UFO-Fake-or something else?

I just came across a story of a possible UFO sighting on a Michigan local news website. I couldn't tell ya what the guy took pictures of, or if he used photo shop to create the photos. The pictures he captured show a ball of light just after sunset. I ran down the list of what it could be, a reflection off a satellite or the space station, planet, or some other natural phenomenon, but couldn't find a answer. I thought I would throw this out to ATS, and see if anyone can debunk the pictures or find a answer to what this could be. Here is the story from the website with the link to the pictures.

ALGER COUNTY -- An Ishpeming man is looking for answers to a strange sight in the September skies. It was a bright looking object over Hovey Lake in Alger County that caught the eye of Mark Perala. He took several photos on September 19 just after 8 p.m. He's not sure what they are, so he showed them to NMU Physics Professor David Lucas, who believes it's a satellite. "I started clicking pictures and that's when all of a sudden there's a bright object up here," explained Perela. "Then it's a ways out and then it's right here in front of me, and then I went and sat down and reviewed the pictures with my friends and showed them and they said, 'Holy cripe, what the heck is that?'" "There are these satellites put up by a company called Iridium, and they have highly reflective surfaces to them," said Dr. Lucas. Perala isn't so sure it's a satellite. He doesn't believe it would move back and forth in the sky.

www.uppermichiganssource.com...

[edit on 6-10-2009 by InvisibleObserver]

I camp near Alger County every year. Haven't seen anything like that, but I have seen some pretty intense Northern Lights. The first shot looks more like the setting sun shining on a lone cloud. I don't think a satellite would be that bright... I've seen lots of them crossing the night sky in that area.

You do not even have to zoom in to see the pixelation on that "UFO". That UFO looks like it was done in MS paint

The 'object' doesn't seem to have a reflection.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5496d5589bad.jpg[/atsimg]

Pixelated box normally means fake.

reply to post by zaiger

Unless the image is a JPEG and the box sides are multiples of 16 pixels, if they are then it most likely is a result of the JPEG algorithm.

Edit: a correction, it's multiples of 8, not 16, sorry.

[edit on 6/10/2009 by ArMaP]

reply to post by zaiger


Geeze, that is poor.

Mystery solved.

Bokeh is the first thing that comes to mind: the diamond shape could have been given by the iris opening: there are a lot of videos and pictures showing some out of focus lights looking like some diamond but actually they are just some dot in the sky:

Camera tries desperately to focus something that it cannot: but i find very unusual the dark track following the object. This is stuff for people like Jeff Ritzmann, IF the original images are available somewhere and if he has some time to spend on it.
Thanks for sharing.

reply to post by ArMaP

SW :[Adobe Photoshop 7.0 ] [Save As 07 ]

Or a photoshop algorithm.
One thing that is common to hoaxed UFOs is present in these photos he took. All these pictures are amature land scape compositions and the UFO is added in off to the side of the photo. When you are taking a photo of something you try to photograph what you are seeing, you would center the camera on that object. What we see here are some decent landscape shots with the UFO added in. Just look at the composition of the photos.

[edit on 6-10-2009 by zaiger]

reply to post by ArMaP

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Aha, soo (and I've read the three views below), what's that mean ArMaP ?

Decoy

reply to post by Decoy

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean, could you please rephrase the question (as they say in the movies )?

Thanks zaiger, that was the first thing I noticed when I zoomed in on the photo and seen the box around the object. I thought the same thing as you, but I figured I would share the story and pics with ATS and have everybody break it down.

Originally posted by ArMaP
reply to post by zaiger

 

Unless the image is a JPEG and the box sides are multiples of 16 pixels, if they are then it most likely is a result of the JPEG algorithm.

Edit: a correction, it's multiples of 8, not 16, sorry.

[edit on 6/10/2009 by ArMaP]

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Hi ArMap,

your stuff above.. it seems scientific.. explain please?

Decoy

reply to post by InvisibleObserver


Don't take it the wrong way i know i can come off harsh sometimes. You were not claiming that these are pictures you took so it is not like you are trying to pull one over on us, its all good.

reply to post by zaiger


u dont even have to zoom u can clearly see it doesnt look natural with the photo.

reply to post by platipus


Really? Really?
A thread that is only one page and you still can't find the time to read the whole thing. Please read my first post in this thread.

reply to post by zaiger


No worries my friend you didn't come off harsh at all. When I first read the headline to the story I thought we may have something here, then when I saw the picture it looked suspicious, that is why I brought it to the attention of ATS to discuss. Keeping an open mind to the possibilities of what it could be, I was looking for someone to back up my thoughts that it was most likely a fake, and I wanted to get some practice in on my first thread as a new member.

reply to post by internos

i find very unusual the dark track following the object.

I did find this interesting as well, the dark track is in the shape of the object. But I just cant get over how bad the box around the object looks. Is it possible that he took a picture of a planet or star after sunset and didn't use a tripod causing the planet or star to have a streaking effect? Then used photo shop to magnify the star or planet and then tried to blend in the streaking effect (the dark track)? If you zoom in 600-800% you can see the dark track and the object all fit into the same rectangle of pixels but the pixel box around the object doesn't match up with the rectangle or the surrounding area.

reply to post by Decoy

OK, lets see if I can explain it better.

Most digital cameras, to reduce the size the photos take on the memory card, default to a JPEG format (the most widely used image format on the Internet), because that is the format that can make the smallest file sizes.

The problem is that this great reduction in size happens because the method used to achieve it looses some of the information on the original image and changes some other things.

To compress the images, JPEG uses small blocks of data from the image to work with, those 8x8 pixel blocks are the basis of the whole system, so when there is a high compression rate and/or there is clear difference between foreground and background colour those blocks become more noticeable.

As an example, here is an image showing the eyes from my avatar, resized to 400%. This is a GIF file, that does not suffer from this problem but that is useless to use for photos because it cannot show more than 256 colours.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/ca8e3d7de02cbc62.gif[/atsimg]

The same image, saved as a JPEG (and not even with a strong compression), looks like this.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/b9966dddd5a8539c.jpg[/atsimg]

As you can see, the compression created many pixels with a different colour and in some areas, like in the top of the glasses, we can see those 8x8 compression blocks.

That's why we should not automatically consider a square in a photo as a proof being faked, if it's a square or a rectangle that has sides that are 8, 16, 24, etc. pixels long it is most likely the result of having being saved as a JPEG.

But that's also something that some people use to hide their fakes, so a highly compressed JPEG is not only less useful than a normally compressed image, it's suspicious.

In this case it looks like normal compression of part of the image that had a great change in brightness.

PS: some cameras (usually the more expensive) have also the possibility of saving photos to the memory card as TIFF or RAW, and if we want the best quality those are the right formats to use. The problem is that they take something like 8 to 10 times more space on the card.

reply to post by ArMaP


I didn't know about the compression artifacts you described.. thanks for the education.

I counted the pixels and it appeared to be other than a multiple of 8 or 16 on a side.