Government UFO - UAP report

L

Larry H-L

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The much-anticipated government report on UAPs / UFOs has finally been released and it was disappointing. No Klingons, Vulcans or Borg to be found. Dang.

So, I thought I might add a personal report. I have been really reluctant to show these photos, only a few of my colleagues have seen them.

This series of photos was taken last September during the height of the pandemic. My partner and I headed to a rural area in western Maine and we stayed at a lakeside cottage owned by family. Each night I would walk out onto the dock to take some sunset or water photos. On this night, September 06, I was shooting with a Sigma SD Quattro (aps-c) with a Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 and a Sigma 70-300mm f4-5.6.

I had my eye mashed up to the camera most of the time but at some point I became aware that something had flown over my head. I didn’t pay much attention at first because there are so many birds in the area, eagles, osprey, loons, ducks, etc. Then I noticed it again and looked up and saw a dark object moving along the sky. I was pretty sure it was a drone, but there were not any navigation lights (it was getting dark) that I could see and no sound that I could hear.

I changed to the longer 70-300mm zoom to get a magnified look. The "drone" was a perfect dark smooth square cube. No propeller arms, no props visible. It seemed to be almost satin black, very dark, but the sunset sky reflected slightly off the bottom which looked flat and smooth. Judging by the size of larger birds at a similar distance, I estimate that the cube was between 3 and 6 feet on a side.

I watched both through the camera and by eye for several minutes as it moved in all directions, east, west, north, south at different times, and it moved vertically climbing and descending. No sound that I could hear. I considered early on that it could be a square balloon of some sort but it changed directions and moved swiftly against the breeze. Eventually it disappeared against, or went over the tree line on a hillside about 2 or 3 miles from me. The flag pole that you see is about 100 yards away.

Back in the cottage I reviewed the shots. The Sigma is not a low-light camera but I had several shots that showed the drone quite well, though some shots showed slight movement as the shutter speeds were quite slow as the sun had set.

Then, in reviewing my earlier shots with the wide zoom, I discovered that there were actually two identical drones. Concentrating on the one drone through the camera, I never saw picked up the second one by eye.

I am fairly certain that these ARE drones, but in scouring online images, I cannot find a large, black, smooth, cube-shaped drone without arms or propellers. There is a drone that folds into a cube for storage, but it opens for flight.

Any drone pilots out there who can solve the mystery?

Below is a Dropbox link to a folder of full-sized photos if you want to take a closer look. The first few wide angle photos are the ones that sort of weird me out, two black cubes hanging in the air with sunlight bouncing off the bottom of them. I've circled the objects in Photoshop. Zoom in on those.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/98tusnzcw56kxrz/AADK0bkUD57T16OQEgr8fO0Ta?dl=0

Mini-Borg, I guess.

Enjoy.

Larry

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The part that puzzles me is why would a drone be built that is as tall as it is wide? That doesn't seem to make much aerodynamic sense. Most drones seem to be vertically flat.
 
I have no idea whether this has any bearing on the story or not, but the time of day makes me wonder.

Many years ago a friend and I were sat on a clifftop watching the sky change as the sun set, when I realised there was a small black object heading towards us from the West. Apparently spherical and totally silent, moving in a straight line at a constant height. We could both see it, and we watched it for several minutes wondering what the flip it was as it continued to head towards us.

Eventually, as it got apparently very close - just out to sea, and still utterly silent - I could see it tumbling, and realised what it was. It was a helium balloon - there was a carnival going on in the town to the WEst, and someone must have lost a balloon. It had climbed so far, but then as the evening air cooled it had ran up against a temperature inversion and could rise no further.

I wonder if your UFO could be something similar - maybe with the light apparently underneath, a sky lantern?
 
Larry H-L said:
... I am fairly certain that these ARE drones, but in scouring online images, I cannot find a large, black, smooth, cube-shaped drone without arms or propellers. There is a drone that folds into a cube for storage, but it opens for flight. ...
Click to expand...
Could be drones, balloons, or sensor dust. Do any of these possibilities count as UFOs?

I skimmed the referenced article yesterday and what amazes me is that with all of our sensor and optical technology improvements (over the last 10-years especially) no one ever seems to be able to get a clear picture of their UFO(s).
 
Definitely not dust on the sensor, I watched it without the camera, naked eyes. Balloon, I considered that at the time but then watched it stop and change direction several times.

I still think they are mechanical drones, but I can’t figure out exactly what brand they are.
 
Larry H-L said:
... is there a way to mathematically estimate their size?
Click to expand...
Without one of the two variables (size or distance), no. Without knowing their size, you can't be sure how far away they were.

Larry H-L said:
... Balloon, I considered that at the time but then watched it stop and change direction several times. ...
Click to expand...
You think wind doesn't change direction?
 
The pictures in post 5 look very much like sky lanterns. When the predominant direction of movement is towards you or away from you, that may not be noticeable but minor changes in direction will look like it's wildly moving in different directions.
 
Muggins said:
I have no idea whether this has any bearing on the story or not, but the time of day makes me wonder.

Many years ago a friend and I were sat on a clifftop watching the sky change as the sun set, when I realised there was a small black object heading towards us from the West. Apparently spherical and totally silent, moving in a straight line at a constant height. We could both see it, and we watched it for several minutes wondering what the flip it was as it continued to head towards us.

...
Click to expand...

An IFO (identified Flying Object)
 
Larry H-L said:
The part that puzzles me is why would a drone be built that is as tall as it is wide? That doesn't seem to make much aerodynamic sense. Most drones seem to be vertically flat.
Click to expand...

But you are ignoring how they actually move. To move in any direction (or to hold their ground position in a wind) they pitch forward/backwards or to the side(s).

Take a drone like a DJI Phantom

https://www.dji.com/phantom-4-pro-v2

and have it fly toward/away from you at a distance and it is going to look fairly square.

However, based on your first image I think the sky lanterns is the correct identification. Drones have two color flashing lights and the odds of two drones both flashing the same color at the same instant is pretty low. But two recently launched sky lanterns would both be burning together at the same time. In the later pictures you can't really see a light near the bottom so they probably burned up their fuel.

Shawn
 
Larry H-L said:
The part that puzzles me is why would a drone be built that is as tall as it is wide? That doesn't seem to make much aerodynamic sense. Most drones seem to be vertically flat.
Click to expand...

Unless their main purpose was to lift something off the ground and move it a short distance. Many drones are eVTOL (electric Vertical Take Off and Landing). More flat ones convert to almost a plane to travel distance. Others are STOL (short take-off and Landing), etc. Depending on their purpose they take on a number of different configurations.
 
Some years ago a friend saw a black cylindrical object floating in the daytime sky. It appeared to hover, then would suddenly move away at an astonishing speed; then, a few minutes later would appear to suddenly move back closer again, at incredible speed.

He continued to watch the object, and followed it by car. Finally he discovered what it was, and also discovered the secret to its incredible motion.

It was one of those large black cylindrical solar hot air balloons, the kind you buy from the back of a magazine, fill up with air and the sun expands the air to make it light enough to float. Maybe fifteen feet long and four feet in diameter. It was slowly rotating as it flew. As it rotated so its major axis was pointing away from the viewer, it appeared to get much smaller in the sky; which, without another frame of reference, looks just like it had suddenly sped off in the distance at a great velocity. Then, when it rotated so its major axis was visible, it looked like it suddenly sped back much closer to the observer.

Without another visual frame of reference, this slowly rotating inflatable object looked just as if it were performing extremely fast maneuvers.

I wonder if this could serve as explanation for other mysterious sightings.

~Joe
 
Here's one I took as a kid. Vivitar 110 camera on Kodak Gold film. Northeast Albuquerque, but not close enough to Manzano Base for it to count as a "real" UFO.

UFO002 by Joe Van Cleave, on Flickr
 
the DNI in the previous Administration was on TV tonight. He said there is a fair amount that cannot be declassified ( I assumed that to be experimental flying vehicles in our arsenal). The report states that there are some sightings with more than one type of sensor tracking that they cannot explain.

this report very helpful...NOT.

I hope they have better resolution pictures of UAP's somewhere because the ones they show could have come from Gallileo.

I was involved with a space based earth mapping company 15 years ago. At that time it was fairly easy to get 1 meter resolution from low earth satellites. Today's devices are very much sub meter, so tell me that we don't have hi res...is BS.
 
I'm liking the sky lantern theory. If it lost fuel and descended rapidly, it would look like it was moving away from me. Seems to me to make more sense than a cubist drone.
 
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