what the hell..... (pics)

Originally posted by Bocephus
I think you are blessed to have them let you photograph them.
I had a ship land 50 feet from me. Scared the crap out of me...
The also diguise there ships to apear as planes with a strobe in back on top and
strobes in front on the bottom.
Seen several close up with no sound.
Wait till they start talking to you.

Well, I don't think we need worry about them speaking to him. Shearder has said nothing to make us think he is insane

well this may just be the stupidest question ever asked but how come I can't see any other stars in the sky when it is zoomed out??

With the moon up and near Venus, only bright stars would most likely be visible. A lot depends on the location because of the amount of lighting in the area would determine how manyy stars might be seen. Venus has been near two of the bright stars in Gemini but they would be out of the field of view. If it were a moonless night in a dark area, one would expect to see fainter stars also. I am basing this on my experience living in a good star viewing location.

I remember not too long ago there was this thread on this website called Fark.

This guy said he saw something in the sky, way above the treeline and above all the other houses and said it was in the sky and couldn't possibly come from anything on the ground.

It was this weird looking glowing object, nobody knew what it was.

Well, cutting this long story short.

Waited until daytime and took another pic in the same direction . . .


It was a streetlight.

I remember that FARK thread! A classic...

forums.fark.com...

And the follow-up...

forums.fark.com...

"It's a streetlight" is a cliche that needs to come to ATS.

Originally posted by OverlordQ

It was this weird looking glowing object, nobody knew what it was.

Everybody knew what it was except the submitter...

[edit on 23-6-2007 by IAttackPeople]

[edit on 23-6-2007 by IAttackPeople]

Originally posted by Moserious
I believe it is no way a star cluster or galaxy.

I know it isn't--not because of its odd appearance, but because of its magnitude. You can't get a deep space object to look that bright and densely lit with either binoculars or a telescope. Inventive theory, but no. I've spent way to many hours at the eyepiece to buy into that.

What the photographer could and should have done to legitimize it as anomalous--or at least to eliminate the most obvious probable cause (trees)--is to simply shine a flashlight from the camera's location at it while taping. Ah shucks, opportunities missed.

Since the OP hasn't posted any day time shots of the same location and being I seen a previous poster mention the idea of "lightening" some of the photos, I decided to let my curiosity mingle in photoshop a bit.

I downloaded a pic from the OP's savefile link (open002.jpg) and used the adjust/levels tool inside photoshop which allows you to adjust the black/grey/white attributes of a file. I then turned the file to a greyscale format and moved the brightness/contrast sliders around a bit and this is what " I see ". Trees, with Venus clearly behind them trying to show its spherical shape as best it can. Take a look and judge for yourself, the trees " I see " can best be seen if you lean back from your monitor a bit and try to notice the "lighter area" (night sky) that's between some tress located on the upper left area. In the second photo I tried to outline the night sky (which is lighter then the trees) as best I could with a quick outline.

h1.ripway.com...]No outlined sky
h1.ripway.com...]Outlined sky

Maybe Im nuts but IMO trees is what "I see".
(hopeing My links work)
Bzzzzzz

Buzzingon, thanks! Hmm, trees, how strange!! So many were thinking it could be satellites, digital zoom artifacts, ships, galaxies, everything but trees, but no one even suspected it could be, well now wait a minute, I do seem to remember Spoodily saying pretty darn early on:

Originally posted by Spoodily
Please post a daytime photo in the same location as the nightime one. I can see the object, but it looks like you are shooting it through the leaves on a tree. Was it sparsely cloudy that night? Maybe that's what I'm seeing as leaves. A daytime photo of the same area would be very helpful. Thanks.

But it wasn't really necessary to do so, because:

Originally posted by shearder
I accept your analogy and it would appear as such, however, as mentioned i am placing a link to video and with panning etc there are no trees that were blocking the view as you will also see from the video when zooming in and out and moving around. Again, I am not saying everyone's ideas are rubbish, purely because i do not know what it is myself, hence the reason it is on here BUT what i will do is eliminate any and all "possible" identification based on assumed anomalies so that we can ALL get an answer

And one has to really applaud such scientific rigor. Of course, the "panning etc" was done at night, which isn't quite, well actually that's the opposite of what Spoodily was asking for, but what the hey, shearder's going to "eliminate any and all "possible" identification" for us, so all we have to do is keep on posting any and all completely far-fetched theories to explain this truly bizarre and perplexing mystery.

Please let us know if any further information comes to light to explain this celestial artifact shearder. Naturally we know you'd tell us immediately if you were to discover you made a somewhat embarrassing error and that it was, in fact, something really obvious like trees. I know it isn't trees though, because you assured us that you'd "eliminate any and all possible identification" so hopefully some of the fine minds here at ATS can wrap their minds around this conundrum and solve this riddle once and for all.

Originally posted by shearder

Originally posted by Diplomat
At first the pics did not impress me at all, but the video is amazing.

I'm not even going to try and begin to explain this one, but whatever it is really does seem to be "alive." I also think the reason you are seeing it so easily is because Venus is directly behind it. If you had been looking at Venus from a different part of Africa that night then you probably wouldn't have seen this "object." So basically you got lucky and were at the right spot to be able to see this weird thing...

Edit: Unless the "object" was very close to Venus then it would probably look the same when viewed from anywhere on Earth...

[edit on 21-6-2007 by Diplomat]

That was my train ot thought. I have watched this over and over again in high definition. The 15 mins i have got on video is 3.2GB in size. With that said, i also noticed on the bottom right "when it is open" seems to be some pulsating light.

I have viewed more of the video and i will upload another section tomorrow morning. The piece i want to put up seems to be more clear and one can see what looks like plates and it definately appears spherical in shape. Again I questioned whether there is a tree SOMEWHERE but I can guarantee noting was in the way OR it would be seen in the pic where it appears turned. The clip also has a part where it appears to "open" up. So it may not be sideways at times but just closed with light coming out the sides i.e. the blue hue.

Just very interesting.

I haven't seen the vidoe posted as yet bt I will be downloading it at soon as I am on broadband.

Shearder, why not consider putting it into dvd format and sending it off to a few people. If you are open to letting everyone see the raw footage we could distibute it fairly quickly throgh the post.

In music bootleg circles, there is a set up called a tree. 5 people get the original postings, the promise to post it to 5 more each, the promise to post it to 5 more each. It mltiplies very quickly.

For those who can afford the bandwidth there is always the bit torrent system. This is a good way to share large files but the 3.2 gig has to be ploaded t start the whole thing off.

Originally posted by yuefo
I know it isn't--not because of its odd appearance, but because of its magnitude. You can't get a deep space object to look that bright and densely lit with either binoculars or a telescope. Inventive theory, but no. I've spent way to many hours at the eyepiece to buy into that.

I still wonder what effect the digital zoom had on the brightness and the color of the object. The brightness may be artificially enhanced in the recording. I too have spent time viewing thru a telescope but this was a video camera. From the telescope perspective, I tend to agree with you.

Originally posted by roadgravel
I still wonder what effect the digital zoom had on the brightness and the color of the object. The brightness may be artificially enhanced in the recording. I too have spent time viewing thru a telescope but this was a video camera. From the telescope perspective, I tend to agree with you.

Yeah I'm with you on this one. Common sense tells you one thing, but when digital effects and ccd chips and new video camera features come into play, it causes all kinds of weird effects, and can throw common sense out the window.

Things like digital zoom, some cases up to 900x digital zoom, low light/lux recording levels, this is done digitally, anyone know the affects that this may cause to artificially taint the image? In any case, hope the OP sends us those images daylight this weekend and remains honest about the location and evidence he/she finds as well.

[edit on 6/23/2007 by greatlakes]

Originally posted by greatlakes
In any case, hope the OP sends us those images daylight this weekend and remains honest about the location and evidence he/she finds as well.

So you're saying that, even after Buzzingon's post, you're still on the fence on this one? Meanwhile the OP is thinking, "thread die, please die, make them stop" lol. I'm basing that on the OP's own words.

Ordinarily I wouldn't bust someone's chops for making a mistake, but after the OP has had plenty of time to see in the daylight what went wrong, he's still entertaining questions and conjectures about the mystery object--until Spoodily asks for a daylight shot. Then the tone suddenly changes:

Initially he doesn't agree to daylight imaging:

i am placing a link to video and with panning etc there are no trees that were blocking the view as you will also see from the video when zooming in and out and moving around.

The trouble is that he's talking about the nighttime vid. A few posts later:

Please just trust me when i say no trees were in the way.

And 2 days after the original taping we read:

Again I questioned whether there is a tree SOMEWHERE but I can guarantee noting was in the way OR it would be seen in the pic where it appears turned.

He's giving us a guarantee there, right? But all is not well, because a few posts later IAttackPeople says:

Originally posted by IAttackPeople
I'm with Spoodily. I'd like to see a daytime photo of where you pointed your cam that night.

Time to discreetly retreat--the OP's next post after IAttackPeople's request surprisingly reads:

Originally posted by shearder
Quite honestly i doubt i will take it further. It is really a personal thing to try and figure out what it is/was.

But IAttackPeople asks whether the OP is sure it's not a tree, and he replies:

Absolutely. If you listen to the remark i made (to myself) questioning the possibility of branches so i moved the camera about 20m further away and the second clip i posted today was at the new spot. Same result.

Still not having delivered on the daylight photos, the OP illogically theorizes:

But again, if there was a tree involved would it not block out venus MORE when zoomed out and the object would easy be seen as being obscured by the tree or it would have taken some serious maneuvering to ensure the branches only come into play when fully zoomed in.

And you have to ask why in the world such a suggestion is even being made if there are no obstructing trees to begin with, but nevertheless it's presented again in a subsequent post:

i think some of the ideas are pretty compelling but campfire it isn't and if it were branches, would it not show MORE when zoomed out and more obstructive to what i was viewing?

Again, why does the OP make this observation if there were no trees in the first place...need I go on? I take no pleasure in embarrassing anyone, but on the other hand, it's kind of egregious to make a mistake and string everyone along with total BS instead of simply coming clean. Honesty shows character and people respect that. Well I'm done.

that aint fare i never seen a ufo

Originally posted by yuefo
So you're saying that, even after Buzzingon's post, you're still on the fence on this one?

Meanwhile the OP is thinking, "thread die, please die, make them stop" lol. I'm basing that on the OP's own words.

Err I didn't seem to find buzzington's post all that convincing or comprehensive, no offense buzzington . The images were quite small and no clear evidence is seen from those images. Its quite ez to perform a cursory look yourself at the images in photoshop or other software to perform some analysis of your own. I have, couldnt find much or would have posted it....

Err I didn't seem to find buzzington's post all that convincing or comprehensive, no offense buzzington

....

No offense taken at all, , it is just "my opinion/non-scientific study/observation"

My back patio (on top of a third floor building) has a view of a very long tree line of trees that has lots of houses on the other side and when I am on this patio looking at this tall tree line I can see the lights behind them coming from the other houses built over there and the first thing I noticed when seeing the OP pics was how this looks like what I see nightly when on my patio.

My own skyline is very limited due to the amount of tall trees behind where I live so seeing Venus, the moon and any low horizon objects in space can only be seen threw trees and are obscured lights behind them. Very similar to what the OP photos looked like to "me".

I hope the OP can post some day time photos soon to help us all eliminate the tree possibility.

Bzzzzzzz

It is and interesting video, but I would almost bet the effect is caused by the zooming action.

Originally posted by BuzzingOn
My own skyline is very limited due to the amount of tall trees behind where I live so seeing Venus, the moon and any low horizon objects in space can only be seen threw trees and are obscured lights behind them. Very similar to what the OP photos looked like to "me".

I hope the OP can post some day time photos soon to help us all eliminate the tree possibility.

It could very well be trees, I just hope, as I've said before, that the OP keeps everything honest when posting any of the findings, if theres a tree nearby, post it-we won't ridicule anyone for making an honest mistake. In fact it would be kudos from me to the OP for posting the truth rather than some false reports.

btw why was I calling you buzzingTon?

Look once more about mid-way through the video when he does the close-up. You can see the branches and leaves gently moving in the breeze. And then when he does the extreme close up, you can see the pixilated leaves against the dark background surrounding Venus. Unfortunately I have no photo editing software to illustrate this. Venus Video

This was an easy and honest mistake to make. It immediately looked familiar to me because the same thing happened to me when I first bought a telescope. I was viewing a star or planet, and eventually the motorized mount followed it as it passed behind a tree. I was momentarily bewildered and believed I was the discoverer of some new, bizarre object in space--until I saw what had happened.

In hindsight, I wish I hadn't been so harsh on the OP. He found himself in an awkward situation and just made a bad choice--bad because the curious posters wouldn't let the matter drop.

I am still not convinced that it is a tree/trees. Right around the middle of the video where he goes back to looking at Venus for the second time it barely looks like much at all is blocking the view. Then he zooms out and back in and the "object" does not look like it is blowing in the wind to me, it almost looks like it is morphing or materializing. The movement of the object does not resemble branches and leaves in the breeze at all...

...and you didn't see the pixilated leaves surrounding it in the extreme close-up either?