Latest UFO pic

[hypatia]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article637499.ece

[PlasmaSphere]

I would like to know if anyone else saw it, multiple independant witnesses is the best way to confirm something like this. There should have been loads of people at the coast looking out to sea, the british coast is one of the most populated in the world, and i would be suspicious if it ws only him that saw it.

Saying that, it definately fits the typical saucer stereotype. hmmm. i'm undecided.

[DaveC426913]

Oh fer Pete's sake - it's a freakin' gull (http://www.fredmiranda.com/A6_Daschund/index_files/seagull01.jpg)!

Jumped right out at me...

[hypatia]

Might be a Gull, with motion blur from the camera. It looks like its much closer to shore then the ships.

Plasma, he didnt say he saw it, only that he dicovered it on the photo after downloading it.

[turbo-1]

Oh fer Pete's sake - it's a freakin' gull (http://www.fredmiranda.com/A6_Daschund/index_files/seagull01.jpg)!

Jumped right out at me...My first thought, too, Dave. Flying left to right, wings blurred (more than the body) due to motion.

[Evo]

It's a goshawk.

[Andre]

I'd vote for sea gull too

http://www.hrphotocontest.com/data/gallery1/6441/54434.jpg

[Evo]

I'd vote for sea gull too

http://www.hrphotocontest.com/data/gallery1/6441/54434.jpgThat's a good one.

[PlasmaSphere]

Saying that, it definately fits the typical saucer stereotype. hmmm. i'm undecided.

hmmmmm, i'm decided...... Its a gull :smile:

saying that, its a pretty damn fat gull if it is a bird. Amazing it can fly at all.

[neutrino]

That's a good one.
Agreed. Wonderful photograph.

[RonL]

I would have to agree with bird of some sort.

Having looked at the returning NASA shuttle as it passed over between Austin and Waco texas, at around 10,000+ mph, you see a fireball and nothing on the shuttle is burning, just friction in action:bugeye:

It will be a long time before i accept that anything can move thru our atmosphere without leaving some trace. -:)

[LightbulbSun]

I wish I had it uploaded on my computer, but my brother took a nice picture in the desert in Nevada of some cloud formations which have been mistaken as UFO sightings many times in the past. So even cloud formations can dupe us.

[russ_watters]

This is telling: In a weird twist, Kelvin, 55, did not even see the UFO at the time. It's a sure bet he didn't see it either because it was a mundane object that he ignored without thinking (seagull - I agree that that is a very likely possibility) or that it is an artifact of some sort (dust/ bug on the lens, etc).

[Ivan Seeking]

Without eyewitnesses to corroborate the sighting or to provide explicit details about the object, and without any evidence that the object moved in an inexplicable manner, it is just another fuzzy photo that could be anything.

[DaveC426913]

it is just another fuzzy photo that could be anything. As far as fuzzy- photos-that-could-be-anything goes, this is a very poor example.:rolleyes: I would say that there is very little doubt that it's a bird.

[Ivan Seeking]

As far as fuzzy- photos-that-could-be-anything goes, this is a very poor example.:rolleyes: I would say that there is very little doubt that it's a bird.

I think we can guess that it might be a bird but only by playing the numbers. It is more likely to be a bird because not too many other things fly around. But a fuzzy photo is just a fuzzy photo. I think trying to make more of it is exactly what the UFO crowd gets slammed for doing.

[hypatia]

I spent a goodly amount of time with this photo with my photoshop program tonight. Without much work, you could clearly see the head of the bird.

[russ_watters]

I think we can guess that it might be a bird but only by playing the numbers. It is more likely to be a bird because not too many other things fly around. But a fuzzy photo is just a fuzzy photo. I think trying to make more of it is exactly what the UFO crowd gets slammed for doing. But as you can see in the link, the ufo/flying saucer crowd likes to chalk such photos up as big wins, but they don't get to. We don't have to be sure that it's a bird to make it worth dropping, but we would have to be pretty sure that it's a flying saucer to pay more attention. That's the way burden of proof works with extrordinary claims.

Still, as these things go, that's a pretty big wiff by the ufo/flying saucer crowd. How many big wiffs does it take before we can generally just ignore them?

[Ivan Seeking]

I think it was actually two people quoted in a cheesy news story. If you choose to ignore everyone and the entire field because of stories like this, then you had better throw away your science books the next time someone proposes a perpetual motion machine. The logic is just as solid.

[DaveC426913]

Still, as these things go, that's a pretty big wiff by the ufo/flying saucer crowd. How many big wiffs does it take before we can generally just ignore them?
Well, it's just a report in a rag paper. I expect UFOers see it as giving them a bad name.

[binzing]

I agree, its a bird......but I'm think even smaller, possibly a small blue jay, in the photo you see a slight blue coloration on the top(also may be reflection of the sky. But, I'd say a small bird, not a seagull.

[Ivan Seeking]

This report at least has some of the basic elements needed to make it interesting.
http://www.expressandstar.com/2008/01/03/mystery-%E2%80%98arrowhead%E2%80%99-ufo-spotted/

Of course reports like this lend themselves more to blimps, shaped balloons, toys or scale models, or military aircrafts. As I read the second news report, nothing was reported that requires a more exotic explanation. However, there are reports involving many witnesses, pilots in pursuit aircrafts, RADAR and even multiple RADAR tracks, that do seem to defy conventional explanations.

In the first photo, the only thing that I can see would be if some sort of image enhancement were possible that makes this report more interesting than it appears. And even then you still have the problem that we have no supporting details.

[_Mayday_]

What a scam that guy must have earned a few for that.

You can see the "UFO" is closer than the ships, so that explains the size of it. It looks very much like a gull, and gulls like to chill in similar areas. I mean what a coincindence! ¬¬

[turbo-1]

Like hypatia, I decided to download the image and process it in Gimp. A modest amount of unsharp masking brings out details in the gull and even shows its eye (er, "porthole").

[DougF]

I too think it's a Gull and not a UFO!

[DaveC426913]

What a scam that guy must have earned a few for that.
Point of order: nowhere in that article does it claim that the photographer ever even thought it was a UFO let alone tried to claim it was such.

First rule of selling: when making a claim, make the strongest claim you can. i.e. since the article never suggests he thought it was a UFO, that means he never did, or they would have most certainly used that.

[turbo-1]

Point of order: nowhere in that article does it claim that the photographer ever even thought it was a UFO let alone tried to claim it was such.

First rule of selling: when making a claim, make the strongest claim you can. i.e. since the article never suggests he thought it was a UFO, that means he never did, or they would have most certainly used that.Well, there was this quote:

“When I got home I couldn’t believe what I had. I thought, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’ I’m not the sort to believe in UFOs — now I’m not so sure.”

Then, there was the fact that he posed for a picture with a concerned look on his face with his camera pointed skyward (as opposed to toward the horizon to capture the tankers). If he did not believe that the gull was a UFO, how did his photo come to be in the possession of UFO-fans and get printed in a sensationalist rag?

[DaveC426913]

Well, there was this quote:

“When I got home I couldn’t believe what I had. I thought, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’ I’m not the sort to believe in UFOs — now I’m not so sure.”

Then, there was the fact that he posed for a picture with a concerned look on his face with his camera pointed skyward (as opposed to toward the horizon to capture the tankers). If he did not believe that the gull was a UFO, how did his photo come to be in the possession of UFO-fans and get printed in a sensationalist rag?
This has all been filtered through the paper's writers and editors. They're making a story out of it.

“When I got home I couldn’t believe what I had. I thought, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’
"I’m not the sort to believe in UFOs — now I’m not so sure." I'll bet those two lines were not spoken contiguously; they've been put together in editing.

The "now I'm not so sure" is the kind of thing they coach him to say in the interview.

"he posed for a picture with a concerned look on his face with his camera pointed skyward"
Who do you think posed him?

I'm sure he became very aware of the spin they were going to put on the article, he'd know they were fishing for quotes, he'd know they were posing him, he might have even known they were going to consult UFOlogists. But he never made any of these claims.

Nor am I suggesting that he ultimately objected to them. I'm simply saying that I doubt he had any hand at all in pushing the UFO angle.

Once you agree to be interviewed, you're not really in control of what happens to the story, except by what you don't say.

[DougF]

DaveC426913
Once you agree to be interviewed, you're not really in control of what happens to the story, except by what you don't say.

Sad but true!

[turbo-1]

Sad but true!Well, my point was that the photographer was gullible/suggestive enough to look at his own photo and "see" a flying saucer and bring it to the attention of a publication, and then to play along when they decided to publish his photo and story. He could have previewed his images and tried to figure out what this blurry bird was, but instead he apparently chose to bring the photo to the attention of the rag paper as a possible UFO photograph. It is not at all remarkable that he didn't notice a UFO when he took the shot - when you are at the sea-shore, gulls are a dime a dozen.

[DougF]

Well I think he just wanted to make a quick buck and sell the photo,
but I doubt they let him prof read the article and give his approval.

[DaveC426913]

Well, my point was that the photographer was gullible/suggestive enough to look at his own photo and "see" a flying saucer and bring it to the attention of a publication...
If I were a betting man, I'd bet that it wasn't him that first starting making a serious claim about it being a UFO, and it wasn't his idea to take it to the paper. But that he did go along with it.

[Ki Man]

Some of The Sun's other top headlines for today: Twins unwittingly marry each other, Ronaldo's latest TV girlfriend, and some people making love on an airline flight.

[_Mayday_]

^ The news you can't live without.

[Ivan Seeking]

I agree. We won't be allowing any more links to "The Sun". In fact we have never allowed links to tabloids. I didn't realize that was the deal here.

Hypatia is hereby pithed. :grumpy: