In the meantime let's go back to this frame.
I'm open to the idea that I completely misinterpreted this photo. After all, I'm experienced in film photography, but lacking an education in digital photography. And I don't even own a smartphone and have never used one.
But in that case I'd like a detailed explanation of some things. I'm not arguing that the mystery object is the Moon.
Is that bright blob at the top right of the frame in the right position to be the Moon? Let's look at some evidence.
- The video starts with this view (above) and then the camera zooms in. (I'm assuming a digital zoom?) This is a wide angle view. The right edge of the window frame (from the viewpoint of the guy with the phone) is in focus, but much more important is the apparent size of the window frame and and the port engine.
Compare to this frame from a video that was clearly shot with a short focal length lens.
Original video. Clearly a wide angle lens in use.
The dog is looking out a window on the right side of the plane and it's the starboard engine in view, but no matter. Just compare the apparent size of the engine in both frames. And the proportions of the window frame. Not exactly the same but, pretty similar.
Besides all that, the landscape looks like a landscape in a wide angle view.
So how many degrees would there be in this vertical frame from top to bottom? About 70? The Moon was 18 degrees above the horizon at that time and place. So could the this blob be 18 degrees above he horizon. Thinking it through now... Yes it could be. Score one for StarFlint. And one against me.
Still... establishing that this is a wide angle shot should be helpful if a cluster of ground lights is ever really found that's a good candidate for the Mystery Object. The absolute size and brightness should match the apparent size and apparent brightness in the witness images; taking into account the distance from the witness and atmospheric extinction.
Here's some things I don't understand:
-The color temperature. As has been pointed out the color temperature of Moonlight is ~4100–4500 K. Not taking into account that Raleigh scattering shifts it slightly toward blue (I don't know how much) and atmospheric extinction shifts the color temperature down according to conditions at the time. A Moon 18 degrees above the horizon, above a city, on a misty night, in China where it's still common for households to have coal burning stoves and furnaces, should be fairly yellow. Significantly more red than 4100 K. Daylight balanced film would make it look pretty yellow/orange.
I'm aware that digital cameras might adjust color temperatures depending on the overall lighting of the scene. Something about automatic white balance. (I don't know any details about how it really works.) And I've seen digital photos of the Moon which look much too blue.
But if the balance was shifted that much to the blue... wouldn't the rest of the scene also have a bluish cast? The Moon here looks like the Sun at the meridian, which has a color temp of ~5800 K.
I see no indication that the color temperature of the city lights has been shifted that dramatically toward blue. Can the automatic white balance single out a single object and leave the rest of the landscape alone?
Or was the Moon somehow not tinged yellow by atmospheric extinction, but shining brightly in a completely clear sky? Or am I misjudging the color temperature of the city lights?
And if the automatic exposure was tricked into vastly overexposing the Moon... why aren't the city lights also overexposed? I promise that daylight balanced film would not show such an overexposed Moon but well exposed city lights. The Moon isn't that much more bright than city lights. A bright full Moon (not dimmed by atmospheric extinction) would be several stops overexposed if the city lights were well exposed like this. But the Moon seems to be something like... I don't know how many stops overexposed in this image. A lot. Too many.
I'm open to believing that this is weird quirk is possible in digital photography, but can someone explain why?
-My idea was that the blob in the upper right corner of the frame might be the illuminating LED on the phone itself. These LEDs, I assume, have the color temperature of Sunlight to make illuminated scenes look natural. But it might be something else. An overhead reading lamp is a prime suspect. In that case the second dimmer/smaller blob might not be an internal reflection. It might be a second reading lamp which is angled differently and not shining so directly at the window.
-Showing me other videos on Tik Tok which have blue white blobs in the airplane window doesn't convince me. Couldn't that mean that other naive photographers were making the same mistake? Never underestimate the thoughtless incompetence of naive photographers. Back in the days of film people routinely tried to take snapshots out of a window at night... with a flashbulb. What you got was a blob of light. (There was a UFO case in which the witness did just that, but I can't remember which one it was.) In the days of film it was common to see flashbulbs/units going off all over a stadium during night games.
Or those cited photos might really be of the Moon with the color balance shifted toward blue. And the Moon also vastly overexposed because the automatic exposure has been tricked by the overall lighting conditions. Don't know.
-Just eyeballing the mystery light, it seemed to me, with the ambiguity of just where the horizon actually is, that it might be 18 degrees above the horizon.
It probably isn't. But it seemed reasonable. That was a notion without applying any measurement. And done in a hurry. Is that blob the Moon 18 degrees above the horizon? Maybe. Or maybe the Moon is hidden by clouds, or slightly out of frame. Not too important just now.
More importantly just now, it doesn't follow that if the blob is actually the Moon, the mystery object can't be a reflection in the window.
We know that the phone was not flush against the window. The camera, as has been pointed out, is looking out at a slant. I could believe that the left edge of the phone was put up against the surface of the window for stability... with the guy's right hand holding the phone. Or it might be that the guy's left hand was up against a solid surface with the phone in that hand. The solid surface may be the surface of the window, or the window frame, or the wall of the cabin near the window frame.
But looking at this again, I'm skeptical that even this is true. How do you get the window frame in the shot like this with the camera up against the window at whatever angle?
-Given the quirkiness of the the optics of airline windows which are made of acrylic plastic and prone to cause diffraction effects
-Given that the phone camera lens was not flush against the surface of the window, but there was at least some gap between the lens and the window pane surface
-And given that even if the lens was flush against the surface of the window, there was another external pane with a gap that might be inches wide, and a reflection in that outside pane could be visible
I don't think we can rule out the idea that this mystery object may be a reflection of a light inside the airliner.
Possibly a reflection of a diffraction streak caused by the big light in the upper corner, whether the Moon or the illuminating LED or an overhead reading lamp. I think that unlikely.
More likely a reflection of an entirely different light source.
The witness's protestation that he would recognize a reflection is not convincing to me. Was that a spontaneous comment, or in reaction to someone's suggestion that it was a reflection?
If the former: When a UFO witness spontaneously says, "It's not 'X'," there's a 95% chance it's X.
If the latter, it could be an ad hoc excuse.
It seems to me that a reflection is entirely possible, and is an entirely adequate explanation. Just another UFO that turns out to be a reflection in a window.
