Mick West

Gimbal UFO - A New Analysis

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

The "Gimbal" UFO is the poster child of modern UFO videos. Leaked in 2017, and officially released in 2019, it's considered by many to show a genuine anomalous craft, exhibiting flight characteristics beyond current human technology.

But is it? There are four observables in the video, four things you can check yourself, that demonstrate that the most likely thing we are looking at is actually a camera artifact. It's probably an infrared glare, hiding the hot object behind it, and rotating only because the camera rotates when tracking the target from left to right.

This does not mean it's not a "UAP", or that it's not unidentified, or that it's not an amazing craft - it just means it's not actually exhibiting any incredible behavior, and so this opens the door to more mundane possibilities, like a distant small jet, just flying away, the...
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The AVRORA Callsign Mystery

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2021-11-10_07-51-55.jpg

There's an apparent aricraft with the callsign "AVRORA" that shows up on FlightRadar24. It's the subject of several threads on Reddit, but nobody seems to have figured out what it is.

The track initially looks like a standard trans-pacific route, but it's not. There's only two segments, one in the Arizona desert, and one off the coast of the Russian Kamchatka peninsula. There's no data for the path in-between (which is just an interpolated great circle).

The Kamchatka location just shows up as occasional sporadic results, over several days, with very low air speed. 2021-11-10_07-58-54.jpg

The Arizona segment is very different, a steep slope and several tight turns of a 0.5 mile diameter circle at about 26 knots
2021-11-10_08-01-13.jpg
(These tracks are extracted from the raw JSON files using a custom Python script)

What could this be? I think there's a few options, in no great order
  1. ADS-B Spoofing - i.e. not...
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Explained: Tic-Tac Shaped UFO Near Lake Michigan [Plane]

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPGmUF6R3CY

This was a relatively straightforward case. The object looked like a Tic-Tac shaped blob. Initially I thought it was fake, but then it quickly became apparent it was a real object (or at least a really good 3D fake).

The low resolution, sharpening, and digital zoom make bright white shapes turn into blobs. Here on the right there the buildings and the racetrack, with the object overlaid at the same resolution.
Four White Building comparison copy.jpg
Sharpening makes it worse at this scale, as it adds dark pixels which make it look bigger. See the gaps between the buildings.

Tracking down the plane was a simple matter as they gave the flight number, date, location, and view direction...
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UFO Seen From FedEx Plane over Mexico March 19, 2020. Venus? (NARCAP TR 20)

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu0EemWzZpM

Article:
1. The UAP/Light came from above and stopped/hovered near FL37, about the same altitude as the aircraft, shone a light on the 767 and briefly approached the aircraft. Then it instantly matched the speed, and heading of the aircraft and maintained a consistent separation.

a. The light descended vertically, stopped abruptly, and shone a light on the 767 causing the crew to believe that there was another airliner on a collision heading with its landing lights on.

b. It changed direction from vertical descent to a sudden stop/hover, to approaching the aircraft briefly, to taking the same heading and speed of the aircraft at about the same altitude and an estimated distance of 1-2k ft.

c. It matched the altitude, speed, and heading of the aircraft, 575mph and at 37,000ft for over...
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St Ives Bay UFO On Hayle Beach [Probably a Drone]

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHZn29dqy-I

In the "small, or far away" category this video is quite popular. It shows a light close to the horizon. The light hovers, pulsating, then suddenly moves to the left. It hovers for a while more and then ascends vertically. When it moves it leaves a trail of light.

Pretty amazing, if it were actually way out over the ocean. However, a simpler explanation occurred to me when I noticed the people walking on the beach path. If we think the object as being directly above them instead of above the horizon, then it suddenly snaps into something simpler. A drone.



The light trail, first of all, is just a common artifact of webcams like this. In low light, they build up the image using image persistence. This creates trails around anything that's...
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UFOs at Nuclear Weapons Sites (Salas, Malmstrom, Eagle Flight) - Skeptical Resources

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2021-10-20_09-16-32.jpg
[Thread Updated, October 20, 2021]

Robert Salas' claims about UFO deactivating Nuclear weapons are once again bouncing around the media. A lot of the older analysis of these claims is getting lost to Internet decay, so I've gathered here the key resources that help understand the story from a skeptic's perspective.

James Carlson's highly detailed (357 Pages) "American, Credulous - Establishing the Truth Behind the Echo Flight Incident of March 16, 1967"
Article:
The Echo Flight Incident holds a sad place of pride in Robert Hastings’ history of UFO interest in the marching forth of nuclear arms around the world, UFOs and Nukes, but as we shall see, his general disregard for anything approaching a generally accepted standard of proof ensures that his magnum opus will be forever classified as an interesting but ultimately useless...
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DHS "Rubber Duck" Footage

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For discussion of the SCU analysis, see: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/dhs-rubber-duck-footage.12054/post-284302

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Q82LsMPjQ

2021-10-06_16-58-53.jpg

A 1080p50 video. Location and time on screen identifies it as taken from "IRONS12"
2021-10-06_17-08-23.jpg

Which is this plane:
2021-10-06_17-03-59.jpg
(Note the camera)

video description
My apologies for the bullshit but the footage was removed by YouTube so I am attempting to post again. I am finally proud to present to you guys the very FIRST legitimate footage of a genuine UAP craft tracked for over 40 minutes by the department of Homeland Security using FLIR optics system in black hot mode. The footage...
Content from External Source
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Debunked: Pfizer Developing a Twice-Per-Day COVID Pill, Taken Alongside Vaccines

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2021-09-03_12-48-38.jpg

The clickbait site "National File" posted this false headline (and sub-heading):
Article:
Pfizer Is Now Developing A Twice-Per-Day COVID Pill That Must Be Taken Alongside Vaccines
Pfizer is so confident the pill will be approved and likely mandated that it has started production before the end of clinical trials


This has been shared on social media, usually without any context, making it seem like it's a pill everyone will be mandated to take twice a day forever in addition to the vaccine.

In reality, this is an antiviral drug, a protease inhibitor, currently called PF-07321332, which is designed to treat patients who are ill with COVID-19. Pfizer promotes it as a potential "a novel oral therapy that could be prescribed at the...
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Are 99% of COVID-19 Deaths Among the Unvaccinated?

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2021-08-30_15-23-53.jpg

I found the above meme on Facebook, and reposted it on Twitter. I should relaly not have been surprised, but I got quite a bit of negative reaction from people saying I was spreading disinformation. But I think it's essentially true, even if the 99.2% figure is a little high although the 99.2% figure is out of date . But let's fact-check with sources. Firstly the first five "Who has been vaccinated" - which might seem uncontroversial, but people were still pushing back at some.

1. Donald Trump and every other living US president.
That's Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton and Carter.

Article:
Published March 1, 2021
Updated April 17, 2021
Former President Donald J. Trump and his wife, Melania, quietly...
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Explained: Birdwatcher's "Amazing UFO", Burwell Fen, UK. [C-130 Landing Lights]

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2021-08-18_08-53-44.jpg

The above still image from a video was the one chosen by some media outlets a few years ago (2014) to illustrate the story "VIDEO: Birdwatcher spots UFO in skies above Burwell- and has the footage to prove it!." And why not, it looks like a weird diamond shaped craft, almost a flying saucer.

This old story wasn't on my radar until I made a comment on Twitter, wondering why (with their binoculars and long-lens cameras) birdwatchers didn't see UFOs (implying the the question of why there are no god photos of UFOs). Of course people then Googled "birdwatcher UFO" and that's about the only story that pops up, so it was gleefully offered as a counter-example by at least...
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Shape-Changing Light From Plane with Nikon P900 - Polarizing filter + Venus?

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF3w0kI53aU

2021-07-20_17-07-45.jpg

Just looks like Venus at sunset? But when zoomed in, it takes on all kinds of shapes
2021-07-20_17-09-52.jpg2021-07-20_17-10-09.jpg2021-07-20_17-10-31.jpg2021-07-20_17-11-01.jpg2021-07-20_17-16-44.jpg

I've got a P900. To me these all look like some kind of optical distortions of a small light source (i.e. Venus). However I've not seen anything this extreme before, and I wonder what's actually going on. The shapes seem relatively stable, so that seems to rule out the normal atmospheric turbulence. Camera shake and zooming don't really seem to change the shape, and we don't see it actually change shape often, that seems to be off-screen.

It's possible someone is deliberately inducing the distortion with something on the...
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Corbell: "Unidentified glowing objects near US Navy ship" [Planes or drones?]

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Article:
So here’s the deal. I did find one, you know, piece interesting, it appears that there is a blinking what appears to be like a plane going overhead. I don’t know, if that was a plane, I’m making the assumption It was a plane. But you know, remember when you go back into history with UFOs, I mean, we’re talking as far back as they’ve ever been recorded, there have always been blinking UFOs, I’m not going to count that out. I’m gonna say I don’t know. But it appears to me that the VIPR team individual, they’re focusing on the UFOs, and then a plane happens to pass above, which was kind of interesting, because it’s different looking. It’s blinking, it’s going. So that was neat. He didn’t focus in on it, as far as I can tell. And I was told that if it was an object of extreme interest, the individual would have focused in on it. So as far as the...
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Debunked: Diving Triangle UFO Photos from Reddit [Fake]

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5p3gmpocsw771.png
One of a set of four photos (attached in zip file, original webp, converted to PNGs).
Source: Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/o9a39j/here_ya_go_guys_deleted_pictures_from_the/

What looks fake to me is the grain. It looks like the photoshop "Add Noise" filter, which adds noise at pixel resolution, rather than some actual film grain. So you get lots of random short lines.
2021-06-27_22-09-53.jpg

Here, I've recreated it on the left, with the "photo" on the right.

By comparison, here's a crop of photo I scanned in at 600dpi
2021-06-27_22-15-02.jpg

Film grain is there, but fuzzy, not pixel aligned noise.
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UAPs, Bigelow, and the "Invisible College"

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FuVClipbh4

Article:
Puthoff was the brains behind what the intelligence community referred to as the “remote viewing program,” and he worked with an informal group of colleagues on a range of paranormal issues, a team that Vallée termed the “invisible college.” Over the next half-century, Puthoff would help to keep interest in UFOs alive inside the government.

In 1995, Project Stargate ended in failure. Government interest in UFOs and the paranormal might have faded away just as surely if not for the interest of a wealthy hotel magnate, Robert Bigelow, who had spent a lifetime obsessed with the paranormal and became a patron of UFO conspiracy theorists. Bigelow went into business with Area 51 conspiracy nut Bob Lazar, and he funded the research of dubious alien abduction...
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FAA Guidelines for Reporting UFOs - From NIDS to BAASS, Bigelow, and NUFORC

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2021-06-18_15-22-51.jpg

In a recent interview with former Navy pilot Alex Dietrich, she encouraged people (specifically civilian pilots) who saw a UFO to report it to the FAA, and referenced a section of the FAA's FAR/AIM set of regulations.


Part of why I agreed to talk to you [...] is to reduce the stigma, so that when folks see something strange, they will come out and report it up the appropriate channels. [...] So FAA, Federal Aviation Administration has a page in their FAR/AIM manual [...] for you know, what to do if you see a UFO [...], and there's a phone number to call. And I would say, you know, if you see something, no prank calls, but if you see something real, call,
Content from External Source
The page she is referring to is currently:
Article:
Section 8. Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Reports
9-8-1 GENERAL
Persons wanting to report UFO/unexplained phenomena...
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USS Omaha "Transmedium" Sphere Descending To the Sea

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USS+OMAHA+USO+I.png

Article:
DATE / TIME / LOCATION : The USS Omaha related UAP events depicted in the three images (one briefing slide) that I released a couple weeks ago - occurred on July 15th 2019 in the warning area off the coast of San Diego. The UAP event series reached a crescendo, with one of the numerous unknown targets entering the water at 11pm (PST). No wreckage was found / none of the craft were recovered.

PHOTOGRAPH / VIDEO : I’m also providing one additional still image from video - not released in the...
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Explained: Why Magnets Stick To Vaccination Sites (Or Your Nose)

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQT8vfwomvs

Viral videos showing magnets sticking to the skin near a vaccination site are just a new twist on an old carnival trick. Magnets, coins, and other smooth objects will stick to skin if it's just very slightly oily. Remove the oil, and the object will not stick.
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1971 Lake Cote / Lago de Cote UFO Aerial Photo

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2021-05-10_13-31-56.jpg

It's a classic, now over 50 years old. I was recently reminded of this by the New Yorker article:
Article:
Leslie Kean is a self-possessed woman with a sensible demeanor and a nimbus of curly graying hair. She lives alone in a light-filled corner apartment near the northern extreme of Manhattan, where, on the wall behind her desk, there is a framed black-and-white image that looks like a sonogram of a Frisbee. The photograph was given to her, along with chain-of-custody documentation, by contacts in the Costa Rican government; in her estimation, it is the finest image of a U.F.O. ever made public.


Full Frame: https://www.metabunk.org/f/Lake Cote LARGE Tape Scan From Reddit.jpg
Source...
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Explained: Odd Looking Bidens/Carters Photo - Not Fake, Just Perspective

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E0gmejTWYAMo406.jpg

This official photo makes the Carters look very small, leading some more imaginative people to suggest it's a fake (without explaining WHY the government would fake such a thing,)

But it's just perspective, I replicated the effect myself.
2021-05-04_11-48-28.jpg

And made a video showing the placement of big me, mini me, and the camera.
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"Pyramid" UFOs in Night Vision Footage are Bokeh

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r2oaQWmqkk

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbxtTEWczRk

Article:
BRIEFING / EVENT SERIES #1

An event series described involves the USS Russell.

This UAP event series took place during July of 2019 - involving Strike Group 9 within the Warning areas off of San Diego.

The USS Russell observed and recorded multiple “pyramid” shaped craft (see below image and video).




I suspect these are camera artifacts of mundane objects - specifically stars and a plane (the "flasher"). In the video there are two "pyramid" shapes on the left. The flasher moves towards them in exactly the same way planes move across...
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