My Personal Skywatch Statistics + Puzzle

[uair01]

In 2005 I bought my first digital camera. Being a UFO fan I have been photographing the sky obsessively during this year. Now I'm evaluating my results and will bore you with the details. (The predictable reaction is: "Get a life", but I was sorting my pictures anyway ...)

Of course I saw NO ufo at all. But the amount of "sky object" pictures in different categories gives an interesting (?) statistic on what can be seen in the sky by an amateur - spare time - observer.

1) I almost always have the camera in my pocket so I can photograph almost anything that goes by, provided I get approx. 5-10 seconds response time.

2) I'm counting only good, sharp pictures. Often the quickly snapped pictures are blurry of out of focus. This tallies with many classic UFO pictures.

3) The statistics are (by number of pictures, not number of separate objects):

Airplanes by day: 214
Airplanes by night: 31
Helicopters: 30
Balloons: 13 (hot air + toy)
Disco spotlight on clouds: 20
Other: 8

This statistic suggests that:
- more ufo pictures should be taken by day than by night (does that tally with the classic literature?)
- many could be explained by observations of common objects.

Any other conclusion we might draw? (other that I'm wasting my time )

I will try to make a selection of the most ufo-like airplane and bird pictures I have.

Of course as always the "other" category is most interesting and it contains "ufo like" objects, that are however easily explainable. I think case 1 might be hard, numbers 2 and 3 are trivial - but they look good, don't you think?

Case 1:

Case 2:

Case 3:

 

[cassandra78]

I'm guessing case 2 are orbs, were these taken behind a window or something? What are your explanations for all 3 cases?

 

[GNC]

1 looks like a winch hanging from the crane, 2 reflecting sunlight, and 3 the reflection of a lamp (presumably it was snapped behind a window).

 

[uair01]

Cases 2 and 3 have been solved succesfully. I will let you struggle with case 1 a little more. One hint - the solution is realy silly!

And here as promised, a selection of my most ufo-like airplane pictures. 8 out of 200 is really a bad score. An then most of them are (alas!) still recognizeable with a bit of hard staring.

So this experiment seems to prove that it's really difficult to make a UFO-like picture of a real airplane? An so maybe that UFO-looking pictures are often NOT airplanes? :shock:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

 

[cassandra78]

Case 1 is one of those things you see street entertainers playing with? They use a bit of string to fling it in the air :?

 

[eburacum]

A diabolo.

 

[uair01]

Yes, that's it - congratulations! - It was at the Rotterdam street-art festival in August 2005.

Note - Concerning the UFO-like airplane pictures above, do you think that it's possible to make a picture of an airplane that is even more UFO-like? Have you seen or made one?

If I have time I'll try to select some UFO-like bird pictures. I have some that I've made wthout really trying. I have birds in a lots of my sky pictures, and often I didn't even see the bird when I took the picture (but that is quite likely with one of those LCD viewfinders, they have a low resoulution).

 

[cassandra78]

Yaaaaay! Whats my prize?

Sorry to say those last 4 pics really do look like planes, no matter how much I squint. Often when I drive into London I see a few planes circling simultaneously and if its dark the headlights (do they call them that?) make interesting light formations as there could be 3 sets of them all facing me at the same time and they look really close together, then they turn all at the same time too..... i'm SURE it was planes..... :shock:

 

[uair01]

In my personal quest to prove the hypothesis:

It is surprisingly hard to make UFO-like pictures of common objects in the sky.

I went through my stack of digital sky pictures of 2005 and looked for more UFO-like objects. Some I'll explain and a few I'll leave as new puzzles (it would be a pity to give them away like that).

Birds in flight are real shape shifters and their flexible outlines look much weirder than expected. And I was surprised how often you catch one without trying:

Isn't that a nice coincidence?

This was an airplane I missed in the first batch:

B1) These I won't tell yet (easy):

B2) Even easier, but funny. And also a nice coincidence - I wasn't trying to catch one:

B3) This one I found difficult:

B4) Easy:

Well, those are my BEST UFO-like objects in the sky from the whole year. I think that I have proved the hypothesis :?

Sorry to say those last 4 pics really do look like planes, no matter how much I squint.

Yes, I agree. Isn't it a pity? I had hoped to produce better pictures. Anyone else doing better?

 

[ElishevaBarsabe]

What a fun read! Thank you for all the trouble you've gone to.