Tokyo "UFO" lights from 2008

T

ThomasH

Senior Member.


I can't see that Mick has posted this yet.
Original file is here – it's interlaced, but I deinterlaced it in the embedded version: https://t.co/Dcn0QQXuen


More details here:

Source: https://x.com/ChrisSPITZER7/status/1842354542249165282



Horizontal FOV: 56.7° (Blender shows 56.1° when using a 6.4mm sensor and 6mm focal length).


I honestly have no idea what this is – if it's not some kind of lens reflection from a car or aircraft flying in that area towards the airport.
I can't see it as something flying over, and the way the two dots are tilted and stay the same distance apart is odd.


Any ideas?
 
StarStaX_M20080428_200942_TK1_S2_prob4000-M20080428_200942_TK1_S2_prob4138_lighten.png


All frames stacked
 
Looks like a lens reflection, but without any more details about where the camera was not sure what we can do with it with it being from thaty long ago.
 
jarlrmai said:
Looks like a lens reflection, but without any more details about where the camera was not sure what we can do with it with it being from thaty long ago.
Click to expand...
Lens: CBC HG0608FCS-HSP 6mm f/0.8
Camera: Watec 902 H2 Ultimate 1/2″ Mono CCD Camera

But I agree with the lens flare, since I can't make it a psychical object.
 
I'm comfortable with it being a reflection, but I don't think the argument against it being a drone is valid. Looking at the stacked frames ThomasH provides, to my mind there is a pretty good indication of some sort of tilt or rotation approaching point 1, when the spacing between the dots changes at the same time the direction changes slightly. I also think there is a "wobble" at 2, though it is harder to see in the stacked frames as there are a lot of points on top of each other there.
Screenshot 2025-07-22 153552.jpg


If those attitude changes are real, they'd seem consistent with a drone. I admit that they are subtle, and if nobody sees them but me I suppose they can be disregarded... ^_^
 


Is it me or does the movement look much more natural in reverse?
More like a drone.
 
2008 is stil relatively early in the quadcopter drone era, possible, just not as prevalent as today.
 
numbers.png


And what the heck are these two numbers? They only count when the lights are there?
Some kind of motion detection ?
 
I emailed the website owner as it seems to be one of their videos, although I cannot find it on the site archives, even past 2008
 
Mick West said:
Here's a somewhat similar-looking example. Two points of light. You can only see the thread briefly at about 18 seconds in.

View attachment 82583
Click to expand...


Let me be Devil's Advocate for a moment...

The lights in your vid move up and down and towards and away from each other in a jerky fashion, as might be expected from a wisp of spider silk caught in small air currents moving a bit turbulently close to a structure. This seems like reasonable behavior for light and fine spider silk, but while their being two lights matches the video in question, the behavior of the lights doesn't really match.

If we had an example of spider silk creating a long, pretty smooth track like in the Tokyo vid, that would make the case stronger, I'd think. My efforts to search in the few available minutes I have just now did not find one... maybe somebody will have better luck?
 
JMartJr said:
Let me be Devil's Advocate for a moment...

The lights in your vid move up and down and towards and away from each other in a jerky fashion, as might be expected from a wisp of spider silk caught in small air currents moving a bit turbulently close to a structure. This seems like reasonable behavior for light and fine spider silk, but while their being two lights matches the video in question, the behavior of the lights doesn't really match.

If we had an example of spider silk creating a long, pretty smooth track like in the Tokyo vid, that would make the case stronger, I'd think. My efforts to search in the few available minutes I have just now did not find one... maybe somebody will have better luck?
Click to expand...
But the Tokyo clip is just under 3 seconds long. Maybe it returns later and jump up and down too, but that made the clip less "woo"
 
Throwing out something to consider. It reminds me of this case.



This is a vertical video looking out through the passenger side window of a car parked in a lot. The illusion is of bright lights in the sky. But these are specular reflections of the Sun off passing cars.

I'm not sure what the exact light path of these reflections is. I suspect it's from the side view mirror to the passenger side window, and these are interior reflections in the side window.

If that's the case, the cars throwing off the Sun reflections would be well behind the parked car. That's why there's no noticeable correlation between the cars seen directly out the window and the internal reflections.


Similarity between these cases: Taken from inside car. Reflections of passing car(s).

Difference:
The video I posted was taken in broad daylight. The reflected lights are specular reflections of the Sun off of passing cars.

If the OP video is a video from inside a car, the camera is down lower, the time of day is about sunset, the lights are taillights on a passing car.

It could be that the glass surface in this case is the windshield and the curved surface of the windshield produces the illusion of the lights turning a corner.

Or the first reflection may be off a side view mirror and the convex surface of the mirror produced the curved path.

Or it could be a car going around a slightly banked corner.
 
Last edited:
Curve.jpg


I tried making a thin glass cylinder in Blender. I rotated it 32° so it was pointing a bit in/out of the scene, that was all I did to make the two dots lignup, I didn't change the angle during the video, I only lowered the cylinder straight down.
The curve attached is the Z axis of the cylinder animation, so that strange turn the dots make, seems pretty smooth in the spider web theory.

I can't simulate the dots, I don't know how spider web reflects, but angles and everything seem plausible
 
Mick West said:
One possibility is highlights on spider silk.
Click to expand...
Thanks for reminding me of that. I remember that discussion about the shed on Skinwalker ranch. I don't think that's the solution for the OP's video though, as the distance between lights seems fixed rather than flexible. If it were not for the appearance of a fixed camera with a motion detector, I'd have said it's the reflection of an interior object shot through a window.
 
Two birds
One following the other

Why they are so bright I don't know, or why they appear out of nowhere. But that could simply be them starting outside of the cone of illumination of whatever light source makes them appear so bright.

No sense of scale, could be two bugs as well.

Too little information, kind of a waste of time I think.
 
MapperGuy said:
Two birds
One following the other

Why they are so bright I don't know, or why they appear out of nowhere. But that could simply be them starting outside of the cone of illumination of whatever light source makes them appear so bright.

No sense of scale, could be two bugs as well.

Too little information, kind of a waste of time I think.
Click to expand...
Ehh they start in the top of the video, they're not appearing out of nowhere.
My problem is the perspective is wrong if it was an object. Therefor I like it to be a reflection or the light in spider web Mick suggested.
 
ThomasH said:
Ehh they start in the top of the video, they're not appearing out of nowhere.
My problem is the perspective is wrong if it was an object. Therefor I like it to be a reflection or the light in spider web Mick suggested.
Click to expand...
Very faint at the start of the video, did not even notice them. But the same applies, their brightness changes considerably, likely as a change in light sources. Which might suggest that they are relatively close to the ground/camera, not in low earth orbit.

Two birds playing follow the leader still works.
 
MapperGuy said:
Very faint at the start of the video, did not even notice them. But the same applies, their brightness changes considerably, likely as a change in light sources. Which might suggest that they are relatively close to the ground/camera, not in low earth orbit.

Two birds playing follow the leader still works.
Click to expand...
But it's there, you can also see it in the stacked image I made.
The left turn they make, doesn't seem natural, and there is a precise similar distance and angle between them all the time - sorry, but two birds is the least plausible theory IMO
 
ThomasH said:
sorry, but two birds is the least plausible theory IMO
Click to expand...
Well... perhaps not THE least plausible. We know birds exist and that they fly about, which makes them more plausible, I think, than Space Alien scout ships or beings from Dimension X, neither of which is known to exist nor, if they exist, are known to be able to fly about the Earth.

Which I only mention lest a casual reader of the thread is tempted by the fallacy of "If it cannot be positively identified as some specific prosaic explanation, it MUST then be something paranormal." This is not true.

We may never know for sure what this one was; while there are several plausible hypotheses to consider, it may be impossible to PROVE what it was. But I'd bet heavily that proponents of the paranormal will NEVER prove that these two dots were, in fact, alien spacecraft, or whatever their currently popular belief is about what "real UFOs" are.
 
I've looked through a lot of the videos from the archived versions (after the date in the video) of the website of the person who recorded it and I can't find this specific video on there.

So it's unclear where it was obtained from, possibly the forum they used to run, although I also looked through the, some of the forum data is not archived.
 
JMartJr said:
Well... perhaps not THE least plausible. We know birds exist and that they fly about, which makes them more plausible, I think, than Space Alien scout ships or beings from Dimension X, neither of which is known to exist nor, if they exist, are known to be able to fly about the Earth.
Click to expand...
We also know that double-paned windows exist and can give double reflections in perfect sync with each other. And as long as the window and the camera stay still, the second reflection will always remain in the same position relative to the first.
 
Ann K said:
We also know that double-paned windows exist and can give double reflections in perfect sync with each other. And as long as the window and the camera stay still, the second reflection will always remain in the same position relative to the first.
Click to expand...
I just think the photographer seems quite serious, the other videos of evens, meteors etc. and the quality is quite good, so I don't believe he would have made that rookie mistake.
 
I've located the orginal post about it on the forum

https://sonotaco.jp/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1723&highlight=20080428

I am working with the Google Japanese to English translation

External Quote:

I received some inquiries about this capture.
Therefore I note the information of this capture in the image, and appeal my understanding.

Though the movement is rather tricky, now we are thinking the most probable explanation of this event is a pair of birds.
Because...
1. Many birds or bats that are lighted by ground lights have been captured by this camera.
2. Some movement like faction can be seen on the last part of the video.
3. The imaged curvature is very large against its angular velocity.
4. There are no simultaneous observation reported though this area is observed by several stations.
5. 3. 4. means that this event happens within the distance of a few hundred meters.
There is a lot of speculation about what it might be Birds, planes etc are suggested and it seems there was interest at the time in the video.

There is reference to a higher quality video that was shared at some point, but has since been removed, this may be the source video posted on X but I have also attached the original video from the fourm.

More data is presented in a overlay image

1753434317720.png


Tokyo1_S2
139d38m E, 35d39m N in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo
https://maps.app.goo.gl/dVSPjRMA2v9S9kNE7
 

Attachments

jarlrmai said:
I've located the orginal post about it on the forum

https://sonotaco.jp/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1723&highlight=20080428

I am working with the Google Japanese to English translation

External Quote:

I received some inquiries about this capture.
Therefore I note the information of this capture in the image, and appeal my understanding.

Though the movement is rather tricky, now we are thinking the most probable explanation of this event is a pair of birds.
Because...
1. Many birds or bats that are lighted by ground lights have been captured by this camera.
2. Some movement like faction can be seen on the last part of the video.
3. The imaged curvature is very large against its angular velocity.
4. There are no simultaneous observation reported though this area is observed by several stations.
5. 3. 4. means that this event happens within the distance of a few hundred meters.
There is a lot of speculation about what it might be Birds, planes etc are suggested and it seems there was interest at the time in the video.

There is reference to a higher quality video that was shared at some point, but has since been removed, this may be the source video posted on X but I have also attached the original video from the fourm.

More data is presented in a overlay image

View attachment 82619

Tokyo1_S2
139d38m E, 35d39m N in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo
https://maps.app.goo.gl/dVSPjRMA2v9S9kNE7
Click to expand...
No way this is birds!!
Yes the video posted on X is 95 Mb

Funny they did the same stacking I did :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Trending content

Back
Top