Debunked: Airplane passenger 'takes picture of UFO that was giving off bright lights and orbs'

[Mick West]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ground-near-secret-Area-51-military-base.html

An airline passenger claims to have captured images of a UFO giving off 'bright lights and orbs' on the ground near the top-secret Area 51 military base.

The witness was on an American Airlines flight from San Jose, California to Houston, Texas, when he took a series of pictures of a giant metallic disc in the Nevada desert.

He said the plane was flying near Luning and Gabbs on October 30 when he noticed 'blinding bright light' in the desert below.

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However, it's just the Cresent Dunes Solar Energy Project, and some lens flare and reflection from the dual pane aircraft window (which you can tell by the doubling of the lights).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a 110 megawatt (MW) net solar thermal power project is located near Tonopah, about 190 miles (310 km) northwest of Las Vegas.[3] It was developed by SolarReserve through its subsidiary, Tonopah Solar Energy,[4] and was anticipated to cost less than $1 billion.[5]

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Those are all mirrors which focus the sunlight on a collecting tower. This frequently shows up as a bright light that can be seen by planes flying near Las Vegas.

 

[trevor]

I feel like this was one of those that you can just LOOK at and instantly know its fake from the second you see it.

 

[Mick West]

I feel like this was one of those that you can just LOOK at and instantly know its fake from the second you see it.

Yes, this was pretty obvious. I seen solar sites like that before when flying to Vegas. Seems like the Daily Mail will print just about anything.

 

[Svartbjørn]

Yes, this was pretty obvious. I seen solar sites like that before when flying to Vegas. Seems like the Daily Mail will print just about anything.

The comments in the article debunked the snot out of the "UFO" sighting as well. All the up votes are for the reasonable explanation and anything claiming UFOs or Govt Cover Up are getting down voted hard. +1 to Humanity on this one.

 

[ufoofinterest]

Thank you Mick for this debunking

 

[MyMatesBrainwashed]

Seems like the Daily Mail will print just about anything.

Nah, they just know their audience.

I can't be the only one to notice that those who hate the MSM seem to be the biggest consumers of it.

 

[JRBids]

I feel like this was one of those that you can just LOOK at and instantly know its fake from the second you see it.

So many things fall into that category as far as I am concerned. There are way too many credulous, gullible people in the world IMO.

 

[Trailblazer]

The solar project appears to be under construction in the Google Earth view, with only some of the solar panels in place, but I've approximated the viewpoint here. You can see that the road and the three dark areas (storage tanks?) match up, as do the sand dunes in the foreground.

 

[Mick West]

Apple Maps is sometimes more up to date, but in this case less so, looking like it's some secret excavation of a flying saucer

 

[Svartbjørn]

We all know that they just put the solar collector there to cover up the alien crash site.. its obvious to anyone that just looks at it.

 

[Mick West]

Here's another video, this time of the Ivanpah facility, just South of Las Vegas. Ivanpah has three collector fields, so is a little more distinctive. Looks like this might be an occasional thing for the foreseeable future.




It's the type of bunk that's self correcting, as the location is known, and the solar plants are easy to track down, so people will do so in the comments. Occasionally though it's going to get promoted by people like Scott Waring, and picked up by the click-hungry "Weird News" segments of the tabloid media.

Hopefully a useful illustration of how odd looking things can have perfectly reasonable explanations

 

[Gridlock]

In my day UFOs had to fly to be UFOs....

 

[Trailblazer]

In my day UFOs had to fly to be UFOs....

Apparently the Tonopah solar farm has been accused of cooking birds that get too close...



... so you could say it is an identified frying object.

 

[Mick West]

The Ivanpah plant is also a visual problem for pilots - sometimes "blinding" them with the bright light. There were a few stories about this last year, but not much this year. You have to be pretty close to it.

http://docketpublic.energy.ca.gov/P...T153414_Heliostat_Positioning_Plan_Report.pdf

 

[Mick West]

Perhaps this was too silly even for the Daily Mail, they have done a hurried update to the story:


But show a photo of the wrong facility, which will keep the speculation going:

 

[Auldy]

I wonder if the multi-million dollar businesses that run Crescent Dunes and Ivanpah subscribe to Harry Rhodes' et al views on SRM etc and that these asshole planes are flying too close and blocking their solar plants with contrails, potentially loosing millions of dollars in electrical power generation.

But seriously, surely the owners have conducted cost-benefit analysis studies for these type of "problems" which may be available someplace?

 

[Trailblazer]

I wonder if the multi-million dollar businesses that run Crescent Dunes and Ivanpah subscribe to Harry Rhodes' et al views on SRM etc and that these asshole planes are flying too close and blocking their solar plants with contrails, potentially loosing millions of dollars in electrical power generation.

But seriously, surely the owners have conducted cost-benefit analysis studies for these type of "problems" which may be available someplace?

From Wikipedia:

In November 2014, Associated Press reported that the plant was producing only "about half of its expected annual output". The California Energy Commission issued a statement blaming this on "clouds, jet contrails and weather".[14] However, in the first quarter of 2015, Ivanpah generation was up 170 percent over the same quarter in 2014 – 108 gigawatt-hours compared to 40 GWh, according to the Energy Information Administration.[15]

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

 

[Raccoon]

The dutch (lemme call it weirdo site) www.niburu.co also has an article about it. And they claim it furthermore that the taker of that shot had three shots left on his phone and claimed that the battery was full?!

http://niburu.co/index.php?option=c...eming-vanuit-vliegtuig&catid=34:ufo&Itemid=47

 

[Whitebeard]

The dutch (lemme call it weirdo site) www.niburu.co also has an article about it. And they claim it furthermore that the taker of that shot had three shots left on his phone and claimed that the battery was full?!

http://niburu.co/index.php?option=c...eming-vanuit-vliegtuig&catid=34:ufo&Itemid=47

Via google translate for non dutch speakers...

The next observation was received by the MUFON organization , which the witness gives the following explanation :

I was aboard an American Airlines flight from San Jose, California to Houston , Texas on October 30, 2015 .

I suddenly saw a blinding white light in the desert near Luning and Gabbs , Nevada .

A large silver disc was visible from the plane that seemed to lie in the middle of the desert. From the disc shot small white orbs upwards .

The disk itself had several lights that were literally dazzling.

I took my phone to try to make some pictures until the battery is depleted. Although the battery was fully charged , I could not take more than six pictures.

The captain of the aircraft has never said anything and at some point the object disappeared behind a ridge .

None of the other passengers seem to have noticed anything because nobody said anything else .

Once I got home , I have the images presented to several people who work in the Air Force with the question of whether they had ever seen anything like it . The response of all was negative.

At first I thought maybe it was a satellite , but now I do not know anymore . What could this have been?

The case is registered at MUFON under number 72 656

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[Raccoon]

Thank you, Whitebeard. Ofcourse the little ufos can also be easily explained: reflection of the solar array on the window of the plane.

 

[deirdre]

Via google translate for non dutch speakers...

i'm confused. what's MUFON? when i went to a site called MUFON with ufo pics this story doesnt show anywhere.

a sight called "ufo daily sighting" has it posted as "mufon case #72656 (Nov 23 2015)..is this site part of the MUFON network?

and "openmindstv" has "mufon case#72636" as happening on October 8 2015. <i only add this because if the photo snapper didnt report his UFO until almost 4 weeks later his memory could be sketchy about his battery.

anyway, wheres the original story? on that ufo daily site?

 

[Whitebeard]

i'm confused. what's MUFON? when i went to a site called MUFON with ufo pics this story doesnt show anywhere.

a sight called "ufo daily sighting" has it posted as "mufon case #72656 (Nov 23 2015)..is this site part of the MUFON network?

and "openmindstv" has "mufon case#72636" as happening on October 8 2015. <i only add this because if the photo snapper didnt report his UFO until almost 4 weeks later his memory could be sketchy about his battery.

anyway, wheres the original story? on that ufo daily site?

MUFON = Mutual UFO Network
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_UFO_Network

The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is an American-based non-profit organization that investigates cases of alleged UFO sightings. It is one of the oldest and largest civilian UFO-investigative organizations in the United States.

MUFON was originally established as the Midwest UFO Network in Quincy, Illinois on May 31, 1969 by Walter H. Andrus, Allen Utke, John Schuessler, and others. Most of MUFON's early members had earlier been associated with the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).

The organization now has more than 3,000 members worldwide, with a majority of its membership base situated in the continental United States. MUFON operates a worldwide network of regional directors, holds an annual international symposium, and publishes the monthly MUFON UFO Journal. The group now has more than 75 field investigators, as well as specialized teams to investigate possible physical evidence of any extraterrestrial craft. The network trains volunteers to be investigators, and teaches them how to interview witnesses, perform research, and how to draw conclusions from the evidence. Although investigators are not paid, they must pass both an exam based on a 265-page manual, and a background check.

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To be fair, there is no reference on their website to 'case #72636', and even the internal search threw up no responses. So I suspect it was reported, given a case number, then when it became pretty obvious what it was not followed up on or reported.

 

[Raccoon]

It's the policy obviously of Niburu.co that they often put in fantasized paragrahs in their articles. To fill up the gaps I guess. The site is run by some guys who are... how shall I put it politely... has a tiny screw loose. They also mostly post stories that are COMPLETELY untrue, and completely made-up.

And as far as I can see @ Google, there is no case #72636 whatsoever. (or the people of Niburu have lied... again.)

 

[Gridlock]

I thought they might be referring to NUFORC but they have no case numbers, and the recent Nevada entries are just a huge list of people who saw the Trident test.

http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxlNV.html

 

[Raccoon]

I thought they might be referring to NUFORC but they have no case numbers, and the recent Nevada entries are just a huge list of people who saw the Trident test.

http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxlNV.html

Really? Are there really people that don't know how a rocket looks like when they see one?

 

[Trailspotter]

Really? Are there really people that don't know how a rocket looks like when they see one?

Would you really recognise one when you see something like this?

https://lessthanamateur.wordpress.c...t-we-saw-from-the-salton-sea-on-bombay-beach/

 

[Raccoon]

Would you really recognise one when you see something like this?

https://lessthanamateur.wordpress.c...t-we-saw-from-the-salton-sea-on-bombay-beach/

what the frag is that??? :O

 

[Svartbjørn]

what the frag is that??? :O

thats a rocket test

 

[Efftup]

Well NOW I would know to possibly recognize one but I wouldn't have before.