I would like to hear your thoughts on this old photo.

I first bought this photo to the attention of ATS a year ago on this thread Strange original Operation Highjump Photos.. Due to a random act of stupidity, I deleted the pics from my ATS upload page, but I later reposted them on the 2nd page.

I dismissed the photo as being a Light Pillar, but a year later I am still at odds to what it really is. So I'd like us to take another close look at the Foley prom photo to see what you all come up with.

Large chunks of Antarctica are Australian territory, Operation Highjump surveyed this area wich is why the database from Highjump can be found on an Australian Government website.



Upon entering the database the first photo in the first reel is this one.
Down the left hand side you can see all the info -flight number, reel number, image number, date, time, heading and altitude.



1st of March, 1947 was late summer, and one of the last days that flights took place at the end of Highjump.
Sunrise 11:30pm, solar noon 7am, sunset 2:30pm. The altitude of the sun was 29.3 degrees at solar noon.
So at 10:47am it would have been late afternoon sun with 4 hours until sunset.
With of heading of 152.8 degrees the sun would be roughly just off camera to the left.
The photo was taken at an altitude of 10,100 feet or 3100 meters.


As you can see there is something in the centre of the photo that seams to project a beam of intense light thousands of feet into the air. At first it may look like a reflection or a chemical burn during development of the photo, but there are a few odd things.



1/ The light beam is nicely centred in the photo.
2/ The location Foley Prom is written as an underscore to the object.
3/ At some time the object was circled as a point of interest that is now partly erased.


Light Pillars
A light pillar is reflection of a light source in the atmosphere due to ice particles.
Even though they seam to be projected above the light source, they actually appear between the light source and the observer/camera. Looking at a sample of a Light Pillar, I thought I had found what it was.



However my brain kept nagging at me that it's not a Light Pillar so I sent the photo to someone who knows about these things. I wont name him but I will plug his site as it is quite an interesting one atoptics. He replied, "I'm really unsure what this is. It does not have the shape of a lower sun pillar or subsun. Nor does it look very much like the sun reflected directly from ground snow or ice. You might have to consider whether it is a film defect or camera reflection."

So is this a film defect, or camera reflection?
I don't know about photography, hell I've never even seen snow before.

In the next photograph of the flight run, there looks like something that is in the same place but from a slightly different view point.



Once I had received the hi res image, this is what it looks like.





futher along to the left are more of these.
you will notice long thin horizontal lines from the developing machine that I guess has rollers.





Are these just artifacts from the developer, such as scuff marks etc.?
Do these add weight to say that the first photo is bad film or whatever?
Feel free to comment.

As someone who worked with film in a darkroom in college I'd have to say they are just film defects, imho. The light pillar is just someone putting too much developer (a chemical) on the film during developing, or perhaps it getting exposed to light as it's developing (more likely.)

The second photos with the lines in it, are scratches in the film, it appears. Film scratches very easily...

but that's just my opinion.

If this were digital images with a digital camera, I'd be more of a believer it was supernatural .

That is an interesting photo. I've seen it several times before; it was even posted around here someplace, in a thread having to do with Hollow Earth Theory (and, presumably, Nazis, ETs, whatever...).

Anyway, I have no theory. But I did look up Foley Promontory. It's at 68°57′S 69°24′E on Google Earth. Absolutely featureless, as far as I can tell. Either that or deliberately blurred out. Hard to tell which.

The thing is, I've read just about everything I can find about High Jump. Neither that area nor any such anomaly is ever mentioned. Barring an examination of primary sources, I wouldn't hold out much hope of an explanation.

Good question, though....

Edit: Ah. I just realized that it was your year-ago thread that I was thinking of. In my mind I conflated it with "abeverage's" story mentioned in that thread. So never mind, I guess....

In the absence of any accompanying documentary evidence, I am inclined to dismiss this as an artefact of the film development process. This sort of image can easily result from errors during film development, and unless there is some reason to think that it is something else occam's razor (more or less) dictates that the most pedestrian explanation is the most likely to be true.

Diogenes

Thanks for your input guys, you've all satisfied my curiosity.

Light beams might be real if coming off landed Tesla ships such as the
noted Rex Heflin type of ship. When in hover beams are seen above the
ships. Ships over head beams have been seen most notably from parking
fields outside conventions on UFOs or Conspiracies at night with special goggles.
Rex Heflin UFO Hunters

reply to post by WP4YT


I'd have to agree. It all seems like photo flaws to me. A lot of times we want to see things in photos and the mind let's us, but I think in this case anything here is pretty much down to the photo itself.