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Lake Cote UFO Sighting / Photo (Costa Rica; 1971)

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crunchy5

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http://www.ufoarea.com/puerto_aliens_good.html

On the morning of September 4, 1971, four mmembers of the National Geographic Institute of Costa Rica were flying in a twin-engined aircraft 10,000ft above Lake Cote, near the Central American state's forbidding Arenal volcano.

A special map-making camera was slung underneath their plane. It was automatic and large-format, and every 20 seconds it took another photograph of the lake beneath.

When the photographs were developed, one of the frames showed what seemed to be a metallic disc about 160ft in diameter, which had just left, or was on the point of entering, the lake. It was giving off light, and had made a sudden manoeuvre at the instant the photo was taken.

The object showed up on neither the previous frame of film nor the one afterwards. Checks on the negative eliminated tricks of the light as an explanation.

What the geographers had seen was an extraordinary but little-known phenomenon - a USO. Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, have been reported for centuries. What few people realise is that USOs-Unidentified Submergible Objects - have been reported for almost as long.
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This photo, from Lake Cote, Costa Rica, taken on September 4, 1971, by the Costa Rican National Geographic Institute, looks quite impressive.

PSX_20180718_144553.jpg
 
This is one of those "we didn't see anything until we developed the film" photos. I am always leery of these because you can never rule out momentary camera glitches, reflections, lens flares, etc. Attached is an analysis of the photo done by Richard Haines of NARCAP and Jacques Vallee. Even they can't rule out that this is a photo artifact of some type rather than an actual object.
 

Attachments

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dr wu said:
As Skeptical mentioned.....a possible camera artifact,,,I recall reading about this many years ago in one of Vallee's books.
https://www.rockymountainparanormal.com/1971costaricaufo/index.html
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Whilst a camera artefact is obviously more believable than an alien spacecraft, I would expect it to be more centralised in the image, rather than offset and at an oblique angle.

Are there any other photos taken with the same model of Carl Zeiss camera which display a similar artefact?
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Whilst a camera artefact is obviously more believable than an alien spacecraft, I would expect it to be more centralised in the image, rather than offset and at an oblique angle.

Are there any other photos taken with the same model of Carl Zeiss camera which display a similar artefact?
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I have no idea.....I only recall that image from one of Dr Vallee's books and his thoughts on it.
I believe it was taken shooting downward....and after analysis over time I think most people think it's some sort of camera reflection or something like that.
 
About time we had a good look at the Lake Cote 'saucer'.
It looks very much like a shiny, disk-shaped object, illuminated from the left and the right, with a large dark space reflected in the bottom segment of the object.
But the landscape is only illuminated from the bottom left.
Also vaguely visible in the object is a thin, dark line, that may be a reflection of something narrow and dark nearby. Looks like a windowframe to me, but it might be some other darkroom artifact.
Cote_ufo.jpg

My interpretation is that the object was not present when the photo was taken (none of the crew saw it), but it was introduced during the process of development and enlargement. It looks like a flaw in a sheet of glass laid over the photo, perhaps to keep it flat - or maybe it's a bubble of some sort -and it reflects the local environment - maybe a window in the darkroom (unlikely) or some other sources of light that are not related to the light in the image.

In short- it can't be a flying saucer floating over a lake, because it is not illuminated by the lighting in that location.
 
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eburacum said:
About time we had a good look at the Lake Cote 'saucer'.
It looks very much like a shiny, disk-shaped object, illuminated from the left and the right, with a large dark space reflected in the bottom segment of the object.
But the landscape is only illuminated from the bottom left.
Also vaguely visible in the object is a thin, dark line, that may be a reflection of something narrow and dark nearby. Looks like a windowframe to me, but it might be some other darkroom artifact.
View attachment 34542
My interpretation is that the object was not present when the photo was taken (none of the crew saw it), but it was introduced during the process of development and enlargement. It looks like a flaw in a sheet of glass laid over the photo, perhaps to keep it flat - or maybe it's a bubble of some sort -and it reflects the local environment - maybe a window in the darkroom (unlikely) or some other sources of light that are not related to the light in the image.

In short- it can't be a flying saucer floating over a lake, because it is not illuminated by the lighting in that location.
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I am open to that too! I also have problems with the lighting on the "saucer". I think that is a totally reasonable conclusion. I was brning it up in Charliebrowns case because it was one of the few images I thought might look like a clam.
 
Had to enlarge it to see it well:
ufo.jpg
 
This picture has been analysed recently at Metabunk. The direction of the sunlight falling onto the landscape in the picture is different to the direction of light falling on the object, so it cannot have been present when the photo was taken. Either the object has been added later as a hoax, or it happened by accident during processing.

I think it may well be an accident - the object looks like a conchoidal impact fracture in a sheet of glass, which may have happened during processing at some point. But it seems odd that the mark was not noticed at the time.

Perhaps it was, and the photographer thought it was irrelevant, since it is over the sea, and there was no loss of data.
 
eburacum said:
This picture has been analysed recently at Metabunk. The direction of the sunlight falling onto the landscape in the picture is different to the direction of light falling on the object, so it cannot have been present when the photo was taken. ...
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Agreed ... The difference in the directions of the light sources ("UFO" versus terrain below) means the alleged UFO can't be a 3D object in the scene (between the airplane and the ground). That much is obvious at face value.


eburacum said:
I think it may well be an accident - the object looks like a conchoidal impact fracture in a sheet of glass, which may have happened during processing at some point. But it seems odd that the mark was not noticed at the time.
Perhaps it was, and the photographer thought it was irrelevant, since it is over the sea, and there was no loss of data.
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The camera was mounted underneath the mapping aircraft's fuselage. Neither the photographer nor anyone else on board was viewing what the camera "saw" in real time during the flight. The photographer didn't see the single odd frame with the ovoid anomaly until *after* the entire film pack was developed and he received the negatives and / or prints.

I agree that the ovoid anomaly looks like an ovoid fracture / crater of the sort one gets in an automotive windshield. However, it's difficult to explain how such a flaw in either the camera optics or the processing apparatus affected only one frame in the film pack. This makes me think the anomaly might be a transient liquid blob (i.e., a water droplet) on the lens during the flight or a bubble in the film emulsion during processing.

If I recall correctly, the original film stock has never been made available for inspection. Negatives / prints made from the film stock are the only evidence anyone's ever obtained.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I agree that the ovoid anomaly looks like an ovoid fracture / crater of the sort one gets in an automotive windshield.
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It does look like a spalled glass fracture, now you mention it.
 
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