F - Humidity: 33%.



reply to post by wmd_2008

Thanks!
Of course, before making my calculations, I resized all the original photos to compensate the digital zoom effect.

Anyway, I only used for what I've done above the main photo (n°002) where the digital zoom wasn't used:

Originally posted by bluestreak53

Originally posted by wrdwzrd
reply to post by bluestreak53

 

I have no idea if it is literally the exact same object but it looked exactly like the thing captured in the Victoria photo. What it is, I have no idea....

Usually people who have an impressive UFO sighting are anxious to provide details.

1) Where were you? What time was it?
2) What direction was the UFO? What angle above the horizon?
3) Did the UFO move? What direction?
4) How long was it visible?
5) Was anyone else with you? Did anyone else notice the UFO?
6) Describe the UFO? Was it just 3 lights/reflections or did you see a structure? What shape was it? What was its surface texture and colour?

I thought I covered most of this in the original post of mine but Ill clarify -

1) East Vancouver, Mt.Pleasant, it was around 2:30-2:45
2) Wasnt moving
3) Didnt move
4) I saw it for 5 minutes or so, I left to get my camera, came back and it was gone
5) I was by myself but I was in a pretty busy area, nobody else noticed. I was thinking of asking someone but thought forget it
6) Exactly like the photo, super bright shiny silver in the bright blue sky. not a cloud around, couldnt miss it

And just to add, I wasn't anxious to share this with anyone. In the past I have done so and it never turned out well so I dont bother putting my belief systems on others anymore.