Black UFO At Skinwalker Ranch (A Fly)

[Mick West]

In episode 7 of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, an unfortunate cow dies of natural causes. The team of scientists on cast study security camera footage for clues. As the cow is laying there dying small black object whizzes by.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11WVUQ7Lmg8


It's only visible for two frames on the footage, meaning it travels between the two positions in 1/30th of a second. Possible more, as security camera footage is often a low framerate. But let's assume 1/30th.

How fast is it going? That depends on how big it is, or to put it another way, is it small, or far away?

The cast members choose to interpret the object as being at the same distance as the cow is - mysteriously flying over it as it dies, presumably with some intent. I think it's actually much closer to the camera.



The image quality is quite good. Unfortunately the bit we are interested in is the two smaller trees on the right. You can just make out the cow laying underneath them



The best look we have of the object is when they zoom in. Here I've overlaid two frames. Frame 1 is on the left, and frame 2 on the right.

You can see that in frame 1 (right) it's a bit longer and flatter than frame 2. This possibly indicates it's slowing down or changing direction. With only two frames we can't tell if it is traveling in a straight line.

How fast? We can calculate this as a multiple of its length. It's hard to say exactly how wide it is, as it is so blurry and there's a little bit of motion blur, but we can make a reasonable crop, and then stack them end-to-end between the two positions:


The result is about 33 lengths.


So we know that it travels about 33 lengths in 1/30th of a second. so in one second that's 30*33 = 990 lengths per second. Let's round that up to 1000 lengths per second.

From this we can insert a guess at the size, and see what speed it gives us.

Speed = 1000 * (size in inches), giving you inches per second. To convert to mph we divide by 17.6. It's always best to verify conversion with Google.


So speed in mph = size in inches * 1000 / 17.6

If the size is 1/4 inch, roughly the size of fly, then the speed is about 14 mph

If it's a large bird-sized object at cow distance, then that's more like 12 inches, and the speed is 681mph

So it would seem the far more plausible interpretation is that it's a fly, close to the camera.

This interpretation is confirmed 100% simply by viewing footage of actual flies, like in this video

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r8ROxXGXKw

We can take two frames of this (about 28 seconds in), overlay them to get two fly positions - again 1/30th of a second apart.

Counting the lengths between them, using a similarly cropped version of the fly on the right.


33 again! A minor coincidence, given the resolution, but demonstrates that we are certainly in the correct ballpark.

It looks like a fly. It flies like a fly. It's probably a fly.

 

[Mick West]

So if it's a 1/4" fly, then how far away is it?
We need the angular size. Which we can calculate as a fraction of the horizontal field of view, which appears to be about 90°

take frame 1, and over on the full image


I upscaled it to 5760 pixels wide, then zoomed in on the fly



Hard to saw where it starts and ends, but I'm going with 10 pixels. So simplistically it's 10/5760*90° = 0.15625°

So since tan(angular size) = size/distance
distance = size/tan(angular size)
distance = 0.25 / tan(0.15625 degrees)
distance ~= 92 inches
distance ~- 7' 8", but this is all very rough, so let's say between 6 and 9 feet away.

As it's a wide angle, the actual calculation would depend on the distance from the center, and any distortion from the lense, but it would still be within the above error bounds. 6-9 feet. Or 5-10 to be on the safe side.



If it was at 5 feet, would it be in focus? Yes, this is wide-angle surveillance camera. It will probably keep anything more than 1 or 2 feet away in focus. The limit would resolution here, as it's so small. Ultimately it's just as much in focus as the trees are:


So all entirely consistent with a fly.

 

[Mick West]

Now YouTube thinks I'm really into cow videos, so it's throwing a bunch of them my way. Useful reference because flies are going to crop up again and again. And videos of cows generally have flies in them.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj6ezUbjRHE


Here's a few more flies, for reference:

 

[Mick West]

If the size is 1/4 inch, roughly the size of fly, then the speed is about 14 mph

In Episode 8 yesterday, they said the frame rate was actually 15 fps, not 30 fps. So that makes it just 7 mph for a 1/4" fly - i.e. even more fly-like

They claim it is "directly over the tree-line" but give zero evidence of this.

 

[Mick West]

They attempt to link this fly to the "halo" effect seen in the Gimbal video. Taylor talks about a "temperature differential" causing the halo - seemingly failing to realize this would be entirely invisible in normal photography.

They show this "zoomed in" image:


This "halo" appears to be fake. In the previous episode (and later in this episode, 7:42 in the YouTube version) they showed the same zoom, but with no large halo. Instead, we just see the normal edge sharpening seen elsewhere in the image, like the trees.

Taylor even tries to say he sees a halo around an older UFO photo:


But of course it's just image sharpening. You can see it elsewhere in the image. Light halo around darker objects


And a dark halo around lighter objects (like the ridge of rocks, or the distant plane "UFO")

 

[TRON]

They attempt to link this fly to the "halo" effect seen in the Gimbal video. Taylor talks about a "temperature differential" causing the halo - seemingly failing to realize this would be entirely invisible in normal photography.

They show this "zoomed in" image:


This "halo" appears to be fake. In the previous episode (and later in this episode, 7:42 in the YouTube version) they showed the same zoom, but with no large halo. Instead, we just see the normal edge sharpening seen elsewhere in the image, like the trees.

Taylor even tries to say he sees a halo around an older UFO photo:


But of course it's just image sharpening. You can see it elsewhere in the image. Light halo around darker objects


And a dark halo around lighter objects (like the ridge of rocks, or the distant plane "UFO")

Agree on the halo effect. One of the drawbacks to technology is that people accept it without really trying to understand how it works, limitations, capabilities, and so on. Not saying that every mobile phone user needs to have a degree in physics and electrical engineering to use the device. But it frustrates me when I try to teach people that what they see in a highly zoomed-in digital image from their phone's camera, or actual digital camera, is NOT what is really there. Especially when it comes to claims about seeing orbs, or "things" in the center of round objects captured by the camera sensors and processed to be able to see on the screen. Like this. The Blue Angels are amazing, but they are not flying in aircraft that has anti-gravity or force fields surrounding them! ...or are they?!?!