UFO Over Austria

Source: Source

A bizarre and mysterious object, has been photographed over Vienna Austria.
The object, which was reported to the MUFON website appears transparent, or is possibly partially cloaked.
MUFON Case Number: 61696

Thoughts on this? The object almost looks like its made out of glass or crystal. Fake or not, this is one of the strangest looking "UFOs" Ive seen.

a reply to: Bloodydagger

The appearance may be due to a cloaking device and the shape looks like a Klingon war bird.

They look like a bunch of balloons.
some poor kid just had his birthday party ruined when the balloons got away.

Maybe a dust particle on the camera lens? Or some sort of lens anomaly? It kind of resembles a crumbled plastic bag.

Whatever it is, the commercial intro, robotic voice and subscription advertisement at the end don't make it look any more believable.

It almost appears like a chip in the camera lens or a dirty camera lens.

Added note: Looks like someone beat me to this conclusion. Don't see how the photographer would have noticed it unless it was in every photo taken with that camera.

That's a weird one. First thought was plastic wrappmg like you get from a flower shop blowing in the wind. But there does appear to be sort of headlights on it. Weird

a reply to: ufoorbhunter

Weird one indeed

Weird. Would be interesting to see if any other pictures taken had anomolies on them. Looks to me like a chip in the lens as others have suggested, but im not a camera expert.

I will say they use of the phone-voice (Siri or whatever) didn't really make it more believable to me, and the "what if" stuff suggested was very reminiscent of Ancient Aliens type theories to me.

a reply to: Bloodydagger

Looks like a sweet wrapper or a chip in glass

Close-up:


Something is not right with the metadata.



There are two XMP tags that shouldn't be there for an original unmodified file ("Xmp.MicrosoftPhoto.DateAcquired" and "Xmp.xmpMM.InstanceID").

The image was taken with a Samsung Galaxy S5 (SM-G900F).

Moreover, the EXIF tag "Exif Byte Order" that describes the endianess of the data stored in the Exif directories is wrong.
For a a Samsung Galaxy S5, it should be "II", i-e Intel ordering (little-endian), and it appears to be in the MUFON picture "MM", i-e Motorola ordering (big-endian):



What does that mean? Well, seem like the author of the picture artificially added the "UFO" upon the sky, then remove all the Photoshop/GIMP/Paint whatever ... exif tags in the associated metadata. However, he forgot (or didn't knew) that this manipulation leave some traces anyway in the metadata and that changes their endianess...

a reply to: elevenaugust

Looking at the file information in PhotoShop, those EXIF irregularities are caused by importing the photo into Microsoft Photo Gallery.

Photoshops sees no evidence of image manipulation in the file's EXIF details. In fact, what's there would be very typical of someone shooting the shot, then running inside to transfer it to their computer.

What is really needed is the file directly off the phone. However, those EXIF irregularities alone are not evidence of image manipulation.

I improved the visibility of the object a bit.


What bothers me the most about this photo is that, judging by the light on the clouds, the sun appears to be high overhead and to the right -- and at 2PM in Austria, it would be a relatively high sun.

However, it appears to be lit from below -- and I'm not referring to just the areas that "may" be lit by the supposed lights -- highlights on the object appear to be lit from below, and to the left… very nearly the opposite of the sun's position.

The pic was taken in November according to EXIF and Mufon report at 3:09pm. Sunset in Vienna at this time about 4:12pm so it was about one hr before sunset. Sun was sure not very high up at this time.

But I have multiple problems with this sighting. First, we don't have a reference point in the image which makes it difficult to judge the size. It sure is not a large (plane-sized) object in "plane distance", there is way too much detail on the "object", a Samsung Galaxy S5 would for example hardly show any detail if you were to shoot a plane in the distance.

So..the object looks to me relatively close, and because there is lots of detail I would say the object might also be relatively small. Maybe a toy drone of some sorts? Just guessing...otherwise odd.

a reply to: NoRulesAllowed

Actually, the S5 has a very good camera.

The time settings on the camera must be wrong. That's not a sky one hour before sunset.

a reply to: elevenaugust

For a a Samsung Galaxy S5, it should be "II", i-e Intel ordering (little-endian), and it appears to be in the MUFON picture "MM", i-e Motorola ordering (big-endian):

Out of curiosity, I checked the EXIF for an old image on my HD - it's off a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. In the data, it shows as 'Big-endian (Motorola, MM).' I ran the MUFON image through regex.info and it also came up as 'Big-endian (Motorola, MM). I wonder if they've used an old image to add the object to and then changed the model of phone to make it appear more recent and genuine?

From MUFON report: 'I was on the balcony, when I saw this huge transparent vehicle floating above the clouds. I grabbed my phone (Samsung Galaxy S5) and I did a photograph, when the vehicle was gone... I've never seen anything like it, it was strange.'

They didn't add much detail, but made sure to identify the phone model.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

The time settings on the camera must be wrong. That's not a sky one hour before sunset.

Hiya SO, I've had Samsungs and a Sony android and time-of-photo is automatically set by the time on the phone. There isn't a way of having a different time setting for the camera.

It looks like a SNES graphic. Is that out of Final Fantasy 7? Really, this doesn't got the same vibe as UFO pics determined to be authentic. It looks like a sci-fi graphic. You'll need more than this to make a believer out of me.

originally posted by: Bloodydagger
Source: Source

A bizarre and mysterious object, has been photographed over Vienna Austria.
The object, which was reported to the MUFON website appears transparent, or is possibly partially cloaked.
MUFON Case Number: 61696

Thoughts on this? The object almost looks like its made out of glass or crystal. Fake or not, this is one of the strangest looking "UFOs" Ive seen.

a reply to: Kandinsky

So is MUFON officially accepting hoaxes as being the real deal now? I always thought that they were "sort of" better than that.

a reply to: Bloodydagger

The MUFON database isn't moderated so you or I could go and post a hoax right now and others would be none the wiser. Peter Davenport runs the NUFORC database/collecting point and has complained for years about the number of hoaxers and jackasses he has had to deal with. This suggests that MUFON would have an equal or greater number of hoaxes.

This image hasn't been *proven* a hoax. Rather it's raised a few issues that are pointing in that direction.

a reply to: AthlonSavage

I'm with you on this one; "Klingon cloaking device"
LMAO!

Yes, importing a photo into the Microsoft Photo Gallery can create these irregularities into the metadata.

But what bothers me the most is the Big-endian/Little-endian issue...

Using Photoshop systematically replace the endianess by Big-endian, so it would be easy for a hoaxer to remove (using the exiftool command line for example) all the PS tags, without paying much attention to the endianess.

The Samsung S5 endianess is NOT Big-endian, so this alone could raise a big red flag...

However, I've done some further testing to see if the simple use of the Microsoft Photo Gallery can modify the endianess.

Using it, you can modify the picture with simple tools (noise reduction, color, exposure...) and that's what I've done with another Samsung S5 original picture.

And, surprise! It changes indeed the endianess. So that means that even the simple use of Microsoft Photo Gallery change the endianess from Little-endian to Big-Endian. But doing this way also add two news tags that ARE NOT present in the "UFO" picture (outlined in yellow):
- JFIF Version and
- Creator Tool that indicates the use of Microsoft Photo Gallery.



Simply re-saving the image with Microsoft Photo Gallery without doing any modification does not change the endianess.

So in conclusion I would say that, yes, the use of Microsoft Photo Gallery can change the endianess, like Photoshop do, but it indicates nonetheless that a modification of the picture have been done. It could be a genuine modification (contrast, brightness...) ... or not.

But if so, why the two EXIF tags listed above doesn't appear in the "UFO" picture metadata?

There's still something wrong.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: elevenaugust

For a a Samsung Galaxy S5, it should be "II", i-e Intel ordering (little-endian), and it appears to be in the MUFON picture "MM", i-e Motorola ordering (big-endian):

Out of curiosity, I checked the EXIF for an old image on my HD - it's off a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. In the data, it shows as 'Big-endian (Motorola, MM).' I ran the MUFON image through regex.info and it also came up as 'Big-endian (Motorola, MM). I wonder if they've used an old image to add the object to and then changed the model of phone to make it appear more recent and genuine?

Yes, that's a possibility. I already encountered this kind of manipulation, especially in the 2007 California "Drone saga". However, doing so left some traces, most of the time, that are detectable, either on the metadata or on the photo itself.

Another possibility is that there are some "old" Samsung S5 that produce images using Big-endian endianess. I've not encountered such image yet, but we can not formally exclude this possibility.