Debunked: Alien Pilot The Extraordinary Plane, UFO In Transformation

[Mick West]

An older Youtube video is being passed around again as if new. It's got a couple of blurry shots of planes that look a bit odd, so the video maker claims they are some kind of alien craft.



This supposed UFO looks really odd


Until you realize what it is, a blurry overexposed Piaggio P180 Avanti.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaggio_P-180_Avanti

The Piaggio P180 Avanti is an Italian executive transport aircraft with twin turboprop engines mounted in pusher configuration.[6] It seats up to nine passengers in a pressurized cabin, and may be flown by one or two pilots. The design is of three-surface configuration, having both a small forward wing and a conventional tail plane as well as its main wing, with the wing spars passing outside of the passenger cabin area.

Content from external source

And the weird odd shaped red plane is actually just a very normal jet, but with the camera shaking, so it's blurred. (Thanks to @Trailblazer for pointing this out). Here's the image adjusted for camera shake.


Original video:

 

[KAT]

HAHA. An airplane with a whiskers.

Could the red one be a crashing satellite? that square boxy look could be the solar panel array?

 

[Svartbjørn]

HAHA. An airplane with a whiskers.

Could the red one be a crashing satellite? that square boxy look could be the solar panel array?

The red one appears to me to be a trick of lighting, and the same plane that Mick has listed.

 

[Hevach]

Solar arrays are pretty fragile. They would be destroyed by atmospheric forces long before heating effects started showing up. You don't see much structure left in pictures of reentering satellites, they're usually breaking up before they start to burn like that, and the trail is usually bright enough that it's all you get in the picture anyway.


That is one weird looking plane. In those low resolution images, its outline looks like nonsense to me.

 

[Svartbjørn]

Solar arrays are pretty fragile. They would be destroyed by atmospheric forces long before heating effects started showing up. You don't see much structure left in pictures of reentering satellites, they're usually breaking up before they start to burn like that, and the trail is usually bright enough that it's all you get in the picture anyway.


That is one weird looking plane. In those low resolution images, its outline looks like nonsense to me.

I think its camera distortion... take a look:


If you go back a couple steps, youll see the red object in question.. a couple steps forward and you see that its a plane and pretty much the same color.. its just the blur caused by a low res camera catching a fast moving object in flight.

*EDIT.. ok dammit, it's not marking the place.. go to 3:34, thats where the video was supposed to link to.

 

[KAT]

Well there's 2 years between the red one and the whiskers one, so doubt it's the same plane. the red colour repeats on the contrail, so that would be the sun shining on it.

 

[Svartbjørn]

Well there's 2 years between the red one and the whiskers one, so doubt it's the same plane. the red colour repeats on the contrail, so that would be the sun shining on it.

Ah ok, didnt see the time stamps.

 

[KAT]

GOT HIM

skinny tail, huge square-tip wings, it's a STOL short take of and landing light plane

they come in 1 o 2 engine, 1 to 4 or 5 seaters, but can land on as little at 500 metres (of grass or sand).


this is only a model of one, but shows the proportions well.

Paint either of them red, blur the focus a little.....

 

[Trailblazer]

GOT HIM

skinny tail, huge square-tip wings, it's a STOL short take of and landing light plane

they come in 1 o 2 engine, 1 to 4 or 5 seaters, but can land on as little at 500 metres (of grass or sand).


Paint either of them red, blur the focus a little.....

I'm not sure which plane you are trying to match up with here? The only red-looking one I can see in the original video appears to be an ordinary jet distorted by camera movement and lit up by a low sun.



Look at the way the highlights have been stretched out into lines. The camera was moving almost perpendicular to the direction of flight, blurring the plane and making it look "tall".

Apply a transformation in the same direction and correct the colour a bit and it doesn't look very odd at all.

 

[KAT]

blurring the plane and making it look "tall".

Where do the square ends come from? can you blur something tapering to look square? or are you suggesting the square bit is fuselage? still the issue of tapered looking square.

 

[Trailblazer]

Where do the square ends come from? can you blur something tapering to look square? or are you suggesting the square bit is fuselage? still the issue of tapered looking square.

Yes, the "square" looking bit is the fuselage, as should be clear from the picture above. It looks as though the bright highlights on the aircraft are distorting the shape. The camera sensor seems to be overloaded somewhat at the nose of the plane, so the image is smeared out a bit, making the nose look more square than it really is.

I could probably have "squashed" the image even more to get a truer representation of the shape:


The area in the red ellipse, and the bright spot towards the tail, are too bright for the camera exposure.

 

[KAT]

truer representation of the shape:

Great, thanks. At this angle now, the top wing is obviously swept back, so obviously a wing; the shadow at front matches it. OK. In the original these looked more perpendicular to the square shape.

Oh well, I had fun finding those lovely STOL planes, at least.


EDIT: have we ever looked at what type of forces in UFOs make camera focus blurry? is it electro magnetic perhaps? or a photon acceleration issue?

 

[Trailblazer]

EDIT: have we ever looked at what type of forces in UFOs make camera focus blurry? is it electro magnetic perhaps? or a photon acceleration issue?

Autofocus is pretty hopeless when it comes to trying to focus on a small distant object in an empty sky. If you can't use manual focus then a good trick (with still cameras) is to half-press the shutter while pointing at a larger but still distant object, eg a tree or house roof, to get the focus locked near infinity, then reframe your shot with the object in question.

Obviously this can also lead to exposure problems if the area where you set the focus is much darker than the sky.

 

[KAT]

(with still cameras) is to half-press the shutter

A lot of these amateur vids these days seem to be done with phones, anyway, not sure they'd have such shutters buttons anyway. I did once see for sale a telephoto attachment for a phone.


EDIT: wow they still have them. Four in one kit {Telephoto+Fisheye+Wide Angle+Micro) around $20 on ebay. I might get one of those.

 

[Mick West]

I'm not sure which plane you are trying to match up with here? The only red-looking one I can see in the original video appears to be an ordinary jet distorted by camera movement and lit up by a low sun.



Look at the way the highlights have been stretched out into lines. The camera was moving almost perpendicular to the direction of flight, blurring the plane and making it look "tall".

Apply a transformation in the same direction and correct the colour a bit and it doesn't look very odd at all.

Thanks, I've added this to the OP: