Disk shaped object photographed over Wahkeena Rearing Lake, Oregon

On my daily check on the MUFON CMS site, this case picked up my interest as it seems to be, at first glance, neither any usual misidentification nor tampered with.

There's only a small copy of the original photo (562x421 - ratio 1.33):



Direct link to the photo.

Eric was driving a production truck eastbound on I-84 to a commercial shoot. Noticed waterfalls ahead and stretched his arm toward the open passenger window to get a shot. This picture was taken before Exit 30 on I-84 at the waterfall above Wahkeena Rearing Lake. Put the camera away until later that day at the hotel, noticed the object and what looks like a vapor trail behind it while looking through the pics on the camera. The card remained in the camera until February 3, 2011. Downloaded it to the laptop and stared at it until now.

The idea was to take a picture of a waterfall, not of something odd in the sky.
This, whatever this is, is what was on that frame.

Direct link to the testimony.

The guy who uploaded it to MUFON has upload as well a Google map view and a streetview of the place:





....and an enlargement apparently done with a Mac:



There's apparently a problem with the date, labeled as "0000:00:00 00:00:00" in the EXIF data... while the event date states: 2010-11-01. One would wondering why waiting more than two years to submit it to the MUFON!?

It does not appear to me as a solid object in the distance, but rather like a speck of dirt on a window or lense.

The circumstances pointed out in the OP ( 2 years before submitting it to MUFON ) doesn't make it any more credible.

Interesting none the less, cheers for posting.

It looks very similar to a suction cup that would be used to hold a GPS unit or similar gadget in place. However, the picture was supposedly taken through an open side window and not the windshield. Seems like an impossible angle for that to be true. I don't know. Story seems kind of fishy too.

Its much to light on the bottom of the object for me to take seriously. Also its more in focus that anything else in the picture. The is also no chromatic aberration surrounding yet all the trees in the distance do have chromatic aberration. Which pretty much proves beyond any doubt that its not in the sky.

It could be something on the window as someone else has suggested.

I'm beginning to suspect that these, "Disk like objects" are actually military crafts designed to look like alien spaceships. They are doing this in order to fool people into thinking that aliens are watching us, when in fact, they are trying to derail human beings from their true calling...which is God.

But to each, their own.

Object seems sharper then the rest of the pic. Another didn't see it until looking at the photo which I think means something.

Oregon is like that....sometimes really boring, so they go out and FAKE IT....

Originally posted by PhoenixOD
Its much to light on the bottom of the object for me to take seriously. Also its more in focus that anything else in the picture. The is also no chromatic aberration surrounding yet all the trees in the distance do have chromatic aberration. Which pretty much proves beyond any doubt that its not in the sky.

It could be something on the window as someone else has suggested.

edit on 2-3-2013 by PhoenixOD because: (no reason given)

That's not chromatic aberration on the trees, Its blur, caused by the motion of the vehicle it was taken from. Chromatic aberration is caused by a convex lens failing converge the constituent parts of light in a coherent manner. For instance,, stars, seem to be surrounded by a halo of usually red and blue. The vast majority of modern camera lens are compound in nature, which mostly, cures the problem, Many have a diffractive optical layer behind the lens with complementary dispersion properties to that of glass, which also mostly cures the problem. If there was a problem with chromatic aberration the whole picture would be affected, both fore and back ground.

Given it looks almost an identical shape to the objects in the famous "Shuttle tether incident", even down to the small notch in the edge and the dark centre point, Id guess it is the same visual effect as seen in that footage. hat means the object is actually a lot closer than it appears, quite possibly a drop of water on the windscreen.

IDK, the "object" does bear a resemblance to a rock chip in glass windshield ....
but also looks much like the UFOs in the "tether" incident with the space shuttle....

reply to post by elevenaugust


Every inch of I-84 is covered with dirt, dust and gravel on the shoulder, but that thing sure looks awful regular for dirt, dust or gravel flying through the air.

reply to post by FireMoon


You dont get motion blur on objects on the horizon line as they are moving much to slowly in relation to the camera. The motion blur is on the closest objects. The blurriness in the picture is cause by the short depth of field which was caused by the low f stop of f3.5.

But you do get fringing when taking picture of a dark object like a tree against a bright (mainly white) sky especially when shooting using such a wide aperture as f3.5. These cheap $250 cameras cant be adjusted like a dslr or whoever took the pic might have chosen a better setting. Optimal settings would have been a higher f stop (smaller aperture) lower to lengthen the depth of field , shutter speed higher to compensate for the movement blurring any object close to the camera like the telephone pole and a higher iso setting to compensate for the lack of light cause by the first to settings.

All lenses suffer from fringing to some degree even my professional $2500 70-200 lens with multi coated optics will produce slight fringing on strongly contrasting objects shot in a bright sky.

Also the Nikon COOLPIX S630 is known for its strong side lighting that can lead to over exposure and fringing when taking pictures of contrasting brightness. You can also see the effect in this picture on the branches to the top right of the picture that was also taken with a COOLPIX S630

I never set the date on my camera, the date is always wrong. Sometimes a person gets the right date but may goof up on the year also, so that is not evidence to say it is not real.

It looks sort of like a parachute to me. I don't see a jumper but it doesn't mean he is not there. It may be that the person has tilted the shoot to get to a desired location and is not seen. I have seen enough skydivers doing this to know it is a possibility. There could be a logical explanation for this, it does not have to be intentional deceit.

TWO *major* red flags going up:

1) Photographer (as so often) claims he took the picture and then "put away the camera" for some time to discover the UFO afterwards - HOWEVER, the UFO is nicely centered in the middle of the photo. Unless this image is a crop, I have problems with that.

2) UFO is also nicely placed with the open sky as background, which is ALSO to some extent suspicious since an UFO could very well be "in the air" but would not ALWAYS need to to happen being placed where the Sky is, it could be against the mountain backdrop as well.

Those are two things which of course don't prove this is a fake/hoax, but in combination those two things make the image VERY suspect to me.

Short: A naive faker would do exactly that: He would place an UFO "in the sky" and in addition quite in the middle of the image centered.

"Logic" tells me that a genuine UFO photo, especially taken unaware there was an UFO there at the time the photo was taken, COULD have the UFO anywhere in the picture with higher chances its NOT in the middle and not necessarily against the open sky.

interesting disc. some contrasted/filtered crops;

reply to post by flexy123


Those are good points. A little context that occurs to me:

The part where it's suspiciously in the center of the sky, and wasn't seen by the photographer at the time of the shoot, reminds me of the Crete sighting, which is still not definitively explained, to my knowledge. The expert who analyzed that sighting commented at length on that aspect, and concluded only that it could be related to the interdimensional origin hypothesis, and the idea of UFOs 'presenting themselves' to people.

The angle with relation to the horizon of the camera itself is also suspiciously well aligned in the Crete sighting. Another similarity between Crete and this event, is the overall round shape of the UFO. And with the glaring exception of the interstate highway, Wahkeena Rearing Lake is also rather isolated, like the area of Crete involved.

Originally posted by RoScoLaz
interesting disc. some contrasted/filtered crops;

That help... absolutely nothing at all.

Anyway, I'd say its something on the window. The photo doesnt make sense otherwise. The "UFO" is fairly well defined with sharp borders, but the entire photo is a blur - the object should be blurry as well. Maybe it sounds wierd to expect a blurry UFO but yes that's what I do in this photo, lol. The camera is probably focusing on the window, blurring the background. What's to the left of the "UFO" is probably smudges on the window as well.

Is the original uncropped photo available? If not that's usually a telling sign. You probably see the door frame of the car, making sense of the scene and the focus.