Anomalous triangular object filmed flying over my house.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter Godman
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Peter Godman said:
It doesn't matter if you cant see it.
Size, speed, sitrec, frame by frame movement tracking
is where the answer will likely be found.

btw a reliable source is giving me a big NO to satellites,
but I value a second opinion
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Definitely not saying satellites to me, the geometry is wrong:
- 3 satellites in different orbits wouldn't stay in such close and precise relative positions for so long, so must be a single satellite
- won't be generated light at LEO distances, so must be reflected
- there aren't 3 suns, so it must be 3 separate reflecting panels, and such a structure would be huge and known about.
- and one or two other more minor things, such as length of visibility.

As @deirdre says in #158, a useful number to support that gut feel would be the angle subtended by the shape, and therefore how big it would have to be a single structure at typical LEO altitudes. That can probably be calculated from the optics specs or from Z.W. Wolf's star charts.
 
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Z.W. Wolf said:
can't account for the thing marked with the ? Maybe a satellite... ?


Stars 103.png
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If I am following correctly, some of the current discussion of "satellite" was sparked by this in reference to a star(?), not to the flying lights. It would be important to keep straight which is which!

Hevach makes the case against satellites for the three moving lights compellingly. Does anybody who thinks "not birds" want to attempt something similar?
 
Yes no-one has suggested satellites for the three objects in this video.

The satellite suggestion is essentially an 'unexpected' light that doesn't match a known star when the stars in the video are charted.

If we had an exact location and time it might be possible to see if it matches for the position of a known satellite, however one of the problems with night vision videos is they redefine what satellites are "visible" ie the "bright objects" list doesn't really apply and is expanded and it's quite possible there's a few satellites in that approx position.
 
can anyone confirm the rumor that our "ducks" are moving at around 500km/h ?
 
No, nobody can confirm that. The most that could be done us create a graph "at distance Y, speed will be X." A claim to know the one without the other, based on the video, sounds like somebody feeding you a line.

Using data not in the video, such as identifying the lights as, say, a specific aircraft then looking at records to see how fast it was flying would be possible. But it does not look like you shot footage of a plane.

Don't be cagey, if you have information, share it please!
 
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My apologies for misunderstanding the satellite thing. The spot in Capricornus is a bit harder to ID than just looking for a potential cluster.

in-the-sky.org has a planetarium view, but doesn't have any kind of share link unfortunately.

Inputting the date and time from the OP doesn't give any options, even opening up the filters to impossibly dim satellites. We're lucky this is Capricornus because it's just high enough in the sky that almost nothing above magnitude 7 touches it, you can see how dense several nearby constellations are.
Screenshot_20241001-051818.png
Galileo E9 and several Starlink satellites cross the constellation, with Starlink 1365 passing very close to the mystery spot, but they're both 10-20 minutes departed from Capricornus by 1936.

Assuming the 1936 time is accurate there doesn't seem to be a realistically visible satellite to account. However there are possible candidates 10-20 minutes earlier, particularly Starlink 1365.

Minutes do make a difference, though. The OP says the time is "approximate." In what way? Did you not have an accurate time piece in hand? Did you only check the time shortly after or before the video and estimate the gap? How wide would you say your confidence is? Would you say your estimate is likely to be early, late, or center-of-curve?
 
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Hevach said:
My apologies for misunderstanding the satellite thing. The spot in Capricornus is a bit harder to ID than just looking for a potential cluster.

in-the-sky.org has a planetarium view, but doesn't have any kind of share link unfortunately.

Inputting the date and time from the OP doesn't give any options, even opening up the filters to impossibly dim satellites. We're lucky this is Capricornus because it's just high enough in the sky that almost nothing above magnitude 7 touches it, you can see how dense several nearby constellations are.
View attachment 71941
Galileo E9 and several Starlink satellites cross the constellation, with Starlink 1365 passing very close to the mystery spot, but they're both 10-20 minutes departed from Capricornus by 1936.

Assuming the 1936 time is accurate there doesn't seem to be a realistically visible satellite to account. However there are possible candidates 10-20 minutes earlier, particularly Starlink 1365.
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What location did you set, relative position of stars and satellites can change quite a bit based on lat/long and we don't have an at all accurate location.
 
Peter Godman said:
not so sure
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We have to assume some things though, all we can achieve is estimates based on assumptions.

Let's say we come up something like

"Assuming this a is flight of 3 ducks separated by 5 metres in flight and thus based on the FOV of the camera at a distance of x metres and speed of y km/h" and y km/h is within the range of ducks.

How would you react to such a statement?
 
jarlrmai said:
What location did you set, relative position of stars and satellites can change quite a bit based on lat/long and we don't have an at all accurate location.
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Center of the city of Brisbane, since I didn't see a more precise location given in the thread. Precise alignment with will vary significantly enough throughout the city and surroundings that anything passing through at the right time could line up somewhere, but won't drag GE9 or SL1365 back into the constellation unless you wind back time a bit or get quite far away from the city. Though admittedly as an American I don't really know how far from Brisbane Australians would still informally call "Brisbane." Just where people stop calling someplace a parent city and start distinguishing adjoining municipalities is very regional.
 
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Hevach said:
Center of the city of Brisbane, since I didn't see a more precise location given in the thread. Precise alignment with will vary significantly enough throughout the city and surroundings that anything passing through at the right time could line up somewhere, but won't drag GE9 or SL1365 back into the constellation unless you wind back time a bit or get quite far away from the city. Though admittedly as an American I don't really know how far from Brisbane Australians would still informally call "Brisbane." Just where people stop calling someplace a parent city and start distinguishing adjoining municipalities is very regional.
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Yeah Brisbane and what people might call Brisbane probably covers a fairly large area. For satellite stuff it might be helpful to have a more precise location.

@Peter Godman is that something you can/are willing to provide?
 
Last installments...

A short explanation as to why this is so detailed/took so long.

Astrometry.com doesn't recognize these star fields. I had to do it myself. I'm labeling stars so that I can bring some order into the chaos. I'm working my way from one star to the next and using the labels to keep my place. I'm playing with the star magnitude settings on Stellarium to get the same view the videos show us. I have to go frame by frame so that I don't lose track. Thanks for being patient.

Next frame, I labeled 2 stars. Just streaks, because the camera was panning.

Star 104.png



I jumped ahead, because at this point I was confident that I recognized the final view. The constellation Grus.


Stars 105 B.png





This is what it looks like without the labels.
Stars 105 AA.png



The lights disappear into the clouds near Lambda Gruis. Let's not read too much into that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the lights were above the level of the clouds. I think not, as a matter of fact. I think they disappear in the video because of a growing lack of contrast between them and the clouds.
 

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Some tentative stuff.

The lights first come into frame "below" the star Al Thalimain Prior in the constellation Aquila. They pass through Aquila, then pass through Capricornus, then finally into Grus. About 60 degrees of sky.

The time stamps on the video:
Enter the frame - 0:18
Disappear in Grus - 0:28

They pass across one third of the sky - 60 degrees - in ~10 seconds.

My tentative feeling about this: This speed is consistent with birds flying about 50 miles per hour. Let's move onto using Sitrec to test this.

Demonstrate this to yourself by holding one stretched out arm with a pointing finger. Pick out a distance of about 60 degrees across the room - which is one third of the distance from the floor on one side of the room to the floor on the opposite side. Move your finger through that distance, counting 10 seconds. Your arm will move surprisingly slowly.

The illusion of great speed is due to the lights passing across the star field. But these stars are pretty "close together". The camera is giving us an "unnatural" view of dim stars that are normally not visible at this level of brightness to the naked eye. Thus it looks as if the lights are traveling across more sky than they actually are.

The lights are flying straight and level. The camera rotates, which can give the impression that the lights are making a turn. But that's an illusion. Any seeming change in altitude is an illusion due to perspective effects.

The lights fly from the NW to the SE.
 
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Z.W. Wolf said:
The lights are flying straight and level. The camera rotates, which can give the impression that the lights are making a turn. But that's an illusion. Any seeming change in altitude is an illusion due to perspective effects.
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Agree with your findings. On top of this, the camera has a 16mm F/1.4 lens, making it introduce a lot of image distortion.
 
Z.W. Wolf said:
My tentative feeling about this: This speed is consistent with birds flying about 50 miles per hour. Let's move onto using Sitrec to test this.
Click to expand...

50mph is similar to my bird video (1), where we clearly see wings flapping.

However, in my "triangle" video (2,3) we see no obvious wings flapping.

Why? You could argue, "they are too far from you to record."

The further away an object is, the slower it will appear.

However our "ducks" (2,3) it is claimed are moving at a similar speed to our birds (1).
If so, they must be at a similar distance from the camera and so we should see the wings in video (2,3) the same way we see wings in video (1). But we do not!

To ignore this fact is to attempt to shove a square peg into a round hole.

The correct narrative here is, the object (2,3) is further away from the camera than you think, it is moving faster than you think and it is not a bird (1).


References:

(1) Birds filmed flying over my home on the evening of 29 sept, 2024 (a short 10s. video) provides a clear comparison to videos (2&3).


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1UH7ZjL46E



(2) Video of the "triangular" object in question does not show wing flapping. Variables that may be mimicking wing flapping include: camera distortion, video editing effects, object reflecting light, etc. No editing begins at 12s. Editing begins at 18s.


Source: https://youtu.be/RLepH0qnGfk?si=vC6MJy8ZSQLFHg2P&t=12



(3) Video of the "triangular" object in question does not show wing flapping. Variables that may be mimicking wing flapping include: camera distortion, video editing effects, object reflecting light, etc. No editing begins at 14s. Editing begins at 32s.


Source: https://youtu.be/CdkRCbeVgAE?si=j9lQwMFGYAvHCar0&t=14
 
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Peter Godman said:
John, my eye does not catch any "flapping" in the 16 sept video.
There is arguably "flapping" seen in the 25 sept video;
however this is likely an effect of zooming at editing.
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Have to agree with that. But there is some light cloud in the 16 Sept video and the flying things probably aren't captured with any great resolution; just as a shaped neon light seen at a distance might be seen as a 'blob' light source with fuzzy edges, I guess birds reflecting light might be visible as blobs without discernible details in some circumstances.

The formation in the 25 Sept video is similar to 16 Sept; I don't think we can say with confidence that wing flapping is visible, but it has to be considered as a possible contributory factor to the slight fluctuations in the individual light's appearances.

Peter Godman said:
i'm waiting for size and speed
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That would be very useful of course!
But as @deirdre has posted here, if we don't know any of the important variables- the distance, size of objects or speed-
-it's very difficult to pin down any of those values without making an assumption about at least one of the others.

Small, imperfectly resolved objects moving relatively slowly at a modest distance can appear to be large imperfectly resolved objects moving at great speed at a large distance, and vice-versa.*

Assuming a value for one of those variables does allow some room for hypothesis testing, though more assumptions might be necessary which must weaken the strength of any conclusions drawn.
For instance, if each blob of light is assumed to be caused by a duck or goose, we could 'guesstimate' that each is approximately duck or goose-sized. This would allow some estimate of distance, and therefore speed.
However, my assumption that the visible lights might be bird-sized is questionable; if the birds (or any other object) are poorly focussed they might appear much larger than they actually are; or if for some reason the optics used are only sensitive to a bright spot of higher reflectivity, e.g. on the objects' undersides, we could underestimate the actual size.

@jarlrmai suggested using the spacing between lights as a basis of calculation, which might be a more elegant basis for testing estimates of distance and speed. I'm guessing many species that fly in formations ("echelons", I've just learned that!) have characteristic spacing, or at least a common range of spacing (too large a space and no aerodynamic advantage is conferred).

*There are several threads here that deal with examples of this or touch on why "expert observers" (a contentious term) such as pilots sometimes make mistakes in assessing the characteristics of unfamiliar objects/ lights due to the lack of an anchoring variable (i.e. when distance, size and speed are all estimates).
A fun example is Skinwalker Ranch - Season 4 Episode 10 - 3600 MPH UFO Claim, where the SWR team capture footage of a high-supersonic UAP streaking across the sky. Which was probably a fly not far from the camera.
 
Peter Godman said:
50mph is similar to my bird video (1), where we clearly see wings flapping.
However, in my "triangle" video (2,3) we see no obvious wings flapping.
Why? You could argue, "they are too far from you to record."
The further away an object is, the slower it will appear.
However our "ducks" (2,3) it is claimed are moving at a similar speed to our birds (1).
If so, they must be at a similar distance from the camera and so we should see the wings in video (2,3) the same way we see wings in video (1). But we do not!
Click to expand...

Certainly points to consider, but birds vary a lot in size, colouration, wingspan, frequency of wingbeats etc. and the speeds/ altitudes that they might fly at.

Faster-flying birds at a greater altitude might appear to move at the same speed as slower-flying birds at a lower altitude.
 
Peter Godman said:
50mph is similar to my bird video (1), where we clearly see wings flapping.

However, in my "triangle" video (2,3) we see no obvious wings flapping.
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There are birds that flap. There are birds that soar. There are birds that do both alternately. There is also no reason to assume that the same kinds of birds are seen in the different videos. I don't think "flap or no flap" is evidence of anything.
 
John J. said:
Certainly points to consider, but birds vary a lot in size, colouration, wingspan, frequency of wingbeats etc. and the speeds/ altitudes that they might fly at.

Faster-flying birds at a greater altitude might appear to move at the same speed as slower-flying birds at a lower altitude.
Click to expand...

Plus there are going to be differences in the way they are photographed. Differences in lighting or the environment. Perhaps differences in camera settings. Differences in the angle and distance from which the picture was taken.

Comparison images are just never going to fully rule anything out because you can't account for every variable.
 
Z.W. Wolf said:
They pass across one third of the sky - 60 degrees - in ~10 seconds.

My tentative feeling about this: This speed is consistent with birds flying about 50 miles per hour. Let's move onto using Sitrec to test this.
Click to expand...

if the "ducks" cross 1/3 of the sky that I see in 10 seconds, how do you get 50mph?

33% of 9.6km = 3.2km in 10 seconds = 1152 km/hr

*horizon to horizon is ~ 9.6 km at sea level
 
Peter Godman said:
if the "ducks" cross 1/3 of the sky that I see in 10 seconds, how do you get 50mph?

33% of 9.6km = 3.2km in 10 seconds = 1152 km/hr

*horizon to horizon is ~ 9.6 km at sea level
Click to expand...

If you were on an isolated mountain, and the horizon distance was thus much larger, your calculation would give a larger number.
However, if you were in an isolated mountain, and therefore you were closer to the birds, the 60 degree angle they traverse would represent less distance, so you should be looking for a smaller number.
Conclusion: Your calculation calculates nothing of any use at all when it comes to the problem at hand.

Mathematically, geometrically, it doesn't even make sense - it's internally nonsensical, it solves *no* problem. If you were to do correctly what I presume you were trying to do above, you'd be more justified in using a 50% scaling factor for 60 degrees, not a 33% one. It's high-school trig, just draw a diagram.
 
Peter Godman said:
if the "ducks" cross 1/3 of the sky that I see in 10 seconds, how do you get 50mph?
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How fast an object crosses a given angle has to do with more than just its speed -- it also has to do with how far away it is. An object in orbit, say, will move thousands of miles an hour to cover an angle at an object that is close to you will cover in the same time at 1 mile an hour, because the physical distance to cross that angle is very different, smaller when the object is closer. Consider the following diagram, left over from a thread about an object viewed from a drone looking down at a beach:
geek tictac distance.jpg

So that's the situation you were in, filming something flying past at an unknown distance, but this diagram is upside down compared to your case! (I'm on vacation at the moment and posting between moments doing fun stuff so don't have the time to make a new diagram, if this is confusing to anybody because of upside-downness, let me know and I'll try to find time tonight to do one looking up!)

The reference to 311 meters is a known distance at ground level that the angle covered, the UFO witness had figured the speed based on that -- assuming the object in the video was at ground level, and fast. But it might just as well have been much higher, thus closer to the camera, and so the distance traveled much less, and so the speed much less. Moral: Looking at a video and noting the angle crossed by an object does not tell you much about its speed unless you know its distance or make some assumptions.

Making assumptions allows you to maybe test a hypothesis, IF the objects are going X speed in Y seconds, then their size would be Z, you can get a rough estimate of size by seeing how much of the distance they cover as compared to the distance crossed. So if you think maybe it's ducks, does a set of assumptions fit the size, possible altitude and speed of ducks all at once? If so, the duck hypothesis is possible. If no such solution exists, ducks are in trouble!

Edited to fix a muddled section, yesterday was a very busy day and I'm tired! And one more! I think it is OK now! :)
 
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Peter Godman said:
if the "ducks" cross 1/3 of the sky that I see in 10 seconds, how do you get 50mph?
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This is a good question.

But this is bad reasoning:
Peter Godman said:
33% of 9.6km = 3.2km in 10 seconds = 1152 km/hr

*horizon to horizon is ~ 9.6 km at sea level
Click to expand...
Stretch your arms out in front of you at a 60⁰ angle. Are your hands now 3.2 km apart?

The observer/camera is at a 60⁰ corner of a triangle. The length of the opposite side depends on how long the legs of the angle are.

50 mph ≈ 80 km/h
80 km/h ≈ 22 m/s
That's 220m in 10 seconds. This would approximately correspond to the birds flying at 190m altitude if the 60⁰ angle is oriented straight up.

P.S.
Horizon-to-horizon distance for an object flying at 190m altitude exceeds 100 km. (Use https://www.metabunk.org/curve/ to check.) But most of that flight path is very close the horizon, the flight is not happening at a constant angular speed relative to a ground observer. (Compare how cars passing a pedestrian appear faster the closer they are.)
 
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The lights enter the frame at approximately: Az 324 degrees - Alt 59 degrees

The lights disappear at approximately: Az 123 degrees - Alt 62 degrees


The two points stretch across ~ 60 degrees of the sky.


Anyone who is familiar with this kind of thing... you can hold up two pointing fingers and get a picture of the path these lights took in the sky.
 
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Mendel said:
That's 220m in 10 seconds. This would approximately correspond to the birds flying at 190m altitude if the 60⁰ angle is oriented straight up.
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I'm actually quite chuffed that my spreadsheet calculations I've put together agrees with this. My spreadsheet has speeds for different distances away, using right angle triangles and 30 degree angle.

But obviously distance is the real sticking point. Doesn't help when googling how high ducks fly that you get between 200 and 4000 feet (although I'm fairly sure ducks can fly between the 0 and 200 feet as well, unless they teleport).

What I'm wondering is can distance be narrowed down for given size of objects? For example, I imagine that something the size of a duck at 4000 feet probably wouldn't be seen by the camera.

Is it at all possible to say that something of size x must be between distance y and z, given the specifications of the camera and the size of the object in view?
 
MyMatesBrainwashed said:
Is it at all possible to say that something of size x must be between distance y and z, given the specifications of the camera and the size of the object in view?
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Yes you can calculate it if you know the angular size in degrees and the size of the object and the V/H FOV of the camera view

The FOV is probably calculable form known stars, it's not in the spec.
 
jarlrmai said:
Yes you can calculate it if you know the angular size in degrees and the size of the object and the V/H FOV of the camera view

The FOV is probably calculable form known stars, it's not in the spec.
Click to expand...
Google suggests it's between 42 and 48 degrees (searching "sionyx aurora FOV specification").

Sionyx says 42...
The Aurora has a 42 degree horizontal field of view and a 35mm equivalent focal length of 47mm.
Click to expand...
https://support.sionyx.com/en/support/solutions/articles/61000259404-field-of-view-and-focal-length

Camera review says 48...
The Aurora sports a fixed 16mm lens (47mm equivalent in full frame terms) which provides a diagonal FOV of 48 degrees.
Click to expand...
https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/review-color-night-vision-with-the-sionyx-aurora
 
So ehm, is this thread still alive?

EDIT: only now see the ongoings..
 
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MyMatesBrainwashed said:
What I'm wondering is can distance be narrowed down for given size of objects? For example, I imagine that something the size of a duck at 4000 feet probably wouldn't be seen by the camera.
Click to expand...

Depends on the sensor's sensitivity. And, it is an image/IR enhancing type of camera, thus the true object might be smaller than shown in the video, caused by blooming and stray light.

MyMatesBrainwashed said:
Is it at all possible to say that something of size x must be between distance y and z, given the specifications of the camera and the size of the object in view?
Click to expand...
If you know the object's size, it is very easy. If you don't, it becomes guess work.
 
Ravi said:
Depends on the sensor's sensitivity. And, it is an image/IR enhancing type of camera, thus the true object might be smaller than shown in the video, caused by blooming and stray light.


If you know the object's size, it is very easy. If you don't, it becomes guess work.
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Very much an "insufficient data" situation, where even calling what was observed a "UFO" would imply more evidence than is available.
 
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