Blickling Hall Lake UFO

[Swifty]

I bought a UFO book from a charity shop about 4 years ago, got it home and found this photograph inside it:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEfdguUaEn0


I hope I've included enough details of it in my video for people to study, a few of us online concluded the most likely explanation would be that the photo was taken behind a glass window and we're looking at the reflection of a lamp. I loaned it to a staff member at Blickling Hall with the hope that someone could identify a building the picture could have been taken from, possibly a grounds keeper would know but I didn't get any feedback on that. I still own the original photograph. It's my opinion (although I have no proof) that it has probably also been enlarged and cropped?.

 

[Trailblazer]

I wasn't sure this warrants it's own thread but a picture I accidently bought seem to fit into this thread nicely if that's OK? ..

I bought a UFO book from a charity shop about 4 years ago, got it home and found this photograph inside it:


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEfdguUaEn0


I hope I've included enough details of it in my video for people to study, a few of us online concluded the most likely explanation would be that the photo was taken behind a glass window and we're looking at the reflection of a lamp. I loaned it to a staff member at Blickling Hall with the hope that someone could identify a building the picture could have been taken from, possibly a grounds keeper would know but I didn't get any feedback on that. I still own the original photograph. It's my opinion (although I have no proof) that it has probably also been enlarged and cropped?.

The viewpoint looks very similar to this photo, with the lake unfrozen:

Looking at the aerial view of the lake and the position of the trees it looks as though this was taken from the northern end of the lake:

I can't see a candidate building there.

 

[Mick West]

This reminds me of the "angel" photo:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/angels-in-a-snowstorm-on-mt-athos-bokeh.10355/
It seems relatively consistent with a bokeh. But it's hard to say.

 

[Mick West]

Another possibility is a type of lens flare. The camera seems to be pointing southwest. The time written on the photo looks like 4 PM, it's December, so a low sun in that direction above the camera.

(source)

 

[jarlrmai]

Looks like a flare from a 4 blade aperture diaphragm.

 

[deirdre]

could it be the actual sun? this photo feb 8, 2005 at 5:17 pm (assuming camera not off an hour ). the sun would actually be a bit more too the right left in this pic though if you walk further
down the lake to line the trees up to match OP.

 

[deirdre]

hmmm.. or the moon? if 4pm is accurate?

and it looks like her camera must be off an hour.

 

[Trailblazer]

The sun is a possibility but the photo looks like there's an overcast sky with no shadows that I can see. But the colours are very weird (is it even a colour photo? Snow scenes can look monochrome in photos) so it's hard to say.

l think a snowflake lit up by flash is most plausible.

 

[Mick West]

@Swifty, can you take a photo of the photo. Outdoor in the shade will give an even light, as square on as possible and 2x optical zoom if you have it. The video has some reflections.

 

[Trailblazer]

The YouTube video description says the date on the photo is "Dec 97" but it appears to actually say "27 Dec 96".

It can't have been 1997 as the Christmas period in 1997 was mild, wet and windy in England: https://www.trevorharley.com/1997.html

There was however snow on 27 December 1996 across southern England:
https://www.trevorharley.com/1996.html

"Some local light snow on Christmas Day, but heavier falls on the 27th and 30th, particularly in Kent."

It appears to have been cold enough to freeze the lake and have snow settle on it, which isn't terribly common in this part of the world.

Edit: here is the daily Met Office weather summary for Dec 1996: https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_f2c30bf7-3fc1-4a9e-b283-490d62421b7e/

It's a big file, page 106 has the weather for Dec 27. Looks like there were snow showers across East Anglia in the evening and not much sunshine in that part of the country. The wind was from the northeast which means Norfolk would likely have seen "lake effect" snow off the North Sea. So the weather fits the photo and it seems more likely that the object was a snowflake than a sun flare.

 

[deirdre]

But the colours are very weird (is it even a colour photo? Snow scenes can look monochrome in photos) so it's hard to say.

it looks like my brother's photos when he used to develop them himself.

 

[Swifty]

@Swifty, can you take a photo of the photo. Outdoor in the shade will give an even light, as square on as possible and 2x optical zoom if you have it. The video has some reflections.

Will do Mick. I would scan it but our scanner's playing up. Even better than taking a picture, I can mail the original photo to an address of your choice (I wouldn't expect you to give a stranger on the internet your own address) for you to study yourself if you want? .. I'll trust you to mail it back to me ... because the object itself has fine detail including a box structure type base and lots of 'bobbles' that you'd imagine a chandelier would reflect back.

 

[Mendel]

The viewpoint looks very similar to this photo, with the lake unfrozen:

View attachment 41791

When was this comparison picture taken?

 

[Trailblazer]

When was this comparison picture taken?

I don't know, unfortunately. I found it on a Google Image search but when I clicked through to the result the image didn't seem to be there (it was the National Trust page on the Blickling Estate).

I found some similar images here dated Jan 2014: https://www.andydavison.com/blickli...phy-commission-norfolk-landscape-photography/

 

[Swifty]

I'm new here but thank you to those of you who've done a bit of digging .. these are the best pictures I've been able to take, I'm leaning towards the lens flare explanations now:

(I did mix the years up in my youtube description)

The envelope I received back from Blickling Hall .. just because:

 

[deirdre]

because the object itself has fine detail including a box structure type base and lots of 'bobbles' that you'd imagine a chandelier would reflect back.

well that would be one funky double exposure... (the angle of trees shows it was taken on the lake path ..ill attach other photos for comparison) but i guess a room would explain that odd shadow on the left. its possible that is a ceiling line i see there. although how a chandelier would fuzz out that bad ??

 

[deirdre]

would explain that odd shadow on the left

nix that.. i just looked at the OP again and see the shadow must be you.
although now i think i see crown moulding in your video. is it a glossy pic? is your room reflecting onto your video?

 

[Swifty]

nix that.. i just looked at the OP again and see the shadow must be you.
although now i think i see crown moulding in your video. is it a glossy pic? is your room reflecting onto your video?
View attachment 41805

I've posted a less than ideal photo sorry diedre, not taken outside but in my kitchen tonight, the shadow on the left and the bright light on the right is just pollution created tonight by the conditions I took the picture in .. the white line is a scratch on the print, the paper seems to be glossy, not matt. I shot the video on my living room floor also under artificial lighting.

 

[Trailblazer]

Looks like a flare from a 4 blade aperture diaphragm.

The more I look at the "Angels in a snowstorm" thread the more I think it is bokeh from a four-blade aperture turning a solitary snowflake in front of the lens into a diamond. We know from the day's weather report that there were light snow showers late in the day in question.

Most cameras I've seen use more than four blades to form the aperture but they are certainly used on some point-and-shoot cameras. This thread on a photography forum says they are not rare:

Four blades is actually very common. You only need two moving parts (v shaped) to control the size of a square. Many video cameras and some point and shoot digicams have square apertures.

This goes back a long way. All autoexposure Kodak instamatics had square double leave apertures, and even the Brownie Starmatic (2 inch square pictures on 127 roll film) had a sqaure aperture.

This photo was from 1996 so before the digital era, of course, but older point-and-shoot cameras certainly had such lenses too. For example here is the lens from an Olympus Trip, which was produced between the 1960s and 1980s:

Example of the bokeh shape from that lens (harder to compare because this is distant out-of-focus bokeh rather than close to the lens)

Pictures from here: http://forum.mflenses.com/zuiko-40-28-from-olympus-trip-35-adapted-to-sony-e-t72978.html

Note these pics are from someone taking the lens from an old point-and-shoot and using it on another camera. Generally a point-and-shoot snapshot camera will have a very wide depth of field, to eliminate focus issues, so the only way you are going to get bokeh is if there is something too close to the lens to be in focus.

The top and bottom points of the diamond are sharp but the left and right sides are rounded. That could be something to do with the shape of the aperture but I wonder if vertical motion (eg a falling snowflake) could also produce that?

 

[Mendel]

The top and bottom points of the diamond are sharp but the left and right sides are rounded. That could be something to do with the shape of the aperture but I wonder if vertical motion (eg a falling snowflake) could also produce that?

I wonder what the shutter speed for that image was.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Very much onboard with the bokeh hypothesis.

 

[Swifty]

Very much onboard with the bokeh hypothesis.

Looking at Mick West's images in post #4 in this thread, the 'UFO' in my picture has almost exactly the same bobbled texture to it, specifically the three lens flares at the bottom in his picture. The texture was what made me originally consider the reflection of a chandelier theory. I'm not sure what created the black dot at the top of the shape.

 

[Mick West]

Regarding snowflake bokeh - a single flake of snow is entirely possible. There are some other white dots in the image, might be snowflakes, might just be dirt on the negative. @Swifty, what do they look like up close on the print?

It would likely need the flash to be on - but people leave the flash on by accident all the time (like with the Angels image).

An illustrative example from 1991:
https://www.twincities.com/2016/10/...d-28-inches-of-snow-on-twin-cities-in-3-days/

A variety of brightness and sizes, based on on the snowflake size and the distance to camera. The seven-sided shape obviously comes from the aperture. When wider open, it looks like:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/10/31/halloween-blizzard-25th-anniversary

The circular shape here just being the circular lens

 

[deirdre]

apparently there are 2 blade apertures too.