UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

foghorn said:
Knowing it’s Venus for sure (I do believe you Dave, really), I would have said it wasn’t Venus even out of focus.
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Indeed. Frankly. I would have been skeptical too, if I hadn't taken it myself.
But that's the very Achilles heel of UFO-gazing. Mundane things look unrecognizable. Worse, our brains try to make unrecognized things into recognizable things.

It happens so much that it easily accounts for the remaining 10% of open UFO cases.


I've been observing it with my 5" Newt for the past week or two, but a scope is very different kettle of fish.
After several years in storage, it is badly out of collimation, but still good enough to get an image:
1736278597258.png

So, we can see that the scope has enough mag to make out Venus' crescent phase.

This is Venus' orientation and phase right now, according to Stellarium:
1736279922686.png



Now compare the scope image to the camera image from yesterday. One might assume the camera image is that of a disk (or even sphere):

1736279154547.png
but it has not accurately rendered the shape of the actual object. The shape of the object appears circular because that's what happens when images are out of focus. And all osrt of other artefacts further complicate any attempted interpretation.

This trips up rookies and enthusiasts a lot. We have seen Magical Realist make this mistake countless times - reading more into an image than is warranted.

Studying this image - as an known, identified object - would have gone a long way toward MR learning to check his over-enthusiastic drawing of conclusions.


It's a pity he never took a more objective interest in the subject; there is so much to learn and explore.
 
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foghorn said:
Funny seeing the reddish colour.
...
That’s a new artefact effect for me, lens, CCD or something else?
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Yeah. It seems unusual isn't it? But the original file still has the EXIF data, proving its authenticity.
I'll post the other shots for comparison after work.

The redishness is, of course an artefact of imaging. The effect is called chromatic aberration.
It is affected by
- the focusing (which was deliberately off)
- the zoom factor (which exaggerates the effect)
- the low f-stop (f2.8) (which makes aberration worse)
- the relative simplicity of the image (which makes it unexpectedly easy to see)

You can see in this diagram how blue and green do not focus on the sensor plane, whereas red does. So the red is imaged but the others are blurred out of visibility or merely off-calibration.

1736280788249.png
This happens in any camera imaging, and camera technology goes to great lengths to minimize it (that's why they have dozens of composite lens elements and are very heavy). The halo just usually lost in a complex image - most people just don't notice it unless they look very carefully.

Here it is in an more typical image (which I found by Googling):
1736281087204.png

Most people would never even notice this (professional photographers do), but it's there:

1736281405436.png

If MR ever cared enough about science instead of wishful-thinking, there is a lot of room for learning.

This is also a cautionary tale about amateurs and rookies like the v-logger in the video trying to do analysis. They really are ignorant of any analytical knowledge.
 
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DaveC426913 said:
Yeah. It seems unusual isn't it? But the original file still has the EXIF data, proving its authenticity.
I'll post the other shots for comparison after work.

The redishness is, of course an artefact of imaging. The effect is called chromatic aberration.
It is affected by
- the focusing (which was deliberately off)
- the zoom factor (which exaggerates the effect)
- the f-stop (which makes aberration worse)
- the relative simplicity of the image (which makes it unexpectedly easy to see)

You can see in this diagram how blue and green do not focus on the sensor plane, whereas red does. So the red is imaged but the others are blurred out of visibility.
This happens in any camera imaging, and camera technology foes to great lengths to minikizing it. It just usually lost in a complex image - most people just don't notice it unless we look very carefully.

Here it is in an more typical image (which I found by Googling):
Most people would never even notice this. (Professional photographers do) but it's there:

If MR ever cared enough about science instead of wishful-thinking, there is a lot of room for learning.

This is also a cautionary tale about amateurs and rookies like the v-logger in the video trying to do analysis. They really are ignorant of any analytical knowledge.
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So it's something like a prism effect and the different refracting angles for different wavelengths.
Also the image being out of true focus gives a misshapen appearance. Plus other things.
Thanks Dave
 
Two other pics.
1st one is two minutes prior, before I zoomed in.
2nd one is 7 seconds before.

venus daylight 3.jpg

If the weather gods smile on me, maybe I'll try again and see if I can get a couple of shots at various focus settings.
 
Apart from image artifacts, it's also worth considering atmospheric effects. For example, if the photograph of Venus was taken through a layer of smog, that could make Venus look more yellow, simply because the red light undergoes the least absorption between the planet and the camera.

Another factor that might be significant is Rayleigh scattering of light. For the same reason that sunsets make the sun look redder than when it is high in the sky, photographs of Venus taken when it is nearer to the horizon will tend to make it look redder. The reason is that the light has to pass through more air when the planet/sun is near the horizon and blue light is scattered away more than red. So, more red light reaches the camera than blue light.

I hinted at these effects in an earlier response to Magical Realist. His reaction was his usual arbitrary dismissal, with unsupported declaration that "there's no way it could possibly by Venus". He regularly made such claims even though he had literally done nothing to try to rule out the possibility that he was denying.
 
James R said:
To the members:

Since Magical Realist was such a prominent antagonist in the current thread, I suggest that we now close the thread and start a new one for analysis of UAP phenomena.

This seems like a good opportunity to wipe the slate clean and to leave MR's baggage as a historical record. Hopefully, we can attract some new people who want to argue for the presence of space aliens and the like, but who are able to prosecute their arguments without the taint of intellectual dishonesty and trolliness that Magical Realist brought to the topic.

What do you think?

Also, if you'd like to post your thoughts about Magical Realist and his contributions here, I'll leave the thread open for a little while to allow you to do that.

There are arguments that might be made for leaving this thread open and allowing it to continue from here - possibly a good argument. If you'd like to put that argument to me, I will certainly consider it.
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He did, from time to time, ask not unintelligent questions about real science, which I quite enjoyed answering. But that makes it all the more suspicious that he could have been genuine all these years in espousing his unscientific notions. The sensible science posts were most likely a ploy to engage in when he got too close to the ban borderline, to try to win back sympathy from wider forum membership. So I think he knew what he was doing all along.

As I’ve said before, it is often the cranks that generate the most interesting discussions of science on these forums, so I’m not an advocate of banning them as a rule. But there does need to be an element of good faith in their postings, otherwise they are just taking the piss, and they do need occasionally to bring up some aspect of science that is worth discussing. MR was pretty cynical in trying to exploit that, it seems to me.

Good riddance, I say.
 
MR is or pretends to be what he says he is. Not saying he’s good at it but I’m thinking he may be an author, playwright, screenwriter, blogger, reporter, etc. Afterall, magical realism is a literary genre in which fantastic, unimaginable, weird and abnormal things happen in normal settings. No explanation(s) required. Does anybody question how Dorothy’s house travels to Oz or that witches fly on brooms there? No, it’s all part of an accepted magical landscape, call it imagination if you wish, but it’s taken as being real or a world where things are different but based on our reality. It’s normal stuff for the believers of the paranormal.

I’ll give him credit for staying in character despite a relentless onslaught of contrary opinion and personal criticism. I figure there’s no sense arguing with him but like exchemist intimated, his examples, evidence and explanations are enough for people on a science forum to try and debunk, all the while defending what’s actually real. To them I give credit also.

From Google: Magical realism is a literary style that incorporates magical or supernatural elements into a realistic setting. why don’t we poke fun at the JK Rowling’s of the world, aren’t they doing the same thing or at least some segment of it? I don’t think JK tries to explain how the supernatural works either. I don’t know how I can defend a forum that’s against something it allows to happen, especially if it’s parapsychology. That almost sounds paranormal in itself, or at least a head scratcher.

Can it be said that science has contributed to magical realism? Things like a thought experiment where a cat is both alive and dead at the same time, or multiple universes and infinite probabilities. Do they play into the minds of magical realists? When Einstein described quantum entanglement, maybe he should have left out the word spooky. I don’t know the answer re having MR’s forum visa revoked or if he be allowed to stay. I don’t really endorse his contribution here but there is a Para subforum and an open visitation door for those scientific to enter.
 
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PsychoticEpisode said:
MR is or pretends to be what he says he is. Not saying he’s good at it but I’m thinking he may be an author, playwright, screenwriter, blogger, reporter, etc.
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I've engaged with him across multiple very large threads for over ten years - possibly more than anyone else on this forum. He is not an author of any sort. He has a military tech background, with demonstrably little exposure to life beyond the reach of his eye feelers, and no exposure to science or academia, having formed an internally robust world view in the absence of critical thinking.

PsychoticEpisode said:
I don’t really endorse his contribution here but there is a Para subforum and an open visitation door for those scientific to enter.
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He is - and has repeatedly, unashamedly admitted to being - staunch anti-science.

But, a little like the Luigi thread, I would rather not give him more attention than he is due in the way of a post mortem on his person.

He's gone. Let's leave him gone.
 
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Funny thing is the Venus looking object with the moon ain't Venus.
It's just proof that getting turned around a bit and jumping to conclusions is a thing.
 
Kristoffer said:
Funny thing is the Venus looking object with the moon ain't Venus.
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Indeed. If that were Venus, then these cannot have been not taken this month.

The Moon was New when it made opposition with Venus this month,
1736364402894.png

but in your pic, the Moon is at least a gibbous, if not full.

And the Moon passed to left of Venus, whereas in yours the Moon is to the right. (unless you are in the S. hemisphere, or are holding your camera upside down).


Both your pics suggest blur due to camera movement, as the two objects appear to be elongated the same.

1736364696956.png
1736364815284.png
 
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Kristoffer said:
Weird Venus like object spotted in the area you'd expect Venus to be!
View attachment 6434
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Looking at the far left of the top photo, you know who would see 5 bright objects in formation, some with hanging tails that make them resemble shiny tadpoles. Call them the Polliwog UAP sightings. The lone bright object is an alien mother ship. Streetlights? Never…..LOL
 
Informative discussion on philosophy.stackexchange:

How improbable does an event have to be before we can say it didn't happen by chance?​

philosophy.stackexchange.com

How improbable does an event have to be before we can say it didn't happen by chance?

What is the probability threshold below which we can confidently say that a blind process did not create the supposed event? For example, how many heads in a row would we need to say that it did not
philosophy.stackexchange.com philosophy.stackexchange.com

I am thinking about observational accounts of exotic events such as UAP sightings and their recurrence.
 
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