Corbell's "U.S. Military Films Huge Disc Hiding In The Clouds" new video 06/17/25
Z.W. Wolf
Senior Member.
I'm agnostic as to whether this is a water droplet. It could be.
And I don't know enough about digital photography to talk about this case on that basis. In other words, what might be an artifact due to these people monkeying around with the video.
But I can say something about some optical issues that would be consistent with whatever kind of camera.
If this was caused by a water droplet...
This would be a droplet on a lens cover not on the surface of the lens itself. In any case, the droplet would be well inside the minimum focusing distance. Therefore, the droplet itself would not appear as a focused image. We're not seeing, and could not see, a focused image of a water droplet itself. We talked about that issue in connection to the Balloon Cluster/Jellyfish sighting.
But...
We could see the optical consequences of the droplet. The water droplet would act as a secondary optical element. A kind of convex lens or even a biconvex lens. Its shape would refract light rays before it reached the main lens, locally altering the path of light rays entering the lens system.
That would cause...
-Localized warping or magnification of parts of the scene. I think that would be more noticeable with a telephoto lens with a narrow angle of view. Which this seems to be.
-Shifts in focus. The water droplet would bend light differently depending on its shape and position relative to the optical axis. It would vibrate. There would be asymmetric deformation caused by air drag, etc. We'd see apparent shifts in focus, where certain areas of the image would seem sharper or blurrier as the droplet refracted light differently over time. Not a true focus shift in the sense of the camera changing focal planes. It would be an optical artifact caused by dynamic refraction... if I can use that term.
Ditto with the warping/magnification. These effects would change as the droplet changed shape/location. (The position of the droplet relative to the optical axis would change the angle of incidence of incoming light. ... and maybe the angle of incidence to the surface of the object lens element? I'm trying to picture that...)
It wouldn't be a focused image of a physical object. Not even a water droplet. It would just be a mysterious thing that might be perceived as a physical object. It's strange indistinct appearance might be written off as the hazy image of a physical object partially obscured by clouds.
I'll leave it to you all as to whether this is what we're seeing. Video One seems to be the closest to original... and I don't see the object in Video One.
And I don't know enough about digital photography to talk about this case on that basis. In other words, what might be an artifact due to these people monkeying around with the video.
But I can say something about some optical issues that would be consistent with whatever kind of camera.
If this was caused by a water droplet...
This would be a droplet on a lens cover not on the surface of the lens itself. In any case, the droplet would be well inside the minimum focusing distance. Therefore, the droplet itself would not appear as a focused image. We're not seeing, and could not see, a focused image of a water droplet itself. We talked about that issue in connection to the Balloon Cluster/Jellyfish sighting.
But...
We could see the optical consequences of the droplet. The water droplet would act as a secondary optical element. A kind of convex lens or even a biconvex lens. Its shape would refract light rays before it reached the main lens, locally altering the path of light rays entering the lens system.
That would cause...
-Localized warping or magnification of parts of the scene. I think that would be more noticeable with a telephoto lens with a narrow angle of view. Which this seems to be.
-Shifts in focus. The water droplet would bend light differently depending on its shape and position relative to the optical axis. It would vibrate. There would be asymmetric deformation caused by air drag, etc. We'd see apparent shifts in focus, where certain areas of the image would seem sharper or blurrier as the droplet refracted light differently over time. Not a true focus shift in the sense of the camera changing focal planes. It would be an optical artifact caused by dynamic refraction... if I can use that term.
Ditto with the warping/magnification. These effects would change as the droplet changed shape/location. (The position of the droplet relative to the optical axis would change the angle of incidence of incoming light. ... and maybe the angle of incidence to the surface of the object lens element? I'm trying to picture that...)
It wouldn't be a focused image of a physical object. Not even a water droplet. It would just be a mysterious thing that might be perceived as a physical object. It's strange indistinct appearance might be written off as the hazy image of a physical object partially obscured by clouds.
I'll leave it to you all as to whether this is what we're seeing. Video One seems to be the closest to original... and I don't see the object in Video One.
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Ann K
Senior Member.
This is the object at 17'14" in video two. If you watch this section in slow speed, you can see it deforming in shape, exactly as you'd expect from a blowing drop of water that builds up on the leading edge until it hits a cleaner (or moister) area of the glass and "jumps" ahead irregularly, while the trailing edge is dragged behind until surface tension pulls it back to the main blob. The blob is large enough that those actions take place at many different points along the edge, and the shape keeps changing. Note the bright bit at the bottom of the blob, which corresponds to a brighter section of the background TOP, since the raindrop inverts the image. (Nope, I don't know if that's visible light represented here.)
jackfrostvc
Senior Member
In video2 , what is this object? Something on the ground or an aircraft?
Fin
Senior Member
My first guess is specks of dust on the lens. I think Mick also suggested stuck pixels. The trails & surrounding auras are I think caused by video compression artifacting.
The UFO also leaves its own trail artifacts behind it, briefly, in the form of what looks like ripples
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Martinicus1
Member
There are a few issues with the water droplet theory. Firstly, water droplets very close to the camera don't tend to resolve into clearly defined shapes when the camera is focused in the distance. On a normal camera (granted this isn't a normal camera but it still produces a 2D image of the world) this would be a very fuzzy transparent smudge without defined edges. The camera would need to focus on it to see it clearly and in that case the scene in the distance would be out of focus. Secondly, at 21000 ft the air temperature is well below freezing - any moisture would freeze almost instantly. Thirdly the aircraft airspeed would cause streaking, any moisture present would unlikely to be a perfectly round drop. Finally, visual artefacts caused by drops of water (if they could or do occur on the FLIR camera) would likely cause all FLIR to be unusable in bad weather. As far as I'm aware this isn't the case, probably due to the other points.
This just popped up in my Facebook feed, and example of "raindrops on the lens"
The main problem I have with that theory is seeing how it would be in focus. We don't know what the FOV of the Disc video is, but typically these are narrow - i.e. a telephoto lens. The kayak example is very wide-angle.
The main problem I have with that theory is seeing how it would be in focus. We don't know what the FOV of the Disc video is, but typically these are narrow - i.e. a telephoto lens. The kayak example is very wide-angle.
Fin
Senior Member
Someone else also mentioned this previously and I think its a good point which may debunk my idea that dust on the lens could be responsible for the small specks. I briefly looked for another example of the specks and quickly found examples in the first video I looked at; the old "collateral murder" video released by wikileaks & recorded in 2007.
I've isolated a small portion of the clip (no violence included) where we can see multiple examples of similar-looking small black specks which move with the camera. Could these also be stuck pixels? Dust on the sensor? Its not my area of expertise.
Another example of drops on the lens - again a wide angle (360° cropped in post).
Source: https://x.com/aaronjayjack/status/1934979319350407351
Source: https://x.com/aaronjayjack/status/1934979319350407351
Z.W. Wolf
Senior Member.
At best they may be partially focused images of the water droplets. Or they may not be focused images. That's a tough call.
But the droplets are doing what I said above in post 42. They're acting as a secondary optical element. Note the one indicated with the arrow. It seems to have a pretty good convex shape. It's refracting light rays before they reach the main lens. It's locally altering the path of light rays entering the lens system.
EDIT: This seems to be a wide angle view of the surface of the kayak from edge to edge. Inverted vertically and horizontally and unevenly distorted.
Bottom line... the droplets don't have to be in focus to be noticeable. They can be noticeable because of the way they refract light rays.
I'm still agnostic as to whether the thing in the OP video has anything to do with a droplet on the lens/lens cover.
EDIT: This one has inverted the green surface of the sea and the white sky. A distorted and inverted ultra wide-angle image.
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jackfrostvc
Senior Member
Do we have a date and time for the video?
We have the location, so if we have a date (and time would be nice) we could look up the weather conditions that day.
We have the location, so if we have a date (and time would be nice) we could look up the weather conditions that day.
Martinicus1
Member
The examples of water drops on lenses are all at sea level. The video indicates the platform is an aircraft at 21300 ft. The atmospheric conditions are very different. I mentioned in a previous post about the temperature at this altitude. The average max temperature in Kunar province in Nov is 22 Celsius. Using a simple online calculator the temperature at 21300 ft is suggested to be - 20 Celsius. Regardless of the precision (Kunar is not at sea level) of these calculations the point is it's freezing and very dry at that altitude. Most rain originates below 10000 ft in cumulonimbus and nimbostratus clouds - above its frozen ice crystals. The video clearly shows the cloud layer and there's no evidence of clouds close to the platform. If it's water on the camera where did it come from and if it was liquid how did it not quickly freeze at that altitude?
PublicStranger
Active Member
I'm not an expert on cameras but is it possible there could be some frost present on the lense and due to the heat from the camera system it would cause some kind of condensation?
John J.
Senior Member.
@PublicStranger beat me to it... I don't know about these things, but maybe warmth from the vehicle caused condensation, or ice crystals to melt. Or maybe it's a stray drop of oil/ lubricant. (No idea if that's plausible or not).
Ann K
Senior Member.
Granted, the scene behind is of clouds, but is there anything in this that suggests that the distant background actually IS in focus?
Martinicus1
Member
I suppose it's possible. The other factors at such altitude would be the lower air pressure, lower humidity and wind/airspeed speed all of which would tend to promote rapid evaporation. These are all things which may make the water droplet theory slightly problematic. Having said that, I couldn't definitively say if there was a certain situation which could, in theory, allow liquid to be present on the camera, but I think it's unlikely.
Martinicus1
Member
It's a good point. The object is very difficult to see. I don't see any evidence of the camera changing focus to correspond to the fleeting appearance of the object. Although the video is poor quality the clouds are still quite clearly seen and similar to other FLIR videos which are focused on infinity.
Z.W. Wolf
Senior Member.
How droplets on glass act when the glass surface is in focus.
The drops are acting like a short focal length lens. The landscape is in focus, inverted both vertically and horizontally, and unevenly distorted due to the weird shapes.
Even if the glass surface was not in good focus, the droplets would still refract light and form distorted, inverted, ultra wide-angle views of the landscape. What we would see of the landscape would depend on the depth of field of the lens on the camera. The landscape might still be recognizable in some way if the camera had a wide angle lens.
As here...
And here...
If the droplets were on the lens cover of a telephoto lens and there was no resolved image at all, we would still see the optical consequences. But I'd think it would cause a general loss of brightness and contrast across the image.
You wouldn't see a localized spot. No more than you see the secondary mirror in a reflector telescope.
So the water droplet idea is looking pretty bad. The only thing that could save the water drop idea is if the lens were a wide angle lens rather than a telephoto. Was it?
What if water somehow made it onto the surface of the sensor? Don't know. But if this is a spot of something or other, I'd think it would have to be something on the sensor or whatever layer just above the sensor.
Or... it could be dust on the outside surface of the lens element just in front of the sensor. Depending on how close that last lens element is.
Talked about defocused shadows here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ch...n-partially-obscured.13927/page-2#post-332978
If this truly is an optical artifact - as opposed to a digital artifact of some kind - I'd think a defocused shadow is a better candidate than a water droplet.
The drops are acting like a short focal length lens. The landscape is in focus, inverted both vertically and horizontally, and unevenly distorted due to the weird shapes.
Even if the glass surface was not in good focus, the droplets would still refract light and form distorted, inverted, ultra wide-angle views of the landscape. What we would see of the landscape would depend on the depth of field of the lens on the camera. The landscape might still be recognizable in some way if the camera had a wide angle lens.
As here...
And here...
If the droplets were on the lens cover of a telephoto lens and there was no resolved image at all, we would still see the optical consequences. But I'd think it would cause a general loss of brightness and contrast across the image.
You wouldn't see a localized spot. No more than you see the secondary mirror in a reflector telescope.
So the water droplet idea is looking pretty bad. The only thing that could save the water drop idea is if the lens were a wide angle lens rather than a telephoto. Was it?
What if water somehow made it onto the surface of the sensor? Don't know. But if this is a spot of something or other, I'd think it would have to be something on the sensor or whatever layer just above the sensor.
Or... it could be dust on the outside surface of the lens element just in front of the sensor. Depending on how close that last lens element is.
Talked about defocused shadows here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ch...n-partially-obscured.13927/page-2#post-332978
If this truly is an optical artifact - as opposed to a digital artifact of some kind - I'd think a defocused shadow is a better candidate than a water droplet.
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Ann K
Senior Member.
Oils have a much lower surface tension, and would likely form a thin slick rather than droplets.
DopVamp
New Member
I'd say, respectfully, instead of speculating on what it could be, we need to find data that match what we're seeing.
For the water droplet on lens, i tend to not believe that what's the object is, as Martinicus1 mentionned the environment is drastically different
Also, the object's mouvment do not match clouds and the platform recording : it's path does indeed a smooth u turn as revealed on the previous compositing i posted there
Moreover, a water droplet would create a blurry area reflecting light, not a define circle
For the optical consequences of a solar glint, here's why i tend to think it's not what we are seeing :
- classical IR glints manifest as bright, often saturating spots or patches, moving inconsistently with cloud-embedded objects
- while the platform is moving, being a flarelike object, it should move accordingly to the mouvment, which it doesn't
I'd say we can rule out, at least waiting for more data to compare with, water / oil droplet or reflection.
As for the cloud being opaque or not, i tend to think it would be because of the thermic's settings of the sensor and the temperature of those clouds : when set for specific range, some cloud could appear opaque or not, we need examples to confirm it
For the water droplet on lens, i tend to not believe that what's the object is, as Martinicus1 mentionned the environment is drastically different
Also, the object's mouvment do not match clouds and the platform recording : it's path does indeed a smooth u turn as revealed on the previous compositing i posted there
Moreover, a water droplet would create a blurry area reflecting light, not a define circle
For the optical consequences of a solar glint, here's why i tend to think it's not what we are seeing :
- classical IR glints manifest as bright, often saturating spots or patches, moving inconsistently with cloud-embedded objects
- while the platform is moving, being a flarelike object, it should move accordingly to the mouvment, which it doesn't
I'd say we can rule out, at least waiting for more data to compare with, water / oil droplet or reflection.
As for the cloud being opaque or not, i tend to think it would be because of the thermic's settings of the sensor and the temperature of those clouds : when set for specific range, some cloud could appear opaque or not, we need examples to confirm it
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jackfrostvc
Senior Member
But what do droplets look like on a lens of a IR camera?
Mauro
Senior Member.
No idea, really, but it seems water is not transparent to IR:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water
https://flir.custhelp.com/app/answe...-measuring-image-accuracy-with-water-dropletsExternal Quote:
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Don't know if this is universally true, but the IR lenses I am familiar with are made of germanium, and you would not want water on that. It would be behind some sort of cover, and the drops would be on that... if germanium is indeed as universal as my very limited experience suggests. (Anybody who knows I'm wrong ... I will not be mad if you blow me outta the water!)
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Would that not depend on what the surface it is on a actualy is? With water, it would depend 9n if the surface was hydrophilic or hydrophobic... don't know what the equivalent phrase is for oil!
Any cover would also have to be IR transmissive, so may also be made of germanium. The ATFLIR used sapphire, as it's tougher.
The OSD looks like a wescam MX, here you can see cameras behind windows. The bottom one is the IR.
The camera on the left is probably EO (visible light), and looks like an inch or two behind the glass.
That seems very unlikely. It looks like it was recorded on a Wescam MX, just a few years ago. A fully digital system, and also one that is known to have issues with stuck pixels.
Eburacum
Senior Member.
Could it be a water droplet on the inside of the glass? Or a small pellet of ice, either inside, or outside the window, making a 'defocused shadow' on the image?
It certainly looks like a visual artifact of some sort. The movement could be caused by the droplet or pellet sliding about due to vibration.
It certainly looks like a visual artifact of some sort. The movement could be caused by the droplet or pellet sliding about due to vibration.
Kyle Ferriter
Senior Member.
Can you clarify which one of these is the IR lens? It looks like some Wescam MX-15 can be configured with multiple IR sensors, both SWIR and MWIR, which may be behind different panes. Do we know the exact model of camera used? I saw Marik von Rennenkampf suggest it's "likely" a Wescam MX-15 but it didn't seem definitive. Does he have an inside line of info to such details that were not made public elsewhere? This could be relevant, as more layers of glass introduces more opportunities for artifacts.
For example if there is an outer layer of glass that is angled, that can contribute to bringing a flare from an out-of-frame bright light into frame. Here are two images of my setup. This is a Canon mirrorless camera with 100mm lens, with a clear glass UV filter taped to the front at a slight angle. I then pointed the camera down at a pretty steep angle so that the bright light source of the light was above and well out of frame.
I tried out a couple video configurations but I think this one turned out the best. I put a flashlight on top of the tripod and pointed the camera down in front of it, and pivoted clockwise and counterclockwise.
As you can see when pivoting counterclockwise, the small bright flare/reflection artifact is moving right across the field of view. There is also another reflection artifact above moving in the opposite direction, which is interesting. This is a pretty bright flashlight and I think there are multiple back and forth reflections happening between various panes of glass on the camera.
Kyle Ferriter
Senior Member.
I don't know that we can say anything about whether the object (theoretically in the foreground), or the background are in focus, since this is edited to add sharpening and also processed with some kind of AI upscaling. Video 1 is so low quality that it's hard to say anything about what pixels were really recorded on the camera, vs added via editing or interpolation in software.
^I'm still trying to figure a way for a lens flare to move to the right with respect to the "background" as the camera moves to the right and pivots to the left. I don't think I can easily recreate this in my living room. Also need to keep in mind the 'background' is the clouds, not the fixed point on the ground the camera is looking towards, so parallax is contributing some of that apparent motion. In my example the background was the wall, behind the flashlight, which is not analogous to the sun since the clouds are not behind the sun. I will try outside with the actual sun, trying to mimic this sort of path:
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This has the cloud layer stabilized, so it's just rotation. I then added the Video2 layer back in (with a dot tracking the object).
Look at the red track in the lower right. That's the track of a cloud. It matched the motion of the object. I think this is a strong clue that what we are seeing is an artifact that depends on the position and orientation of the camera.
(Note the track isn't perfect, but it works during the "video2" portion.
Ravi
Senior Member.
Don't worry, it is just one of the features of these True Believers videos. If there is one thing we all can agree on is that they are all extremely poor in quality and context. Just things True Believers need to make sure before they release videos, to have hem as incomprehensible as possible.
Are you referring to the original videos in post #1 or Mick's video in post #74?
Yes. What you see in Sitrec is based on the camera simply tracking the target point on the ground as the plane moves along the path. I'm not sure what's missing to make the clouds rotate like that.
However the background does rotate, and in a way that matches the motion of the object, which suggests the object is a camera artifact.
