1997 Phoenix Lights UFO - Solved - Day & Night Videos Superimposed - Ergo: FLARES!

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: Jay-morris
This just does not make any logical sense at all. The witnesses said it was a huge craft travelling slow and low. These jets would have been fast. If they were high up, the formation would have been small. If they were low, the noise would be loud and they would fly by quickly.

Goes completely against what the witnesess saw. I do not believe the witnesses are talking about the same thing this guy saw. Just does not make sense.

It's perfectly logical.

If each one of those lights is a single airplane, each light is small at that altitude, but look how far apart the lights are in the formation. The lights are tiny given the relatively huge size of the formation relative to the small size of the lights, giving the illusion of a large craft, many many many times larger than any one individual plane. This is not a blue eagles air show where the planes are flying a tight formation wingtip to wingtip, there is a fair amount of space between the aircraft.

I don't see why you don't think this is logical but it makes perfect sense to me.

You have not answered my question. The witnesess said the object was low, huge , and moving slow. If these planes were high up, then the formation would have looked small. If the formation was low, they would have gone passed very fast, and with noise.

So going by the witnesess, it does not make sense. Even if the new poster boy of debunking filmed a formation of planes. Not saying that he did not see a formation of planes, but to say this is what the witnesess saw, is completely ignoring what they say to fit your own belief.

a reply to: Jay-morris
I see a serious problem with your logic. When a witness says they saw lights there's no reason to doubt that claim, but when the person tells you they don't know what the lights were but they can tell you they were "close" or "far away", you are not applying either logic or well known data sets which document how inaccurate such distance perceptions often are, and moreover that it's very very common for witnesses to report distant unknown lights as much closer than they really are.

A very common occurrence which is well documented is that witnesses will say the light came down just on the other side of that hill a few hundred yards away when we know what they saw was a meteor hundreds of times farther away then they say. This isn't a rare event, it's common and well documented. The only time a witness might be able to judge the distance of lights at night on an aircraft is if the aircraft is known, and even in that case it takes an experienced and knowledgeable observer with training, but if the lights are an unknown object or part of an unknown object then there's no way to accurately judge the distance. So if you want to be logical, then accept that or do some research until you learn that it's true from your research, then you will know how unreliable witness estimates of distance are of unknown lights at night.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
a reply to: Jay-morris
I see a serious problem with your logic. When a witness says they saw lights there's no reason to doubt that claim, but when the person tells you they don't know what the lights were but they can tell you they were "close" or "far away", you are not applying either logic or well known data sets which document how inaccurate such distance perceptions often are, and moreover that it's very very common for witnesses to report distant unknown lights as much closer than they really are.

A very common occurrence which is well documented is that witnesses will say the light came down just on the other side of that hill a few hundred yards away when we know what they saw was a meteor hundreds of times farther away then they say. This isn't a rare event, it's common and well documented. The only time a witness might be able to judge the distance of lights at night on an aircraft is if the aircraft is known, and even in that case it takes an experienced and knowledgeable observer with training, but if the lights are an unknown object or part of an unknown object then there's no way to accurately judge the distance. So if you want to be logical, then accept that or do some research until you learn that it's true from your research, then you will know how unreliable witness estimates of distance are of unknown lights at night.

You still have not answered my question. Going the video the guy released, they are pretty high up. If they were low they would have gone passed within a blink of an eye, with sound.

Looking at the plane formation, also indicates that the formation would not have looked huge in the sky, far from it.

All i am saying is if you go by what witnesses saw, then the plane explanation is not logical at all. If the planes were high or low.

originally posted by: Jay-morris
You still have not answered my question. Going the video the guy released, they are pretty high up. If they were low they would have gone passed within a blink of an eye, with sound.

Looking at the plane formation, also indicates that the formation would not have looked huge in the sky, far from it.

What about it tells you it's not huge? If it is a formation of planes which it almost certainly is in the video, the distance between the furthest lights is far larger than any known aircraft which is pretty much what the witnesses described, it was far larger than any known aircraft. That's huge!!

Anyway perceptions of the distance of unknown lights at night are unreliable and you're trying to put too much weight on that when we know people don't and can't report that reliably.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: Jay-morris
You still have not answered my question. Going the video the guy released, they are pretty high up. If they were low they would have gone passed within a blink of an eye, with sound.

Looking at the plane formation, also indicates that the formation would not have looked huge in the sky, far from it.

What about it tells you it's not huge? If it is a formation of planes which it almost certainly is in the video, the distance between the furthest lights is far larger than any known aircraft which is pretty much what the witnesses described, it was far larger than any known aircraft. That's huge!!

Anyway perceptions of the distance of unknown lights at night are unreliable and you're trying to put too much weight on that when we know people don't and can't report that reliably.

I have explained why. We will just have to agree to disagree.

originally posted by: Jay-morris
I have explained why. We will just have to agree to disagree.

Well consider this, I mentioned the Yukon case as a means of calibrating the accuracy of witness statements on unknown lights at night. Here's what they said about the apparent distance and we can calculate the actual distance since we now know what the object was:

"Top Ten" UFO Case - Yukon, Canada, 1996 - BUSTED!

Report: the UFO was hovering approximately 300 yards in front of the observer. "Hynek Classification: CE1" (Close Encounter of the First Kind).

Reality: the distance to the re-entering booster was approximately 233 km (145 miles), so this was not a "close encounter." At no time did it stop, or hover.

Can we at least agree we have here a documented case of the distance estimate by the witness being inaccurate by an almost inconceivably wide margin? The witness said the distance was approximately 300 yards when it was approximately 254,669 yards. Not only the distance, but other characteristics of the event were misperceived, dramatically, like the object did not hover and that link contains many other misperceptions some of which relate directly to the Phoenix lights case like reports it blocked out the stars when we know it didn't do that.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: Jay-morris
I have explained why. We will just have to agree to disagree.

Well consider this, I mentioned the Yukon case as a means of calibrating the accuracy of witness statements on unknown lights at night. Here's what they said about the apparent distance and we can calculate the actual distance since we now know what the object was:

"Top Ten" UFO Case - Yukon, Canada, 1996 - BUSTED!

Report: the UFO was hovering approximately 300 yards in front of the observer. "Hynek Classification: CE1" (Close Encounter of the First Kind).

Reality: the distance to the re-entering booster was approximately 233 km (145 miles), so this was not a "close encounter." At no time did it stop, or hover.

Can we at least agree we have here a documented case of the distance estimate by the witness being inaccurate by an almost inconceivably wide margin? The witness said the distance was approximately 300 yards when it was approximately 254,669 yards. Not only the distance, but other characteristics of the event were misperceived, dramatically, like the object did not hover and that link contains many other misperceptions some of which relate directly to the Phoenix lights case like reports it blocked out the stars when we know it didn't do that.

If you want to disregard witness testimony, then Yes, it was a re-entering booster. If you want to keep on throwing up words "their imagination" to fit your own belief system, then yes, re-entering booster.

Reminds me of the coyne helicopter ufo incident and the rather stupid explanation that it was a meteorite Even though that goes against what the witnesses saw, on the ground and in the air.

But more telling for me when you read the comments of the article you linked, is that gloating. Which tells me, this is not about finding the truth, this is about people who have puts themselves into groups and they would rather be right than wrong. And this is part of the problem.

People talk about ufo believers as being a new age religion. The same can be said about the debunking movement. They have their mini gods too including shermer, random, klass etc Armchair debunkers look up to these guys, most prob have posters of these guys on their wall. Will pay money to go to a conference to listen to someone ridicule the subject and laugh along with them.

The point is, these people completely disregard witness testimony to come to their own conclusion. We see it time and time again. And they would rather be right, than wrong, which means they are running on belief, just as much as the believers

originally posted by: Paddyofurniture

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed a reply to: Arbitrageur Except the early event in Phoenix people saw a very humongous craft that was very low in altitude but filled most of the sky as it passed over, and they said it made no sound.

As did the 30 plus witnesses in Yukon, saw a very humongous craft that filled most of the sky as it passed over, and they said it made no sound, except that's not what they really saw in either event. It's what they think they saw, but they don't understand human perception, and neither do the people arguing that we can trust everything these witnesses say to be indisputable fact.

That's hilarious. You aren't the first wannabe debunker who actually thinks he knows better than witnesses who had a mass sighting, when you didn't see anything yourself, saying that you know better than they do without seeing, than those who saw it close up. I have heard James McGaha use that exact explanation before and couldn't believe the blatant arrogance of those words. Only you and other esteemed citizens in that special circle understand human perception, so everyone else is essentially blind and uneducated. It's only your opinion not based on anything credible, as opposed to actual real witnesses who all saw something inexplicable that night early on. You say there are people arguing that we can trust everything these witnesses say to be indisputable fact, but I have never even once heard anyone make that demand about a single case. I had the opportunity to personally investigate the phoenix case since I lived there at the time, and ask lots of questions of all kinds of witnesses, and because of that, know they weren't lying, and I know they saw what they say they saw because their testimony matched. That has nothing at all to do with little grey guys, only that there was an event where people saw something real, and nobody knows for sure where it came from or why it was there. That's all.

Great post NoCorruption.

Just had to go on the record as saying that.

Any additional info from your investigation, witness statements?

Thanks

Yes, one family was pretty spooked by it, and it wasn't pitch black night time yet when they saw it fly over Camelback Mt., They saw it as clear as can be, and said it was giving off a shimmer around it like a lot of heat was emanating from it. They mentioned a slight low hum as it passed over. Quite a lot of people saw it (the early sighting). Later on people mentioned the flares and other things like jets buzzing around.

a reply to: Jay-morris

You are beating a dead horse! Here you are, repeating yourself ad infinitum. You haven't offered anything concrete to your boring argument. You can't go by what witnesses saw, Arbitrageur has tried to knock some thinking sense into you and you resist logic, thinking that your words are worth reading.

Let me tell you one thing, it doesn't matter what "your" witnesses claim they saw there was no other aircraft in the sky that day or night other than military planes. Now, put up evidence or move on. You haven't added anything new to the thread and you're not earning any points with a baseless, empty argument. Arbitrageur is to be complimented on his patience.

originally posted by: Jay-morris
If you want to disregard witness testimony, then Yes, it was a re-entering booster. If you want to keep on throwing up words "their imagination" to fit your own belief system, then yes, re-entering booster.

The belief systems which presume human observation is fallible are far more grounded in scientific verification than belief systems which presume human observations are not so fallible.

If you were to take the time to educate yourself on the range of human misperceptions then you would realize as I do that everything the witnesses say matches perfectly with the rocket booster re-entry after taking human fallibility into account.

If you insist that human observation is not so fallible in defiance of scientific observation that it is, then you are doomed to never know the truth because you put way more faith than is justified in the reliability of human observation.

Reminds me of the coyne helicopter ufo incident and the rather stupid explanation that it was a meteorite

Even though that goes against what the witnesses saw, on the ground and in the air.

This is a diversion; that is not the case being discussed and I have no idea what happened in that case.

But more telling for me when you read the comments of the article you linked, is that gloating. Which tells me, this is not about finding the truth, this is about people who have puts themselves into groups and they would rather be right than wrong. And this is part of the problem.

I think you have some very distorted perception here. It's all about finding the truth. It's unusual for a top ten UFO case to be solved with this much scientific certainty so yes he's happy about that and if you are distorting this into your twisted belief that this somehow makes the rocket booster not the truth then you will never know the real truth yourself, either about the rocket booster or the range of fallibility in human perception.

The point is, these people completely disregard witness testimony to come to their own conclusion. We see it time and time again. And they would rather be right, than wrong, which means they are running on belief, just as much as the believers

Actually I listened very carefully to the witness testimony in both cases, and then put it through my filter based on scientific evidence of what type of information tends to be reliable and what type of information tends to be unreliable. Anything about the distance of unknown lights in the sky tends to be unreliable, but if the witness says they perceived 5 or 6 lights then I see no reason to doubt that they saw 5 or 6 lights.

The The Yukon case isn't the only basis for calibration. There was another re-entry over Kiev and again witnesses drew images of a craft in the sky when it was just an object re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, so once again mere lights in the sky are transformed into craft by flaws in human perception.

www.jamesoberg.com...


That case is even more interesting because not all witnesses saw the spacecraft, some just reported the lights. So even in your overly-obsessed desire to think humans are reliable witnesses, how do you resolve such discrepancies? Some humans say they saw a craft, and drew it, and other witnesses say they only saw lights, yet they are talking about he same event. If they are so accurate in their observation how can they contradict each other so much in their observation of the same event? The answer of course is we are not so accurate in our observations, which are notoriously fallible, a known scientific fact which you reject at your own peril.

originally posted by: Lathroper
a reply to: Jay-morris

You are beating a dead horse! Here you are, repeating yourself ad infinitum. You haven't offered anything concrete to your boring argument. You can't go by what witnesses saw, Arbitrageur has tried to knock some thinking sense into you and you resist logic, thinking that your words are worth reading.

Let me tell you one thing, it doesn't matter what "your" witnesses claim they saw there was no other aircraft in the sky that day or night other than military planes. Now, put up evidence or move on. You haven't added anything new to the thread and you're not earning any points with a baseless, empty argument. Arbitrageur is to be complimented on his patience.

Thank you for going on a rant, without answering my questions! Gotta love armchair debunkers!

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Sorry, but we have had some pathetic explanations, from this so called "humans make lousy witnesses" This only seems to apply to ufos mind you.

This gives people a whole range of excuses. From venus to swamp gas. This is not science! This is people who's ignorance and arragonce will not allow them to be wrong, or allow them to leave something as unknown.

I have explained why, according to witnesses, this explanation does not make any sense, be it they were high or low.

originally posted by: Jay-morris
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Sorry, but we have had some pathetic explanations, from this so called "humans make lousy witnesses" This only seems to apply to ufos mind you.

It's not really the topic of the thread but since you say "humans make lousy witnesses" only seems to apply to UFOs, you couldn't be more wrong. Of the over 350 DNA exonerations in the United States, over 70% of those involved witness misidentification, and some of those people were on death row for crimes they didn't even commit!

DNA Exonerations in the United States

20 of 353 people exonerated served time on death row...
70%: Involved eyewitness misidentification

You're doing a lot more to display your ignorance of the science of human perception than to defend the eyewitnesses.

Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts

Eyewitness testimony is fickle and, all too often, shockingly inaccurate

IN 1984 KIRK BLOODSWORTH was convicted of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl and sentenced to the gas chamber—an outcome that rested largely on the testimony of five eyewitnesses. After Bloodsworth served nine years in prison, DNA testing proved him to be innocent. Such devastating mistakes by eyewitnesses are not rare, according to a report by the Innocence Project, an organization affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University that uses DNA testing to exonerate those wrongfully convicted of crimes.

Please just stop embarrassing yourself with your overconfidence in eyewitnesses and your silly claim the problem only applies to UFOs. It only serves to put your ignorance on display.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: Jay-morris
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Sorry, but we have had some pathetic explanations, from this so called "humans make lousy witnesses" This only seems to apply to ufos mind you.

It's not really the topic of the thread but since you say "humans make lousy witnesses" only seems to apply to UFOs, you couldn't be more wrong. Of the over 350 DNA exonerations in the United States, over 70% of those involved witness misidentification, and some of those people were on death row for crimes they didn't even commit!

DNA Exonerations in the United States

20 of 353 people exonerated served time on death row...
70%: Involved eyewitness misidentification

You're doing a lot more to display your ignorance of the science of human perception than to defend the eyewitnesses.

Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts

Eyewitness testimony is fickle and, all too often, shockingly inaccurate

IN 1984 KIRK BLOODSWORTH was convicted of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl and sentenced to the gas chamber—an outcome that rested largely on the testimony of five eyewitnesses. After Bloodsworth served nine years in prison, DNA testing proved him to be innocent. Such devastating mistakes by eyewitnesses are not rare, according to a report by the Innocence Project, an organization affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University that uses DNA testing to exonerate those wrongfully convicted of crimes.

Please just stop embarrassing yourself with your overconfidence in eyewitnesses and your silly claim the problem only applies to UFOs. It only serves to put your ignorance on display.

Oh come on! Almost every unexplained ufo case comes with stupid over the top explanations. I never said witnesess cannot be wrong, that would be stupid, but when it comes to what witnesses or a witness has seen, then it is always wrong.

See what I am getting at here ?

I brought up the vote case ( one of many) to prove my point.

a reply to: Jay-morris


As Arbitrageur eluded to earlier in this thread, the failings in human perception are easily demonstrated when a large fireball/meteor is observed by many witnesses. As an example I've chosen the recent Michigan fireball, which has been designated as Event 168-2018 by the International Meteor Organization, but choose any event with lots of witnesses, and you will also see similar.

At time of writing 669 reports have been submitted, and I've only looked through the first couple of hundred or so to find the following witness reports:

It must have been meteorite debris--as I saw it landed somewhere behind my neighbor's house.

Report 168aga Glenda P

Location:
42° 15' 49.31'' N (42.26°)
85° 47' 9.21'' W (-85.79°)



"Somewhere behind my neighbor's house" would suggest that the witness thought it was a few hundred meters away at the very most.

The light was moving toward the earth and it looked like whatever caused the light would have hit the ground a few hundred yards from my location. The light looked like a firework (roman candle) that was descending rather than ascending toward the sky.

Report 168aht Tom H

Location:
41° 50' 1.59'' N (41.83°)
87° 53' 42.13'' W (-87.9°)


Again, the witness perceives the fireball as only being hundreds of yards/meters away.

I was driving east on I94, light came from behind, over car, and down into sight in windshield. Looked like a flare gun, but green in color, slow, droped to about the tree line then flashed bright and was gone. The flash appreared to be near the service road in Fort Custer Battle Creek, north side of I94 between Galesburg and Battle Creek. Light was traveling NE in a downward direction.

Similar time as the sightings in northern MI. But this was close by, 150 feet or so from my car.

Report 168aiv Leslee S

Location:
42° 16' 55.98'' N (42.28°)
85° 20' 38.81'' W (-85.34°)


Can you see the pattern here?

Now let's take a look at their locations:


The nearest two, 168aga and 168aiv are around 40 km away from each other, and 168aht is 180.71 km (112.29 mi) away from 168aga!


Here are a few more witnesses:

It seemed very close!

Report 168aji N K

Location:
44° 50' 15.2'' N (44.84°)
85° 7' 40.81'' W (-85.13°)

Unfortunately I made the original map too small, so here is the location marked on its own map:


This location is approximately 289.01 km (179.58 mi) away from 168aga!

My husband and I were driving west in our car when we observed this. At a glance, it looked close above treetop and almost resembled a flaming 55 gal drum moving across the sky. Because it was unusual, I noted the time. To me it looked close enough to the ground to have landed still lit, based on my observation of it's trajectory. I looked today to see if anyone had reported something strange locally and saw reports of sightings in Michigan, which is why I am reporting this.

Report 168ajy Melanie F

Location:
41° 1' 9.26'' N (41.02°)
80° 24' 53.51'' W (-80.41°)


Here is the location marked on a map:


This location is approximately 466.91 km (290.12 mi) away from 168aga, and 574.92 km (357.24 mi) away from 168aji!


This the same event that all the above reports witnessed, there's no doubt about that, and the witnesses were all separated by tens of km/mi at the very minimum, yet all of them perceived the fireball as being very close to them. Having dissected more than a few events like this one in the past, I can tell you that this is a common feature that all these type of events share.

In fact, meteorite hunters/researchers have been aware of this for a very long time. Not much has changed over the last 100 or so years.


Continued in the following post..

In the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland Journal from April, 1879, the author writes:

My purpose, as I have said before, is to collect everything that is known on the subject of British Meteorites ; to establish by means of copious references every fact relative to each recorded fall ; and to inquire into all doubtful instances, so as to ascertain, if possible, whether their authenticity can be proved, and to expunge them from the list if they can be shown to be the results of errors.

The doubtful instances of meteoric falls may be classed under four general heads :-

1st. A meteor has been seen apparently to fall, and a search has been made where it seemed to descend. The results of those searches have included nodules of pyrite, fragments of scoriae, hematite, and ordinary pebbles, all distinctly terrestrial, but which have been described as "Meteorites"

Of course, nowadays we have lots of cameras pointed at the sky, and if two or more cameras record footage of the event, the 3D trajectory of the object can be calculated by triangulation. In the case of the MI event, NASA has calculated the trajectory, so we know precisely where the fireball was, and that was around 130.03 km (80.80 mi) from the nearest witness at the closest point in it's trajectory:

Update on the Michigan fireball - this image shows the trajectory of the meteor as determined by the eyewitness accounts posted on the American Meteor Society Website. Our analysis yields a similar result, and we have calculated that this was a very slow moving meteor - speed of about 28,000 miles per hour. This fact, combined with the brightness of the meteor (which suggests a fairly big space rock at least a yard across), shows that the object penetrated deep into the atmosphere before it broke apart (which produced the sounds heard by many observers). It is likely that there are meteorites on the ground near this region - one of our colleagues at JSC has found a Doppler weather radar signature characteristic of meteoritic material falling to earth.

Pieces of an asteroid lying near Detroit? Let's see what the meteorite hunters find.

Source: NasaMeteorWatch(facebook)


Also, it's not just NASA. There are independent fireball networks in almost every country, all of them capable of triangulation. Pretty much anyone can do it if they want. I'm just in the process of setting up my own camera, and have seen a few meteors/fireballs myself which looked closer than they actually were. The most recent one (a couple of months back) was caught on multiple cameras like this one here so that the trajectory could be calculated, so I know exactly how far away I was from it when I observed it, yet it *seemed* at least 20x nearer to me than it actually was. I knew I was seeing something that looked much closer than it was, yet that did not change my perception of the object at the time!


That is, why people on here are not going to let it go. It's not some BS someone has thought up in order to debunk UFO reports willy nilly. It's a known fact that distance/size is impossible to judge in such events unless you have prior experience with such events and/or are familiar with the inherent perceptual weaknesses we all have.


Here are some quotes from peer-reviewed papers on the subject:

The ability to judge sizes is acquired by a painstakingly, long chain of experience only. Our judgement of sizes and what is basically the same thing, our sense of perspective, will be the more accurate the more objects of comparison we have, at various distances. Whenever such objects are practically absent, for instance, on the high seas, it will be very difficult to judge sizes and distances. On the high seas or on a barren plain, distances are nearly always greatly underestimated.

Source: The moon and the cause of optical illusions


It's the lack of "visual clues" which contributes to the illusion. A dark sky is often just as devoid of these "visual clues" as "high seas or on barren plains", and darkness in general cuts down the number of these "visual clues" that are available to us. It's something that people involved in the aviation industry are very aware of because of the risks involved:

The safty board concluded that a contributing factor to the mishap on that dark night was a sensory illusion causing height and altitude misperception relative to the runway approach lights resulting in a crash 1.5 km from the landing threshold

Source: Visual Perception in Aviation

Human subjects viewed round stimuli located equidistantly in the horizontal and vertical planes of vision under conditions where presumed cues to size were present and where they were systematically eliminated. Two experiments revealed a consistent tendency for the horizon object to be judged the closer. Cues introduced reduced the effect.

Source: Distance Perception in Darkness


click here for many more relevant papers

a reply to: FireballStorm

I understand that to judge the distance to a phenomenon like this is tough. You can easily believe something is closer than it actually is.

But that does not not explain the Phoenix sighting. I will say it again, but no one seems to be able to give me a straight answer on this.

If this so called plane formation was low, it would have gone past pretty quick, and pretty loud, I am sure you will agree.

If the formation was high, it would not have covered the sky like witnesses said, but still eould have gone passed pretty fast.

Witnesses say the object was large (covered the sky) and moved slow, blocking out the stars.

I am not saying there was not a fighter jet plane formation in the sky that night, but we had flares dropped, which could have been a diversion, so why not have fighter jets up there to confuse the matter worse.

All i am saying is if you go by what witnesses saw, then plane formation does not make sense.

And this is the reason why I brought up the coyne ufo case. No matter what the witnesses saw, be it on the ground or in the air, as soon as they find out there was a Meteorite storm that night, or venus was esp bright that night, they completely ignore witness statements, and go with that explanation, and bring up the old chestnut that we are crap observers.

This is what annoys me. It is not science here, it is belief hidden behind science.

a reply to: Jay-morris


We have hundreds of threads on here and thousands of posts, one had 2 brothers sitting side by side looking at the same object yet 2 different descriptions, one thread a claimed ufo photo but it was shown that the Moon was in the sky in that direction at the right elevation and because the witness only saw it on the screen claimed it as a ufo. Even when shown a picture taken with the same type of phone with the Moon in the same phase and the same size on the image they still claimed it was a ufo.

With lights at night videos and pictures above towns or cities we never get claims from people below the object only from a distance.

Also when taking pictures or video phones have the equivalent of a wide angle lens which obviously makes objects look further away.

In the example linked below the only thing changing is focal length.

Same objects same distances different focal lengths

Yet even a small change has a great effect on the apparent distance/size of the objects.

Even people you think would be good at judging distances can make large errors and it's worse at night.