So where is all the cellphone movie footage if we're visited so often?

Also there are plenty of dashboard cameras in police cars. One of which caught a brilliant daylight fireball. I can't help but think this would have lead many on this forum to say they saw a UFO:

originally posted by: grainofsand
a reply to: AboveBoard
My my such emotion...but, urm, you're still avoiding the question how come there is so much decent quality footage of fast moving unexpected meteors on social media, but none of 'UFO's'?
That is sort of the topic of the thread if you hadn't noticed, so you didn't have a camera back when you saw aliens, pretty irrelevant, this thread is about the 21st century and millions of cameras in millions of hands and pockets, and the continuing lack of UFO footage by multiple people of the same event.

This is an important question.

Besides the millions (billions?) of cameras in people's hands and pockets there are also many thousands of low light, ultra sensitive cameras which have a wide field of view which are on 24/7 pointed skywards and record anything which moves.

I'm talking about the various meteor tracking networks worldwide.

A good example of one such network in the USA is the NASA and SETI institute sponsored CAMS network..

Another is the American Meteor Society network

Here's one site for an individual meteor camera in France which operates as part of a larger Europe-wide network.

And here is the English language site of the Japanese maker of the UFO Capture software which many meteor hunters use to capture meteor, sprites, lightning and other transient atmospheric phenomena.


While some of these All-Sky cameras belong to both professional and amateur astronomers, observatories and universities a key takeaway is that far more of them belong to private individuals who simply have an interest in the subjects of meteors and other transient sky phenomena.

It's not an exclusive group either. Anyone with a proper equipment setup can join. The attitude is one of, "the more cameras pointed skywards the better." regardless of who operates and maintains the camera(s).

Click the thumbnail to enlarge this list...



I have had one which operated from my parent's place in rural Washington, State for example:




These cameras are ideal for capturing the UFO phenomena because:

1) They operate in extremely low light.

2) They are highly sensitive to dim objects and can often see stars often down to 8th to 12th magnitude. The human eye typically can only see stars as dim as 7th magnitude so these cameras are more sensitive than the human eye.

3) They are set up to capture extremely short duration, transient events. Meteors, Fireballs, Lightning, Sprites. In other words things which last for very brief periods of time from a split second to a minute. They also often capture Airplanes, Helicopters, Blimps, Birds, Bugs and Satellites.

You would think with so many cameras, often in remote areas where UFOs are often reported according to the National UFO Reporting Center, that there would be more UFOs caught on meteor cameras since they are ideally set up to do so.

So then, where are all the UFOs flying around?

These cameras often operate 24/7 and have a wide view of the sky with a more sensitive eye than human ones. They're set up to record anything that moves and yet, we don't have brilliant videos coming from meteor cameras of what UFO enthusiasts often describe as brilliantly bright structured craft of various shapes flying in unconventional ways, large dark slow moving structured craft blocking out stars, starlike objects zigzagging across the sky, etc.

They just do not seem to appear and that's a problem for UFOlogy.

No matter how you look at this subject, that is a major problem for the UFO field. The law of averages would say that these cameras ought to pick up at least a few of these events a year if they happened as frequently as many UFO enthusiasts allege.

A lot of interesting things are captured on such cameras but they are earthly in nature like sprites, a rare weather phenomena. I suspect that, other people might see something strange and it becomes a "UFO" which in modern UFOlogy apparently means "Alien Spacecraft piloted by spiritual beings from the Pleiades." The visitation exists purely in their mind as a misinterpretation of something less fantastic.

And this is why I am highly skeptical of people who see UFOs as representation of extraterrestrial visitation and UFOlogy as it is today.

People and organizations who are more familiar with the sky and who often operate these cameras do not capture these objects and they are perhaps the ideal people to do so.

There is no sugarcoating that cold hard fact. No amount of wishing things were otherwise can push it aside either.

As technology has increased these cameras have become cheaper and cheaper, there's a very good one available for under $100 and most people's computers are more than powerful enough to run the often free software to capture transient sky phenomena so as time has gone on, more and more digital eyes stare continuously at the sky but we aren't getting the UFOs that so many allege are "visiting the Earth".

By the way a good site for people interested in setting up their own UFO/Meteor/Transient skycam is The Transient Sky

originally posted by: grainofsand
First, and for the record, I am of the opinion that that with the billions of stars out there, it is not a wild stretch of imagination to consider the possibility of life existing in the universe other than our own planet.

I agree with your statements but have to challenge this comment. Three quick scenarios to start:

1. What if there is a galaxy full of sentient life, but it's a billion light-years from Earth? It might as well not exist. So we must keep any discussions of 'sentient life' confined to our Galaxy, the Milky Way.

2. What if there is a galaxy full of sentient life, but by the time we or they could know of us or we of them, 50,000 years pass and both civilizations die off? They might as well not exist.

3. What if there is a galaxy full of sentient life but they can never get off planet because of one or another problems, such as lack of metals close to the surface to mine, or too large and therefore, gravity too high to get off planet? We will never know of them in their lifetime even if we develop Kardashev type II capabilities in 10k years. They'll be dead, and unless we also migrate into 5th dimensional beings, we'll never find them.

The reason it is unlikely that non-terrestrial, sentient, human-like life is visiting here is multi-factorial. (note, I say 'human-like' life, because anything other than bipedal entities about our size, using individual sentience (not hive minds) is that if you get too far from 'human-like' there's little chance of communication).

Any visitation would be in the form of nano-scale exploration, using robot Von Neumann probes (that's how we're about to start doing it). Any visitation in the 'flesh' so to speak would have to take GREAT care not to expose either side to microbial infestation (see 'exobiology'), and we know almost for a fact that it's impossible to completely sterilize a craft let along an individual. Other visitation would be virtual.

Is it completely impossible that there are full-sized non-terrestrial biological creatures, similar to Earth life (reptile, insect-like) visiting us in atmospheric craft - I'd say yes. If there were, they wouldn't hide, we'd already have had a biological plague, and 'they' wouldn't be so dumb as to do that, given their advanced nature.

So what are people reporting? I'd say we'll never know and you know why? Because there are millions of people who are deluded or who get their jollies out of 'faking' events and this completely muddies the water. You can't study something if you're surrounded by hoaxers, liars, frauds and deluded people.

FWIW

originally posted by: Scdfa
There are indeed examples of UFO events being filmed by multiple witness, so that pretty much negates your entire thread. You're a poor researcher if you haven't found any.

Unaware of all the multiple videotapes from Mexico City?

During that eclipse? Hoax done by a release of balloons.

SEE: UFOEvidence.com - Could the Mexico City UFO Video Be a Hoax?

Tel Aviv?

I think you mean Jerusalem. That was a hoax too.

SEE: Livescience.com - Hoax in the Holy Land: Jerusalem UFO a Proven Fake

The UFO sighting over a city in China yielded 17 different videos from different angles throughout the city. Seventeen! Is that enough different witnesses? Do a little more research, whine a little less.

Do a little more research and you will see that that was a misidentification of a Chinese missile launch.

WantChinaTimes.com - UFO spotted over northern China; missile launch suspected

Now let this pointless thread die, since your premise was false.

Interesting you want to shut down debate. It used to be investigators wanted to investigate no matter what the outcome. Now self-styled "google investigators" want to believe rather than investigate.

Because investigating, often leads to identification.

originally posted by: JadeStar
You would think with so many cameras, often in remote areas where UFOs are often reported according to the National UFO Reporting Center, that there would be more UFOs caught on meteor cameras since they are ideally set up to do so.

So then, where are all the UFOs flying around?

Interesting, I didn't know about these camera networks. But as such this doesn't (dis)prove anything. If you suggest they would capture most events in the skies, I would be awfully kind if they would share the footage of the missing Malaysian airlines flight, or the flight that was possibly hit by a Russian rocket over Ukraine. Would save a lot of time for the investigators. Or can you look at some B2 bombers taking off for Syria on those camera's? Should be available, shouldn't it?

Again, I appreciate critical thinking but it's too easy to dismiss something this way.

originally posted by: nononsense35

originally posted by: JadeStar
You would think with so many cameras, often in remote areas where UFOs are often reported according to the National UFO Reporting Center, that there would be more UFOs caught on meteor cameras since they are ideally set up to do so.

So then, where are all the UFOs flying around?

Interesting, I didn't know about these camera networks. But as such this doesn't (dis)prove anything. If you suggest they would capture most events in the skies, I would be awfully kind if they would share the footage of the missing Malaysian airlines flight

You're joking right? That disappeared over the ocean.

or the flight that was possibly hit by a Russian rocket over Ukraine.

Don't you think people in the Ukraine might have had more to worry about than operating a meteor camera at the time that flight was shot down?

There's also the very real fear from people who live there who MAY have photographed the shootdown.

Would save a lot of time for the investigators. Or can you look at some B2 bombers taking off for Syria on those camera's? Should be available, shouldn't it?

We're talking about UFOs which are supposedly seen daily all over the US, the UK, etc. In otherwords where a bunch of cameras exist and people have motive to upload video. Yet there is an absence of meteor camera footage of UFOs. Like I said, that's pretty damning.

Again, I appreciate critical thinking but it's too easy to dismiss something this way.

There's nothing wrong with using critical thinking to dismiss something if the reasoning is valid which mine was. Your examples seemed desperate attempts to deflect from it to say the least.

Guess what? Sometimes the smartest thing to do IS to dismiss something if the data isn't there to support it. That's called science.

There is a reason why interest in this subject has wained with the prevalence of cameras. It's the same reason younger people have less and less interest in the UFO subject as something worthy of serious interest.

Because all too often its proponents seek to throw critical thinking out the window to ignore an inconvenient set of facts of which the lack of meteor cam network footage is one.

Compared to a meteoroid in our atmosphere, which has a fiery tail...a typical foofighter [based on my own nighttime eyewitness observation in November, 1976] should have no observable fiery tail --- visible to the naked eye --- whether it's in the high power bluish-white plasma phase, or the low power reddish-orange fiery plasma phase.

I'd never really thought about that, but I agree. 98% of UFO videos I've seen are easily debunkable and most of the ones I still can't make my mind up are VHS movies. Now that most people have HD cameras on their phones, and computer graphics are so prevalent, you'd think hoaxers would be popping up everywhere. There's still a few, but I think society today is able to watch a video and determine the majority are a hoax as soon as they see them. Recent one being the Jerusalem UFO, which even the MSM was trying to pass of as real for a while. Wonder what the endgame was with that if we believed it...

Text "The color of the emitted light depends on the atomic element and the particular excited state involved. Quantum physics tells us which states are likely to be involved for each element. When the plasma photons are ejected from the plasma field, it has collisions with low energy neutral atoms that cause the ions to recombine with free electrons into regular gas."

Source: Plasma- 4 Physics

I speculate...that if the foofighter uses some type of plasma generated for photon propulsion in atmospheric environments --- the photons that are taken from the plasma field [surrounding the starship,] injected into the photon propulsion unit and ejected from the photon thruster with extreme thrust --- might leave some sort of ion trail wih a dull glow, but imperceptible to the naked human eye; even in nighttime environments.

This thread is ridiculous....how in the world do a lack of civilian cell phone VIDEO footage debunks that visiting Intelligent Life regularly visits our Solar System??? What a crazy claim with no scientific evidence to back it up.

1. Are people going to accidentally photograph UFO's during:

A. Sunset
B. A nice view
C. "Chem trails"/Clouds
D. Fireworks
E. Blue Angels/Air Show

But wait, we are talking about VIDEO....not PHOTO

What NORMAL reasons do people video the sky or horizon?

What research papers, surveys, or online forums or comments from people who are upset they are spending so much time videotaping the sky for UFO's and coming up empty handed?? Tell me, how many people and please site the scientific paper where you get this information from, who on a regular basis are out as a hobby filming UFO's?? I'm sorry but if you research filming or photography as a hobby, filming or shooting for UFO's is not popular at all, as compared to all the other things and activities you can film or take photos of, i.e. family, sports, architecture, nature, randomness, etc...

Where is the phenomenon that people are foolishly filming the sky for UFO's? Where is the proof that this is actually happening??? Do people film UFO's as much as say drink Pepsi? I mean are the debunkers really claiming people attempt to film UFO's as frequently as.... ________ as what? (crickets) Yeah exactly....people DON'T.

I for one think that people don't film the sky for UFO's, or that the UFO sky gazing crowd is a very very very small group of people.

I also think that when people do film the sky, the odds of them accidentally capturing a UFO are nearly impossible.

If someone sees a UFO, do they have time to pull out their camera and FILM it?

Where is the claim from the OP that UFO's are visiting the planet non-stop? Did you come to this conclusion from reading anonymous claims from people online, or from members of the UFOLOGY movement? And how many of those members have been debunked as hoaxers? And you still made this thread, so you are referencing hoaxers that UFO's are visiting non-stop and then BLAIM civilians that we don't produce cell phone VIDEO footage??

Makes no sense....sorry....

People take #selfies more often than anything....


If you have heard more people now believe we have been visited by Intelligent Life, that is because of a combination of scientific breakthroughs and conspiracy theory. However debunkers please show the documented research that X amount of people believe we have been visited, because for crying out loud, Intelligent Life visitation is not on anybody's radar for conversation that I know of, or that I see online. Where is the debunkers' proof that X amount of people believe we are constantly visited, other than a debunker stating their opinion as fact.

You can research hashtags on twitter and instagram to see what the world really cares about.

a reply to: grainofsand

How many videos, etc. of the latest Lamborghini are around? There are just as many cameras "looking", perhaps more. Yet the quantity of "good" videos is probably about the same as it is for "good" UFO videos.

And then again, while I have a modern "phone" complete with camera; it would be the absolute last thing I would think of IF I wanted to take a "picture"...you see; it's just a damn phone and not really suited to what you are asking for. No...for a "good picture" I would grab my DSLR, or better yet my antique Pentax. But, unfortunately, most experiences don't last long enough for people to even grab a phone...so be came full circle and we back at the same, not well thought out, question...

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: Scdfa
I resent the use of the term 'believer'. Save the 'belief' for Santa or Jesus, the UFO and alien situation is not one that requires belief.

To me a believer is someone who BELIEVES something or has faith in something without actual hard evidence to support the extraordinary claim. It's not derogatory in nature, it's simply what it is.

It is simply a matter of awareness, either you are aware of the reality of UFOs, aliens and alien abductions or you are not.

Aren't most people aware of UFOs or the UFO subject?

In 2014 the answer is a resounding yes. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't heard the term UFO. What it means of course depends on the intelligence, mindset and mentality of the person who hears it.

You are not aware that the alien situation is a fact.

There's no good, credible evidence which supports Earth is being visited regularly by extraterrestrial aliens. That's a fact. No matter how much you may not like it, there simply is no evidence which supports UFO sightings represent aliens. Eyewitness testimony alone is simply not good enough to substantiate something as extraordinary as alien visitation.

Raise your standards.

Or simply admit you want to BELIEVE "the aliens are here". You may have a NEED to BELIEVE that. But I, and most logical, rational people do not.

And that is why UFOlogy in 2014 borders on psuedo-religious belief.

There was a time when people who investigated UFOs investigated them as UNIDENTIFIED objects rather than spaceships piloted by aliens from the Pleiades. Lol.

Your understanding, or lack thereof, in no way changes the facts, anymore than centuries of geocentric belief changed the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun.

As someone whose field is dedicated to looking for life in the Universe I find this idea that those who do not subscribe to a blind belief in what amounts to mostly a collection of stories as representing what would be the most remarkable event in human history are somehow missing out on some profound fact.

The fact is if UFOs were vehicles piloted by aliens visiting the Earth we'd all have much better evidence than stories, poor quality pictures and some guy who said he was abducted by aliens with anal probes.

Maybe you should just stick to believing in meteors, what with all that great footage.

Meteors are fact, you don't need to believe in them. You can hold a piece of one in your hand, bring it into a lab and have it analyzed.

I'm still waiting for that to be the case with UFOs and Aliens.

Do most rational people accept an unidentified flying object (UFO) instantly means UFOs are piloted by aliens abducting people?

No.

And no amount of faith, belief or "awareness" will change that.

Bring us a body.

Bring us a piece of a spaceship.

Bring us some information from an abductee that actually has scientific value which is not presently known to science but can be confirmed by it.

Short of that, you're simply believing stories.

I

Jade, I'm sure you're an adorable little student, and probably well-intentioned too, but I need to address a few errors in your post.

1. I'm not a 'believer'. I tried to state this clearly. You seem to be confusing what you know about aliens with what I know about aliens. This mistake does not serve you well in this discussion. Do you really think everyone, everybody in the world is just like you, having to guess whether or not aliens are here? That no one else is in a position to know more than you do? You realize that is an absurd notion, correct?

I will continue this a little later, but I can tell you that a person such as yourself who has nearly three thousand postings in a year and a half has little time left over to be seriously investigating UFO sightings, or having a sighting of your own. It won't happen through your telescope, either. You don't know much about aliens, but you sure have a lot to say about what you don't know. You might want to address that imbalance.

Also part of the reason why we don't see as many UFO's caught on camera phones these days, is because everybody seems to be looking down at their phones.
People walk across roads & push prams while they are looking down at their phones, not a care in the world. On nights out, you see couples across a table, on the internet.

People are looking down, rather than up these days.

originally posted by: Scdfa
Jade, I'm sure you're an adorable little student, and probably well-intentioned too, but I need to address a few errors in your post.

1. I'm not a 'believer'. I tried to state this clearly. You seem to be confusing what you know about aliens with what I know about aliens. This mistake does not serve you well in this discussion. Do you really think everyone, everybody in the world is just like you, having to guess whether or not aliens are here? That no one else is in a position to know more than you do? You realize that is an absurd notion, correct?

I will continue this a little later, but I can tell you that a person such as yourself who has nearly three thousand postings in a year and a half has little time left over to be seriously investigating UFO sightings, or having a sighting of your own. It won't happen through your telescope, either. You don't know much about aliens, but you sure have a lot to say about what you don't know. You might want to address that imbalance.

Right, so since you presume to know so much, rather respond to your thinly veiled ad hominem attack I want to ask, can YOU give a scientifically valid explanation for the lack of UFOs captured by All-Sky, 24/7 meteor cameras?

I'll be waiting.

Here we go.

Video Link of Potential UFOs caught with NASA AllSky Camera

CdT

Cloaking Device

We are close to creating cloaking devices yet we are hundreds of years away from interstellar traveling. Those that come here probably have children with toy cloaking devices.

Are they are right there, up there, on earth....who knows? All that I know is that I am 1000% sure of is that they would be using cloaking technologies.

In fact, Earth could be cloaked from the outside and so would be all the other planets with civilizations not advanced enough to leave their solar system. If I was part of a friendly "galactic federation", cloaking planets in such fashion would be on my list.

I got a simpler answer :

80% of cell phone footage and pictures are about CATS

originally posted by: CirqueDeTruth
Here we go.

Video Link of Potential UFOs caught with NASA AllSky Camera

CdT

Thank you CirqueDeTruth. Star for you.

I'm went through these but all I found were meteors, Iridium flares, satellite, the ISS and high altitude airplanes. Did you find any that are truly anomalous?

You know, right angle turns, structured crafts, etc?

EDIT: I also noticed the uploader: ufoevaluator has tinkered with several of the videos by moving clips in time (often separated by hours) out of sequence so objects appear to jump. It's very crude because stars in the more extreme examples of this also jump and in one case you can see the pre dawn horizon brighter than the clip before it. :facepalm:



So anything from Youtube uploader "ufoevaluator" should be considered a hoax.

Still awaiting credible all-sky meteor cam footage of the types of UFOs people swear they saw.

a reply to: JadeStar

No, I didn't find any either that truly stood out for me as a UFO. I was hoping for some right turns and really bizarre behavior.

I'm hopeful though, that if I keep searching and looking up, someday I'll be in the right place at the right time to find something definitively anomalous! With camera or video recorder ready. I actually am one of those, who don't own a cell phone. So my getting caught without a device to capture a strange phenomenon is more likely. Most of my personal experiences are just that, only significant to me personally, with no evidence. Just my word.

I'd still approach moderators or the site owners first, with any capture I managed to record, and move on from there in presenting it to the community. Just to be sure, the mundane explanations are ruled out - before the community gets a hold of it and lambasts me.

CdT

originally posted by: CirqueDeTruth
a reply to: JadeStar

No, I didn't find any either that truly stood out for me as a UFO. I was hoping for some right turns and really bizarre behavior.

I'm hopeful though, that if I keep searching and looking up, someday I'll be in the right place at the right time to find something definitively anomalous! With camera or video recorder ready. I actually am one of those, who don't own a cell phone. So my getting caught without a device to capture a strange phenomenon is more likely. Most of my personal experiences are just that, only significant to me personally, with no evidence. Just my word.

I'd still approach moderators or the site owners first, with any capture I managed to record, and move on from there in presenting it to the community. Just to be sure, the mundane explanations are ruled out - before the community gets a hold of it and lambasts me.

CdT

Well I starred you again for continuing the search. Hey, if you do come across anything or capture something yourself and don't want to post it to the forum feel free to shoot it to me in a U2U. I'll keep it to myself unless or until you post it.