They indeed all look like (larger angle) optics on a thermal cam. No VIS telescopes, it seems. Ok, well you gotto make sure the object observed remains unresolved, right?
They should have included a Smell-O-Scope, perhaps more luck.
The whole thing is a bit ludicrous really.
Lets look a the issues a bit.
Entertainingly the idea of setting up an observatory to try and detect and photograph UFOs, this effort and the proposals of Avi Loeb "Galileo Project" are all very similar to the problem that the US Navy targeting pods that are the source of all this kerfuffle are designed to solve.
1. Acquisition. you need to know that "something" is there.
The US Navy mostly solves this issue by having RADAR, powerful target sweeping radars mounted on multiple platforms (ships/aircraft/ground). These RADARs are not generally available for civilians. I'd actually like to know what if any RADARs civilians are allowed without license?
Not sure how O.S.I.R.I.S. do it but it looks to be a mk1 eyeball possibly with binoculars I assume then they pointed the cameras at it. Or maybe they just ran the cameras pointed at random places and saw what came up.
Never really been sure how Avi Loeb proposes to do it automatically? Some sort of dome camera with 180 degree?
2. Identification, what is it?
For the Navy once they have a RADAR track they can point a camera system on a gimbal at it, this camera system is combination of both MWIR and visual light. MWIR is useful as it generally cuts out haze and shows up relative heat sources (engines, bodies etc) this is adjustable in terms of sensitivity to manage multiple ranges.
O.S.I.R.I.S. seem to have and display footage from thermal cameras, thermal cameras have a different design goal to MWIR, they are generally designed to show absolute temperatures. But there is probably some crossover depending on the the devices used. But likely they don't have the range for far away targets. Happy to be proven wrong on this one, I know the least about these cameras but most of the uses I see for them look to be close range stuff. I really hope they release the models of the cameras used.
So realistically the targets they saw with the thermal cameras would be easy targets for visual id as well (unless they were invisible, which you'd really want visual confirmation of..), so really you'd want to have the same object shown in footage of any objects in optical, MWIR and thermal simultaneously and also from 2 different locations for triangulation.
If I was doing this, thermal would be the lowest on my priority, I'd primarily want optical and MWIR addressing a similar FOV on the same object on a level platform with a known location that also records the time and its orientation to a high degree of accuracy. Ideally auto tracking. Then 2 or more of the platforms identically specced per observation location and then this setup placed at different locations, preferably at 90 degrees to each other.
O.S.I.R.I.S. also seem to have placed all their chickens in the "out to sea" given all their cameras are pointing in one direction. Still it must be nice to get paid to sit on top of a sea view property in Long Beach.
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