Seeking informations about an old 1967 UFO photo

Hi ATS!

For a future UFO image analysis project, I really would like your help finding informations about a specific old photographic case.

Here's the photo with the best resolution (640x349) I've found so far:



With the following statements:

(Picaco Park) Las Cruces, New Mexico- A New Mexico State University student took this photo of what he says is a UFO, while photographing land formations for a geology class. The picture was taken with a 4x5 press camera at F8 at 1/100/second. He said the object made no noise and disappeared as he looked down to change plates in the camera.

...and...

About 2:00pm on March 12th, 1967, A New Mexico State University student was hiking in a desert area near Picacho Peak, New Mexico, when he spotted a big round silvery object hovering in the air just above a rocky hill about 500 yards away. He prepared his 4" X 5" Press Camera, set it at F8 and 1/100 shutter speed, and snapped one good black and white picture of the object. It appeared stationary or was moving very little at the time of the photograph. He looked down to change the plates of his camera, needing only 3 seconds, but when he looked back to take another shot, the object was gone. He recalled smelling an electrical odor in the air too!

I especially would like to find if there's somewhere any better resolution for the photo.

Thanks everyone!

Did a search with tiny eye to see if any thing came up.

Tiny eye results

And did'nt get much luck sorry but did get two decent hits which might help
with your project.

ufo-pictures 138 years of ufo sightings

laboiteverte 433 photos

reply to post by elevenaugust


Flag and Star for opening an old case.
I recommend you to visit a second hand bookstore and dig around in the pre-80s UFO literature.
Enjoy!

I have never seen that photo before, thank you for posting.

The first thing that struck me is how the saucer seems to be flying at an angle we rarely see(or maybe never).

It appears as if it is banking at a hard angle. What was the shutter speed for the cameras in the 60's?

Last thing I noticed was how it is between two large stone formations, maybe somebody ran a rope or the likes from one hill to another and had the object dangling on a line in between them? It is a cool pic, different than I am use to seeing these days. It's going to be interesting to see what the ATS collective thinks about it. S&F

Here's the source on the Web. But you seem to already have that.

Las Cruces, NM, March 12, 1967

reply to post by elevenaugust


Ive seen this one before, im sure its in one of my mothers old ufo books from the 60-70s (where those book would be now I dont know), although if I recall its just the picture (slightly cropped) and more or less what youve already got about the sighting as a caption.

Its a good photo in my opinion, the UFO even casts a correct shadow on the hill top.

We can never say its a genuine pic of a UFO, but for me its one of the better 'very possible' UFO pictures.

Thank you everyone for your help!

Seems like there's no (at least on the Net) higher resolution available.

I've asked anyway to Vicente Ballester-Olmos (Fotocat owner) if by chance he's got one.

Will share with you if I have a positive answer.

In the meantime, maybe Isaackoi or some other UFO archivist have more informations?

Update:

The original source (thanks to my contact Ballester-Olmos) is the APRO Bulletin, March-April 1967, p 1.

The original photograph was published by APRO, which withheld the photographer´s name on request, and strangely it received no analysis in the following years. US engineer Larry Robinson believes it is simply a suction cup stuck to a car window, but it was just an opinion. (thanks to Ballester-Olmos for the informations)

A preliminary work on the best photo resolution reveals some interesting things nonetheless:



So, not a smoking gun yet, but IMO a strong clue to what it could be, i-e some sort of pendulum suspended by one or two strings (Though I wasn't able to see two after the enhancement...)

I looked for a Project Blue Book file on this case, but found nothing. Not too surprising- they seem to have been very spotty on filing cases. I've found no files on sightings refferenced in their own reports.

Did this photo receive any media attention? The newspapers and magazines were prinitng almost anything during the saucer fever of the 60s. Needless to say, many of these later were exposed as phonies.

reply to post by elevenaugust


I wouldn't say its indication of a fake, since to my eyes that 'line' appears to suddenly arc off to the left and down near your bottom red arrow.

Which could be that the lines are simply defects in the image of some sort. The rest of the skys got all sorts of vertical banding going on as well, the lines could be related to that. Who knows how many times that image has been through the mill both digitally and none digitally before getting to the one youve got as an example.

reply to post by elevenaugust
Hello friend, good work in trying to source and analyse the image.

If I'd got here earlier I would have recommended Ballester-Olmos too. For future reference, or if anyone else is interested, he's been publishing a spreadsheet of UFO images for a few years now. It's available for download here. It's a useful document for anyone trying to look into photos of alleged UFOs spanning decades.

The APRO issue is available in a number of places and always an interesting read.

The object in the image reminds me of something like the weight on a clock pendulum or a decorative brass spindle.

the picacho peak UFO photo especially haunting because it seems like some metallic geometrical shape (like a gemini capsule viewed head on) but it is gone in a flash.. sadly the case never got investigated , especially the conditions up to the thing's appearance (high strangeness stuff like sudden silence and change in the air or tingling feeling or feeling of being watched).

those who remember the Yacanto Cordoba UFO ? the cone shaped UFO that was photographed by an argentine air force officer ( there is also a horse below the UFO looking at the UFO as if in apprehension ) ..

once i saw this picacho photo, 2 other case came to mind immediately .. the Yacanto Cordoba photo and the Lago de Cota Goverment Airplane photo

Thanks!

Some I recognized as US built and some other I could explain away as ones that were described by family members and friends.

A very good job sharing that with us at the forum...