UFO over Death Valley?

The video below was captured by the Sunchaser Pictures team around the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley National Park, during the nigth of December 13th, 2012, during the Geminid Meteor Shower Peak.

Armed only with boxed wine, firewood, and our DSLRs, we had to conquer epic climbs, sand roads with the 4x4 Jeep, and the occasional UFO... But it was all worth it when the skies cleared and showed us an incredible galactic palette! Star Trails shot at 25 sec exposures. No special effects used, just the rotation of the earth's axis. Photography Merging: STARSTAX. Used Canon 5D & 7D, with a 24mm/1.4 lens and a 28mm/1.8.

The Geminids get crazy as the sun comes up (2:20-2:35) but you can spot a bunch more throughout, if you look closely.
There's also some passing planets (1:15-1:30 and 2:15-2:25). I think these are Jupiter and Mars(?), but maybe some smart astronomer out there can verify?

The "UFO" is visible from the 1'30" to 1'34" mark. The team have done a close-up of one still shoot from the video:

The "UFO" appears at (1:30-1:35) and makes three broad circular sweeps over the desert. Though in timelapse it appears to be moving fast, consider the 5 seconds = about 50 minutes, so it's creeping. There was no sound, so it definitely wasn't a helicopter.

Source

Some think that it's just a plane (and the classic light colors - white, green and red - makes think that they're right), however, if it's the case, it would have to be a very slow moving plane and/or at a very high altitude, as it makes two circles in 3s. in time-lapse, which means, in "real time", in fact 30' approximately.

Remember this is in timelapse, so it would be moving EXTREMELY slowly -- too slow for a plane. And no sounds from a helicopter or any other kind of craft were heard

So, military plane? Blimp? UFO?

That's some pretty cool footage. The night sky is crazy! Perhaps a drone checking them out? Else...aliens.

I remember seeing another thread on this just yesterday.

Awesome Nighttime Video Captures Unidentified Object

reply to post by elevenaugust


Man that sucks big ones, coz now I want to sit on a mountain top with a cask of goon and do something like that.

Damn I wish I still drank.. lol

Great clip!

The UFO I would think could be a meteorite burning up on entry, mixed with massive frame lapse.

reply to post by elevenaugust


Awesome time lapse footage.

I watched in full screen and caught something pass in front of the dunes at the 1:30 mark, moving at a similar speed to the object in the sky.

Same object or not I'm not sure.

Bottom left corner.

Screen shot:

Originally posted by ChadwickusI watched in full screen and caught something pass in front of the dunes at the 1:30 mark, moving at a similar speed to the object in the sky.

Same object or not I'm not sure.

Could be... or not!
Unfortunately, it is not anymore visible after frame n°2192, and the "ufo" appears six frames later, at frame n°2197, so we could only guess that, if it's the case, then the object have done, after frame n°2192, a left turn to appear again at the top at frame n°2198:





Pure speculation on my part, of course, and it does not explain why, if the same object, it disappears between frame 2192 and 2198, though.

Anyway, I've downloaded the video and done some calculations.

Since 5s. of time-lapse footage record 3000s. (50') of real-time and since the object can be seen from frame n°2197 to frame n°2248, then the total visibility of it in real-time was of 21'25".

reply to post by elevenaugust


Can't really see why it couldn't be a plane and many reasons to think it probably is (no impossible manoeuvres, solid red / green and rotating / strobe white navigation lights).

The lights do 2 circuits within the 3 seconds (30 minutes), of which you can't see the whole circuit, say flying at 300 mph that's a 75 mile circuit with maybe 50 visible. I'm sure then someone a bit cleverer than me can take a shot at calculating what the planes distance from camera would need to be to travel that distance in that arc and then we could see whether that ties in with the distance that nav lights would be visible. Or something like that !

At least making a reasonable guess on a couple of variables would give an indication of whether within the parameters of a normal plane.

reply to post by elevenaugust


I know it's frustrating at times to locate but this was already posted! I'll try to locate it.
Here ya go

If it's not the same title (or close to it) it's easily overlooked.

This is indeed an unusual unidentified object!

That is a nice video, thanx for sharing.

Thats a coral snake, nothing to see here move along...

elevenaugust --

Can we confirm that 1 second of video really does equal 10 minutes of real time? I realize the article says it does, but is there a way to confirm this?


I'm a little confused about that part of the article because of this excerpt you provided in your OP:

Armed only with boxed wine, firewood, and our DSLRs, we had to conquer epic climbs, sand roads with the 4x4 Jeep, and the occasional UFO... But it was all worth it when the skies cleared and showed us an incredible galactic palette! Star Trails shot at 25 sec exposures. No special effects used, just the rotation of the earth's axis. Photography Merging: STARSTAX. Used Canon 5D & 7D, with a 24mm/1.4 lens and a 28mm/1.8.

color emphasis mine

What do they mean by "shot at 25 second exposures"? Do they mean each frame is 25 seconds of real time? If so, then looking at your other post four posts above this, you showed that the object swept across most of the sky in six frames (frame 2192 to frame 2197). If that is the case, then the time it took to move those six frames -- at 25 seconds a frame -- would be only 2 minutes and 30 seconds (or am I missing something here).

I only ask about the time frame involved because the lights ARE so typical of aircraft aviation lights -- steady red light on left side, steady green light on right side, and a blinking white light. The lights look so much like the lights on a plane or helicopter that I wonder if the assumption of 1 second = 10 minutes could be a wrong assumption (even though that's what the article said).


EDIT TO ADD:
By the way, the idea that each frame in the video is a 25 second exposure fits in nicely with the idea that the blinking white light in the long exposure still image is an aviation collision avoidance light. Collision avoidance lights are suppose to strobe at a frequency of between 40 to 100 per minute. I counted the white dots on that still image, and got 19 "blinks". If we consider that image to be a 25 second exposure, then the frequency of that light is about 46 blinks per minute -- which is consistent with an aviation collision avoidance light.

reply to post by elevenaugust


PUCK THAT'S A LOT OF STARS!

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

Well, yes, it's somewhat confusing and I had probably badly explained myself as in my screenshoots above, I only speculated about the possible path that the object have done, following the idea of Chadwickus that the two (the one seen in two frames in front of the dunes and the other that starts six frames later.) object were the same.

Anyway, to summarize, what we know is that:

- 5 sec. of time-lapse = 50 minutes or 3000 sec. real, so 1sec. = 10mns.
- 25 sec. exposure per frame
- 51 frames (2248 - 2197) is the total number of frames where the object is visible
- 2 sec.125 is the total "time-lapse time" during which the object is visible
- MP4 video is 24 frames per sec.

So we can deduce from that that:
- The object was visible during 21'25" in real-time and this result can be found in two ways:
1- Using the time-lapse frequence ([3000s.x2s.125]/5s.)
2- Using the exposure time (25s.x51)

Next step is to determine the angular size of reference objects, such as stars, to give an estimation of the speed and altitude of the "ufo"...

Edit

A useful site for ufology and astronomy research that I rarely use is Nova Astrometry, which will be useful here and which is capable to give any sky/stars position and references:

If you have astronomical imaging of the sky with celestial coordinates you do not know—or do not trust—then Astrometry.net is for you. Input an image and we'll give you back astrometric calibration meta-data, plus lists of known objects falling inside the field of view.

We have built this astrometric calibration service to create correct, standards-compliant astrometric meta-data for every useful astronomical image ever taken, past and future, in any state of archival disarray. We hope this will help organize, annotate and make searchable all the world's astronomical information.

Let's see how it works with our still frame extracted from the video by the team who produce the time-lapse:



I cropped it as follow in order to avoid possible misidentifications due to the object itself:



Next step is to upload the file (Quickly done if you have an account) and, after few seconds, we get all the informations needed, with a .kmz file:



Now, let's load the .kmz file into Google Sky:





Next step is to do a precise angle measurement and to report it on our original file:





Here, there's exactly 6° between these two stars from Cephee constellation (Béta Cep et 31 Cep)

Then, a simple calculation gives the exact angular size of the object: 4°40.

So the object moved by 4°40 in 25sec. for each frame.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

I only ask about the time frame involved because the lights ARE so typical of aircraft aviation lights -- steady red light on left side, steady green light on right side, and a blinking white light. The lights look so much like the lights on a plane or helicopter that I wonder if the assumption of 1 second = 10 minutes could be a wrong assumption (even though that's what the article said).


EDIT TO ADD:
By the way, the idea that each frame in the video is a 25 second exposure fits in nicely with the idea that the blinking white light in the long exposure still image is an aviation collision avoidance light. Collision avoidance lights are suppose to strobe at a frequency of between 40 to 100 per minute. I counted the white dots on that still image, and got 19 "blinks". If we consider that image to be a 25 second exposure, then the frequency of that light is about 46 blinks per minute -- which is consistent with an aviation collision avoidance light.

I agree, good work

very cool video, those stars are hypnotizing, makes me wanna go there


the UFO does indeed come in make a few circular trips and back again.


what purpose would a plane or helicopter have, to fly out into the desert spin around a few times and fly back the way it came? unless it was searching for somthing or ran out of fuel!

have we managed to guess how fast this thing was traveling in real time?

reply to post by elevenaugust


OK, but let's again consider this picture you posted :

Originally posted by elevenaugust

That picture shows that the object moved a good bit across the sky in 6 frames (Frame 2192 to 2197). If the original MPEG video is 24 Frames/second, then 6 frames is 1/4 second of that video. So while we were watching that time lapse video, it appeared that the object took 1/4 of a second (at time-lapse speed) to move those 6 frames.

So, if:

1 second of that video equals 10 minutes of real time, then
1/4 second of that video would equal about 2 minutes and 30 seconds of real time.

So what we are looking at in your image with the frame numbers is the path the object took -- and the time it took to traverse that path was 2 minutes and 30 seconds. That's a big piece of sky, and that does not seem exceptionally slow to me. A small plane or a helicopter may have taken that long.


AND, by the way, the article says the object was visble for 5 seconds between 1:30 and 1:35. But if you watch it carefully, an object (plane maybe) is visible for LESS THAN 1 second from the end of 1:31 through only part of 1:32, then visible once again (another object/plane?) for less than one second within the 1:33 mark. I'm not sure why they say 1:35 in the article...it was not visible at all during 1:35.

Therefore you have an object loop across the sky in LESS THAN 1 second on 2 separate occasions. "That "less than" 1 second means it could have easily been less than 5 minutes of real time -- maybe only 4 or 5 minutes for each looping pass.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


I'd have to go with your summary on this capture, simply evaluating more of what it's not instead of what it might be.
Death Valley is a magnet for lots of unknown objects though. Here is a video I uploaded some time ago that looks to be an F-18 chasing a blue orb on google Earth for example. I stumbled upon it while planning out a motorcycle trip. I don't know if the tile has since been replaced or not but thought it would be fun to share.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


When doing a timelapse video using a DSLR 25-30 secs is a reasonable exposure time to both bring out detail with say 1600 iso and not produce a star trail .

So each individual frame of that video would have been a 25 second exposure still photograph, various programs allow you do dump the stills frames into the program which then generates the 24/25 fps movie some people will make movies at lower frame rates even down to 15 fps.

There are lots of theses videos on the net, what people have to remember is that not all frames taken during a nights shooting always end up in the movie, so trying to calculate may be pointless if it looks like a plane its a plane if it appears in one or two frames and gone the next good chance its a meteor.

Have a look at this one from 53 secs meteor appears burns up and leaves a plasma trail.

Originally posted by elevenaugust

pause 2.08, the centre of the galaxy. it looks like an eye staring down on us, the eye of our Creator possibly.

The eye of God looking down on us.

we are just a ship in a bottle.

yet God is so powerful He can see down on us. so large that we are just little more than ants in a beaker jar.

the stars just spin to keep us contained, and we are just a "specimen" in a jar of trillions.

Jupiter is no more than a pebble to Him. an ornament you put in an aquarium.

you don't have to travel the speed of light to escape, just aim your ship at the centre and he'll move out of the way and you will be free and fly around as long as you please and allowed to return to our home, earth, which He created for us.

no more harder than a fly escaping from a glass, trillions of miles wide as we get closer. and perhaps visit other "specimens" in other jars, as long as we are allowed.

aliens can't invade us, God could squash them like a knat. we will be invited, just as our visitors are now, to fly around and see God's creation, and our "cousins" and perhaps "brothers".

we are flying around in circles which creates our own "jar" which we call the milky way. we can only travel out thru the centre to meet the owner of the eye. God.

Once we meet God, we can ask Him for permission to fly to other planets and other creatures of creation that live in the "jar" with us. but i suspect if we meet God, permission would already have been given.

God can flood the earth, like we can dump a marble in a cup of water.

This eye could also be Jesus'.

point is, don't use science to deny God's existence. if God is a scientist.

explore God's creation and marvel at it. it's all there.