Wichita UFO

DaveC426913

Better opinions require knowledge, sure, but what they require even more of is logic and critical-thinking skills. This is why I challenged your first post. It's mostly rhetoric it doesn't really contribute to solving the problem.


I ask again: what is your point? Is it your claim that this UFO account is best explained by the witness lying? Because if it isn't then this line of reasoning is pointless.

DaveC426913

This was what I saw at first too. But now that it's been Neckerized*, it only makes sense from a 4-5 o'clock position. It just doesn't work from a 1 o'clock position. 1] The wings don't match up tip-to-tip and, 2] what do you think the sun is glinting off on the nose?

* see what I did there?

russ_watters

Yes, certainly. I disagree - wiki, at least, is a source and/or has sources. A game isn't a source and doesn't have sources - at least no sources that are publicly available. In this case, the manual doesn't even tell us what is intended by the Aurora plane in the game - so we don't even know if some random programmer who doesn't necessarily know anything we don't believes it to exists or not. The fact that it is in the game doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it exists.

Also, as do most people in this forum, I chose the wiki source because it is easy. However, it does include as a source, a book I have, "Skunk Works", which is a primary source by someone "in the know" at Lockheed (the director of Skunk Works) at the time the code name was accidentally released. If you like, I can type in the quote, but what I said in the first quote is a paraphrase of it. There is actually some interesting discussion of the issue - including a statement that the gov't did solicit Lockheed's help in developing such a plane and that Lockheed declined because they knew it wasn't possible.

Orion1

Russ, what is the maximum altitude and velocity of the Aurora in X-Plane?

The research and development of a SR-91 Aurora to replace the SR-71 Blackbird is plausible.

Does X-Plane have a SR-71 Blackbird?

nottheone

Since my original posts I got the photographers email and asked him some questions. Here is his reply. He also sent me a 3meg original jpg. His words in underline, he used my email and pasted his answers in.

Hi, interesting pic. Some of my friends and I have been arguing about this and I was wondering if you could clarify a couple of things.

Is it going left to right? Object was traveling from left to right.

Did you use film or digital? I used a digital Canon 40D Camera with a portrait lens

Could you explain a little clearer why you only got off one picture? None of us can understand why you had only time for one shot. I have seen fighters take off at full afterburner and it takes a couple of minutes to get out of sight on a clear day. Mostly because of the surprise of the moment, not being ready to take a photo. Also the area was lower and surrounded by trees so it moved out of view very fast.



Any chance of getting an original digital image so I can see if there are any details I can enhance? I have attached to photo, good luck. This has caused me nothing but grief and, if I had it to do again, I would just delete to photo and move on.



Looks like I wasn't too far off. He was using a good camera with a removable lens and the slow lens thing wasn't really the reason he got only one shot. His story is a little different than what was posted in the other sites. If anyone wants the original jpg leave me a note with an email and make sure you don't have an attachment limit.

Ivan Seeking

By definition there is no such thing as a qualified source for projects that are still classified. Therefore there is no way to discuss the subject.

Ivan Seeking

This subject [Aurora] is closed.

DaveC426913

A quick dialing up of the saturation reveals a couple of things:

1] There's a distinct colour difference between the "engine nacelle" and the rest of the craft. I don't what what that might mean, but what I do interpolate from it is that the sillouette is divided at that point between major surface planes: the "engine nacelle" is behind, the wing is in front - as we've been assuming.

But I'm not sure what to conclude from the fact that the upper tail tip is the same colour as the fuselage/wing. If the colour can be interpreted as major surface planes, that tail tip should be the same colour as the (vertical) engine nacelle, not the (horizontal) wing/fuselage.


2] The part we've been assuming is a cockpit canopy (dome, far right) indeed looks even more like a cockpit canopy.

Attached Thumbnails

 

DaveC426913

I'm trying to break away from my/our preconceptions of how we're interpreting what we're seeing. Our brains are telling us this is a cigar-shaped-winged craft with a tail engine seen from about 4-5 o'clock position. As long as we keep seeing that we'll stay stuck in a rut. So I'm trying to right-brain this: lose the symbols.


1] The glints off the craft don't make sense. There are between 5 and 7 major glints, depending how you count them. These glints will be from highly oblique angles where there's almost total reflectdion of sunlight off large, rounded surfaces.

I can see why there'd be a glint off the backbone and off the canopy. I can even see a glint off the wing leading edge.

But why would there be a glint off the tail tip? It's too high to be off the nacelle, so why would there be a large, round shape for sunlight to reflect off at the tip of the tail? Are we possibly misinterpreting?

2] Why does the right wing tip bend downward yet the left wingtip does not? Is that downward dip actually the wingtip? Or is it somethjing hanging down from the nose of the craft?


Is it possible we are seeing what we expect to see, not what is really there?

DaveC426913

Hey, why don't we simply ask him what he saw? Did he see wings? Wing-mounted engine nacelles? Tail-mounted nacelle? Whatever he saw, he knew it was weird enough to be worth a pic.

notthteone? Do you think he'd be amenable?
If so, don't send right away. Let's compose a list of questions we can ask him and send them in one swoop. He sounds unhappy about this experience; we may scare him off.

nottheone

I sent him a followup with those questions right after I got his first answer, he hasn't answered it yet. Since I got his email from a ufo site I have a feeling he may be getting a lot of unwanted attention. I was surprised he answered the first one and actually sent me the picture. If you come up with some more I will try again.

I think it looks more like it's heading away from him to the right at about 1:30. It looked to me like it was toward him at 4:00 at first. The thing sticking down on the right does look more like it's on the nose. Almost like a IR/laser pod/dome. The bright spots look like lights. The pixel pattern around the edges of the object seems to be uninterupted so it doesn't look like a quick paste job. There appears to be a large lens flare to the right which he may have mistaken for the glow when he was looking through the viewfinder, I think that camera has a through-the-lens type viewfinder so he would have seen what was in the picture.

All I can say is I wish I had seen this.

russ_watters

Now I'm confused - what forum are we in here and what are we discussing? Since when is a "qualified source" relevant at all in this forum? We're discussing a newspaper article about an eyewitness account by an amateur of an unknown object here, not a peer reviewed paper or Lockheed press release! If a "qualified source" is a requirement, most of the threads in this forum should be closed!

Ivan Seeking

We discuss claims of and evidence for unexplained phenomena, not conspiracy theories. We try to find prosaic explanations for specific claims, but we don't play guessing games about classified technology.

No specific prosaic explanation can itself lack any credible references. So we might guess that the craft was part of a black project, but there is nothing more can be said on that point because by definition we can have no credible references. The entire point is that the explanations offered can be verfied as credible and do not amount to just more internet noise.

wolram

If i tilt my laptop away from me until a distinct outline appears, it looks nothing like any aircraft i can imagine.

nottheone

Which was my point about the slow lens, it wasn't a credible excuse GIVEN THE FULL CONTEXT OF WHAT HE WAS CREDITED WITH SAYING which implied to me he had a good camera and he did in fact. As it turns out his actual comments to me made a completely different excuse which IS credible (assuming there actually ARE depressions and trees in Kansas, it looked pretty damn flat and treeless to me when I drove through it :)

Ivan Seeking

I think the real point here is that whatever it is, beyond a complete hoax, there is no reason to think it is anything but a military or test aircraft.

I'll leave the thread open for those who wish identify what specific craft may have been photographed, but I think we all agree that this UFO is for all practical purposes, an IFO. At the least it did not reportedly exhibit any capabilities beyond those of earthly aircrafts.

As for the afterglow reported, I tend to assume that this was simply the evening sun reflecting from the vapor trail.

nottheone

I agree, this doesn't have anything ET about it. As unidentifiable as it is, it looks pretty terrestrial to me.

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In my experience 50/50 odds have a 90% chance of being wrong 100% of the time, and so do statistics like this.