Live data from Hacker News

Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

petapixel.com

211–220 of 401 posts

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#211
post #2

So the anomaly that the carrier group tracked, then scrambled fighter jets for. The object that four different pilots saw visually, and was confirmed on multiple different sensors. That was camera glare? The video is only one piece of the evidence. The pilots are trained, and other sensor systems confirmed what the camera was showing. This analysis is pretty flimsy.

I don't know much about this whole story (I'm not a UFO person) and am learning most of what I know about it from this video and this thread, but: the people saying that this video depicts an actual object rotating in the sky appear to be making the extraordinary claim here: the connection between the rotation and the camera system seems compelling. The horizon is moving as the camera/plane moves; the object is not moving. You can't refute that with "these are highly trained fighter pilots": the horizon is moving with the camera, the object isn't. Training's got nothing to do with it. The shape we're looking at is, in part, an artifact of the camera, unless the aliens are somehow reprogramming the camera to fuck with us.

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet the title of the article says the video was camera glare. Which doesn't even make sense. But what it suggests is that the entire contents can be explained away as camera glare. So blame the media in this case perhaps?

There is no way to watch this video and come away with the understanding that there was no object at all. It spends a tedious several minutes demonstrating the connection between glare and objects emitting light, and multiple long, tedious disclaimers that it is not arguing that there is no object at all in the video. You have to want it to be saying something else to take away a different message.

Of course you can, the submitted article does exactly that. His emotions convey that he knows exactly what's going on, and he states, repeatedly, that it is lens flare. Rationally we can see that this is missing the forest for the trees, but anyone who doesn't think as critically will deduce that this is only a camera artifact. He operates this way on purpose, so that people who want to believe him have the proof they are looking for, and everyone else will quibble about meaningless details.

From the submission: A new detailed analysis of the modern poster child for UFO footage makes the case that the object in the video is not anything other than glare on the Navy jet’s gimbal camera system.

Done. Pilots are idiots, and so are your open minded friends. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#213
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn’t make much sense for Russia to show their cards and use modern war tech on Ukraine, a country with a (relatively) primitive military. They’re barely even using fighter jets.

> They’re barely even using fighter jets. Maybe because they've barely been training those pilots and know the planes would likely be lost if used above Ukraine? Pilots in the Russian Air Force have supposedly been averaging less than 100 flight hours a year, which is next to nothing.

With all their operations in (and supporting) Syria I would doubt the number. It is not the amount of USAF pilots, but should be more than that.

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#214
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to watch this video and come away with the understanding that there was no object at all. It spends a tedious several minutes demonstrating the connection between glare and objects emitting light, and multiple long, tedious disclaimers that it is not arguing that there is no object at all in the video. You have to want it to be saying something else to take away a different message.

Of course you can, the submitted article does exactly that. His emotions convey that he knows exactly what's going on, and he states, repeatedly, that it is lens flare. Rationally we can see that this is missing the forest for the trees, but anyone who doesn't think as critically will deduce that this is only a camera artifact. He operates this way on purpose, so that people who want to believe him have the proof the…

He says literally the opposite thing, and at great, tedious length.

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "saucer" shape and its rotation were IR glare, that's the point of the video. He's very clear that he's NOT debunking the existence of an object. The exhaust of a jet engine, or another high-heat signature, could cause such glare. AFAICT no pilots saw this shape with their naked eye. They were miles away from the target and relying on what they saw via their sensors.

So actually Commander Fravor saw the object with his own eyes, he is one of the pilots who was sent in to engage the craft after it appeared on radar from the carrier group, here is a detailed video of him talking about the incident with Lex Fridman(AI reasearcher - MIT) on his podcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

David Fravor was talking about the Tic-Tac video which was over ten years before the Gimbal video in the article.

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#216
post #193

> But a new detailed analysis by self-described debunker, skeptic, and UFO investigator Mick West Ignored as soon as I read the name "Mick West". The guy's brand is to be a debunker which in of itself is not bad but I am not gonna trust a video game developer's (brand aligning) explanations of this phenomenon compared to trained fighter pilots and the US Navy/Pentagon who have found no explanation of this phenomenon…

> the US Navy/Pentagon who have found no explanation of this phenomenon thus far.

"Released no explanation to the public" != "have found no explanation". The DoD is simply not in a habit of releasing information to the public unless they're instructed to do so by the executive branch.

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#217
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want it to be alien spacecraft? Are you some sort of glutton for punishment?

If there really are aliens out there, wouldn't you like to have some proof of it?

Given how horribly interactions between more technologically advanced and lesser technologically advanced societies seem to harm the lesser ones I'm not sure it would turn out well for humanity.

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#218
Why, at the time, were Navy pilots behaving so incredulously, and why did they not pull up along-side the UFO and simply eyeball its identification? And why did they let it get away? What is it that Navy pilots are supposed to be doing when they're inscrutably not pursuing possible unidentified threats?

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#219
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pilots are trained Fraver (not sure he was one of the ones in this incident) has a history of UFO pranks, shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them, explicitly to give a UFO experience, and someone found a contemporaneous report of him doing it, so it wasn't just a story.

> shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them I find it very, very, very hard to believe that a fighter pilot would _shut down_ his engines in flight, at night, even more so if it's for a stunt. Slightly more believable if he went to idle, and then full military power. Slightly.

There is enough videos of F-18s doing 'push the throttle and bank' in a level flight on YouTube. It's fast, but it's not instantenious. And as an arm-chair pilot I can say what a multiton plane doesn't stay at the altitude with the engines at idle.

Also the last weekend I caught a 40" bass.

Re: Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

#220
post #71

Well, the only reason they were scrambled to begin with is that they had been tracking these objects for weeks using advanced radar. As I understand it, the radar is based on multiple resolutions. The active radar can point in the direction of objects of interest and get very very precise measurements. It's not just the video, its the radar data. The thing that pushed me over the edge in believing these things is the…

> its the radar data

Did the Navy release the radar data, or an analysis based on it?

Post reply on HN