Increasing your chances of spotting a UFO

There are several UFO 'hotspots' in the US as well if you are feeling adventurous, you could roadtrip it and check them out.

Being here in Australia, that makes it nigh on impossible for me, but when i get a chance i will be doing a world UFO tour!

I am thinking of getting the Fuji camera that can take IR and UV pictures,
as I am under the suspician that they can easily cloak from our range of vision. The camera will enable you to take pictures in the light spectrum invisible to the human eye that NASA does on their shuttle flights. Just look at the crazy footage they got at the tether incident.
It was also demonstrated at the the 2006 UFO conference that IR cameras can pick up objects that normal cameras do not see.

Please forgive my ignorance, but what does UAP mean?

Originally posted by peter51
Are there any specific places I should check out? I live in California and I'm not sure if there's a lot of activity here. Any thoughts, comments, or ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Well - There use to be alot of activity in California -
There use to be a webpage called www.SonoraSightings.com - I dunno why it has been removed but it had many video's - It was almost unbelieveable so many lights they had filmed over Sonora - I think many sigtings was around a mountain called long bald mountain or somthing..

Sonora is a small city -
sonoraCA

Originally posted by Astrithr
Please forgive my ignorance, but what does UAP mean?

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, for those who are tired of the UFO acronym, I guess.

I remember reading an account of faeries that said you could only see them out of the corner of your eye, but if you looked directly at them, they would disappear.

maybe this doesnt belong specifically to the topic here, but where did you read about that? i have to mention, that i still keep on seeing:
- little white, orange and black dots of light appearing
- light blue bigger ones i´ve also seen, yet
- orange glowing stuff floating through the air
- white and black shadows / smoke floating through the air
some of this stuff just disappears when i try to look at it directly, just like you described. now i know 2 or 3 other people who are experiencing the same.
i also hear some sizzling noise, when i notice "somethings" around.

[edit on 10/6/07 by cometa]

While I cannot tell a person where to look for UFOs, logic does make a suggestion or two.

First, lets think about a controlled UFO from "somewhere else". We must assume, by the very nature of the phenomenon, that whatever controls a UFO, it is curious. Curiosity would logically be one of the traits of an 'explorer'.

If we, as curious explorers, went to another world, what would get our attention? Weather and natural geological events. Every explorer wants to know about weather and natural geological events. Why should ET be any different?

I would be out sky watching before and after tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, etc...

That might give you an edge in spotting one. Most people would be looking at the disaster, and not at the sky, so you might see something no one else would.

Just an idea.

I have had four sightings. Each of them has been "out of the blue" so to speak. For some years I have been carrying a SLR with a long lens and fast film along wih a compact digital video camera. I have had no sightings when carrying the cameras but have had 2 SLR's die through the rough conditions of going everywhere with me. I spend many warm nights skywatching with my binoculars and cameras - plenty of owls, bats, meteors, Iridium flares and satellites but no sign of ET.

My son is setting up a 6 inch telescope and CCD camera focussed on the moon. It will electronically track and record to a VCR. We hope to pick up some near-moon or moon surface activity.

Originally posted by schuyler
I have to tell you that I am a bit tired of lights in the sky at night. To me your garden variety unidentified light in the night sky is not much of a UFO (though it may be technically.)

But lights in the sky? Gimme a break. To me, they are not impressive. [/rant] Sorry.

I know what you you're talking about--those lights that could be an airplane, helicopter, etc. However, I have seen 3 boomerang ufos here is LA at night. 2 of them flew so low that I could clearly see their shape against the sky. The 3rd was fully self-illuminated, so the shape was obvious. The reflected city light illuminates low-flying objects, so if you live in a large urban area, I feel that nighttime viewing is best--especially since I think the history of ufos shows that seeing a daylight object was much more likely in the 50s and 60s than it is nowadays.

The only rule that I know to work is:go outside. Frequently. For some, this represents a change of lifestyle. When you go outside, pay attention to the things around you. That's less common thatn you might think.

One good way to train yourself to pay attention is photography. I've recently begun this course of self-instruction myself, and find it altering my perception in subtle but important ways. That I have little real talent for it and a very modest camera is not very important.

Originally posted by hippichick
I have had four sightings. Each of them has been "out of the blue" so to speak. For some years I have been carrying a SLR with a long lens and fast film along wih a compact digital video camera. I have had no sightings when carrying the cameras but have had 2 SLR's die through the rough conditions of going everywhere with me. I spend many warm nights skywatching with my binoculars and cameras - plenty of owls, bats, meteors, Iridium flares and satellites but no sign of ET.

About skywatching and UAP...

J. Allen Hynek and others have surveyed Astronomers and the results consistently showed that these people statistically witnessed UFOs at basically the same rate, only just slightly higher than the average person.

The slightly higher rate can be easily explained by the fact that Astromomers tend to spend more time in Rural areas late at night scrutinizing the sky than the average person, not nessicarily becuase they use powerfull telescopes, which conseqeuntly limit the field of view and thus chances of seeing a UAP in that field of view.



[edit on 10-6-2007 by lost_shaman]

There are two reasons for this that occur immediately:

1. Astronomers spend most of their evening focused on a very narrow part of the sky.
   
2. Astronomers are far less likely to report something easily explainable n the night sky since they nearly always know what they are looking at - a much lower noise level.
   

Originally posted by schuyler

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, for those who are tired of the UFO acronym, I guess.

The thing is that UFO is at best a misnomer. Almost all "unknowns" exhibit characteristics that defy Aerodynamic behavior, thus UAP do not by definition "Fly". Also the acronym 'UFO' certainly invokes multiple preconceptions with the public.

Carl Sagan felt that these 'faults' of the acronym 'UFO' made it inadequet for use in scientific literature. The acronym AOP Anamalous Observational Phenomena was adopted, and now UAP Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon is the acronym used in reference to AOP Anamalous Observational Phenomena that occure within the Atmosphere in Scientific literature.

Thanks for the good info everybody's been giving me, I really appreciate it. I'll keep checking this thread to see if theres any additional tips or ideas even though I don't think theres much to add. Thanks again guys