Inspired by a friend, I took a UFO photo that I found on the web at this site, and played with it some. This is the original picture.
Update..........
Here is the cropped and greyscaled altered image.
A less dark crop.
While I'm no expert on photography or aircraft, I do know aircraft recognision. This isn't any type I know of. No visible wings or control surfaces, no shadows to indicate their presence. It fits the light well so I doubt it was photoshoped in. It appears to be a flying cylinder, it also appears to be large using the mountain for scale. No detail is evident, so it's impossible to say for certain exactly what it is.
They say it comes back sometimes. Well I have one major suggestion. Get a telescope and record the images through it. If I'm to believe anything, I want far greater detail, and with optical equipment as good as it is, the UFO people can get better pictures.
What continues to trouble me about these images, is that like pictures of Nessy, they are always at very long range and indistinct. Are we being visited? I have no idea, but the failure of UFO documenters to provide better images than these is a major cause for skepticism. The desire to prove a visitation may be so strong that people read into the blurred image what they wish to see. I think this set of images is a wash, neither proving, nor disproving anything. There just isn't enough clearity to judge.
One thing is certain, UFO researchers need to invest in much better optical equipment if they wish to dispell the doubts about their work.
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Update,
I've tought about this some more and I think I see a pattern. A rectanglular shape with bright glare from the top and bottom, but not the center. It looked familar, but it didn't occurr to me how until today.
A wide wing, slender body turned at an oblique angle moving away, the sun glaring off the wings, but not the body because the angle is wrong. Here is a rough idea of what I mean.
If you think no aircraft has such a wide wing as to have the glare distort the image, then look at this.
This aircraft the Consolidated PBY is still in service. Does this prove anything? No, it doesn't, but it's a plausible explanation of the picture. A shiny natural aluminum skin reflects a huge amount of light, maybe enough to obscure the darker parts in shadow. Add to that the fact that this type of plane is used in the mountainous areas where fires happen, plus the piss poor quality of the picture released, and I think this boogeyman is made of plexiglass and aluminum.
So, am I nuts or does anyone else think it's a reasonible answer?
Posted by Mark Edwards (puggs) at September 12, 2003 06:05 PM | TrackBackAnother thing to bear in mind in this sort of thing is digital imaging formats.
JPEG is designed to reduce file size by losing information, and has a variety of quality settings at which different amounts of information are lost. Generally, the smaller the file size, the less true to the original a JPEG will be.
UFO photographers should use the highest quality settings for JPEGs, or, even better, use non-lossy formats like TIFF, RAW or BMP.
Posted by: EvilPundit on September 13, 2003 02:08 AMWith the proliferation of optical and video retail products in recent years, one would imagine there also would be a proliferation of evidence in the UFO field. It hasn't happened. The number of reported sightings is constant despite the fact that almost everyone has a video camera.
Posted by: Interested-Participant on September 14, 2003 12:40 PMYeah that's the problem I have with it too. In 73 a shakey film shot on a home 8mm camera is one thing, but why is that always the best quality picture they can get? Even today?
Posted by: Mark (puggs) on September 14, 2003 07:21 PMGood point, Puggs. And another thing, how come satellite images don't pick up UFOs? Hell, there's a few thousand of those birds up there watching everything.
Posted by: Interested-Participant on September 15, 2003 02:49 AMI don't actually think UFOs are alien spaceships. They clearly exist, but I adhere to the strict meaning of "something in the air you can't identify". Doesn't mean it's not an airplane or something.
That said, the number of photographs of them has indeed increased dramatically with the spread of digital photography. It's just that most of the pictures aren't any better than the ones of old. Worse, in fact, as most digital cameras are far inferior to film for image quality and light sensitivity.
There's also quite a lot of photos taken by the shuttle showing weird flying things in the upper atmosphere. I wouldn't expect them to get caught very often on satellites (although they do -- those weather satellites pick things up now and again) for the same reason astronomers don't see them much -- they're looking either at too wide of a field of view and lose detail, or too narrow of a field of view (zoom) and don't see most of the sky.
Pilots, both commercial and military, see weird things frequently, although the stigma attached to seeing "flying saucers" is such that they are often not reported. I think this is a shame. If the stigma were lost, then I'm quite sure we'd figure far more of these out.
Posted by: John Fenderson on September 15, 2003 01:20 PMBy "they clearly exist", I meant unidentified flying things, not alien spaceships.
Posted by: John Fenderson on September 15, 2003 01:22 PMIs that volcano in Mexico? "Popo" I think is its nickname. If it is, people have been seeing phenomenae of that nature for awhile now. The most credible theory I've seen regarding it is a kind of high-altitude plasma created by geomagnetic forces from the volcano itself. It seems to correlate with the "foo fighters" of WWII - also strongly thought to be stratospheric plasma effects.