Four Corners - Large Disk Seen From Private Plane at FL210 [Irrigation Circles]

[Gary C]

Another question that believers never seem to care about is, "why would a UAP be doing this in the first place?"
For UAP insert a. Alien Space Craft, b. Interdimensional Visitor, c. Classified Military Operation, d. Unknown Foreign Adversary
What possible useful information could any of the above hope to gain from hovering over a corn field in broad daylight?
Zipping around an aircraft carrier strike group to collect electronic intelligence (ELINT) data? Okay maybe.
A corn field? Not so much.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

This is a bit naïve. And a false dichotomy

What it means to me - and this is speculation/opinion:
Possible evidence of impaired judgment on Elizondo's part. His behavior may suggest a diminished capacity for reality testing—difficulty distinguishing subjective impressions from objective facts. This is not indicative of psychosis, but rather a potential decline in executive function, particularly in the domains of cognitive flexibility and social foresight. The inability to anticipate the public's likely reaction reflects deficits in theory of mind and predictive modeling of others' perspectives. The image likely appeared highly salient to him in the moment, forming a sort of "private reality" driven by internal narrative coherence rather than external validation. Grandiosity, while not necessarily pathological, may contribute to this misjudgment by inflating confidence in personal intuition over critical scrutiny.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

This flying carpet photo was submitted to me by the mayor of a major beach city in the northern hemisphere region. (No, really!) We should have a central repository for flying carpet sightings where solid citizens can submit photos and witness reports without fear of ridicule.

 

[Mick West]

Elizondo has released a video statement

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbV1fQXDOrM


He says the photo was given to him that morning. He never said it was a UFO, just an example of something a pilot said.

He says it was a distraction, and he apologizes. He says there were lots of other important things. He accepts full responsibility. He thinks people should not ridicule the pilot.

"The person who shared the photograph with me is very upset and very concerned."

Lue Elizondo 00:00
Hi folks. Lou Elizondo here,

Lue Elizondo 00:04
I thought I'd take a few minutes and talk to you folks about a interesting week we had on Capitol Hill for the most part. I think by and large, it was very successful. But I do want to address something

Lue Elizondo 00:17
I during part of this, this forum that we had on Capitol Hill. Right before we started, I was provided a photograph from a private pilot who had asked me, he was concerned that there was no real reporting mechanism, and we've known there was no real civilian reporting mechanism for private pilots to report UAP. And he took a few moments and explained to me what he saw surrounding this photograph, and so I made the command decision right there and then that I would use that photograph as a as an example of why we need some sort of civilian reporting system for our civilian pilots. Now that the military is taking this topic seriously, we still have this big gap between civilian aviation and military aviation. And so I made the determination right there and then to go ahead and use that photograph as a as an example.

Lue Elizondo 01:12
And looking back now that people have reacted the way they have, I just want to make it clear I did. I did say several times a photograph has not been vetted, and quite frankly, I did not have the time at that moment to vet it myself, but I did think it was interesting and important enough to at least use it as an example why we need civilian reporting. And unfortunately, I think that message got confused. Now it's possible I did not communicate it effectively, and if that's the case, I accept full responsibility. But I think it's important for you all to know that the intent of that was not to say, hey, look, this is a UFO. I never said that. It was to say, Look, here is an example of a photograph taken by a private pilot who doesn't know what it is, and what he described to me, I took at face value that he was telling me the truth, and I still believe that individual was telling me the truth, and I think we need to be careful. We come out, we we take a photograph again that had been, already been told, had not been vetted, right? So I said, Look, folks, hasn't been vetted. I just received it that morning.

Lue Elizondo 02:13
There was a lot going on. I made the decision to share that. And I made that decision because I thought it would be helpful in the conversation. Clearly looking back now, it's not it was a distraction to everything that a lot of people, lot of hard work by a lot of people did to put this form on for you, the American people. You not me. I don't need it. It's for you. And I sincerely apologize that this photograph became a distraction and became the one thing people are now talking about when there was really so much more.

Lue Elizondo 02:47
There really important things. We had folks like Mike Gold talking perspectives of NASA and and Anna talking about business and NSF the National Science Foundation. We had Chris Mel and Admiral Gallaudet and all these wonderful people, Dr Eric Davis, telling you information that I thought was very, very important, and also the members of Congress. And so once again, I hope that this does not become an unnecessary distraction. I feel that it is, and if it makes people feel better, I will accept full responsibility. But it wasn't intended to fool anybody or say, hey, look, here's a picture of a real UFO.

Lue Elizondo 03:24
It's like, Hey, here's a real photo taken by a pilot who is confused, who doesn't know where to report things and what he actually thought he saw he believed. And so rather than ridiculing that, I think, you know, it'd be a lot more helpful and beneficial if we could have a conversation about it instead of a fist fight about it. We always seem to have these fist fights in the in the UFO community, with these weird knee jerk reactions. And I'm telling you, it's not helpful for people who want to come out and tell the truth, if they're worried about being a lambasted, or their photograph, or their quote, unquote evidence being ripped to pieces. Uh, instead of looking at it constructively and saying, Hey, look, we don't think this is, you know, the that photograph doesn't show anything anomalous. It shows X, Y, Z, that's fine. But the person who shared that photograph with me right now is, is, is very upset and very concerned.

Lue Elizondo 04:19
And, you know, I hope in the future, we can take a breath for a moment and try to treat each other a little bit more kindly. Okay, this is, this is tough work. A lot of efforts been put into this. And and Congress is going out on a limb and taking a big risk as well doing this. And if there are hiccups, hiccups happen, guys, and I apologize, and again, I will accept full responsibility, like I always do. It was not intentional. It wasn't intended to mislead anybody. It's intended to drive home a point that there is a pilot out there and many of them just like him, who have nowhere to report UAP information. And that was the that was the whole point of that photograph. And I actually took the time.

Lue Elizondo 04:59
Time, the moment I received it, I made a judgment call right there. You know what? I think this is important enough to help drive the point home, whether it's a crop circle, a tennis shoe or a real UAP. The point is that there are 1000s of people out there that that are in desperate need of some sort of resolution, and so I was trying to use that photograph to drive that point home. Now, obviously, if that did not get communicated, that's my fault, and that's my issue, and I will absolutely own that as I do every one of my mistakes. But let's not forget, guys, there's a lot of good stuff that was said in that meeting by a lot of people other than myself, and that's really what I think you need to take home from this.

Lue Elizondo 05:39
You know, we've got a long way to go in this conversation. And again, people have been working very, very hard to do this. None of us have been paid to do this. We're doing it out of our own time, spending our own money, traveling long distances, disrupting our families to do this. And so I just ask you to please just take a breath for a moment and give people a break. Sometimes, you know, nothing is done maliciously to confuse you or try to derail disclosure. If anything there's, if there's one thing you should know about me, man, is I will do and just about anything for disclosure to happen. So with that said, Folks, I hope we can continue to move forward, not allow this to be a major distraction. If it makes you feel better to blame you, then, by all means, do it. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, because a lot of folks gave a lot in that meeting for you to have access to information that they didn't need to do they didn't have to do it. I certainly didn't have to do it, nor did anybody else.

Lue Elizondo 06:41
So with that said, I just hope that you know, if you want to get mad at anybody, makes you feel better, get mad at me. But a lot happened, and I said it was a rather, rather, rather very, very, very important form, and I hope you would agree that forums like that in the future need to happen for greater transparency. Now it's also, you know, very, very possible we could have turned around and just recorded everything and not live streamed it and go ahead and edit it later, and you would never know, but part of transparency is being truthful and honest with everybody and letting people see for everything as it is. So I made a call to go ahead and show that photograph, because I thought it was important enough that it would help drive drive home the point that we need a reporting mechanism for our civilian pilots. If I fail to achieve that, I sincerely apologize, and that is my responsibility, and only my responsibility. So with that said, I hope you all have a good day. Take care.

 

[Ann K]

This flying carpet photo was submitted to me by the mayor of a major beach city in the northern hemisphere region. (No, really!) We should have a central repository for flying carpet sightings where solid citizens can submit photos and witness reports without fear of ridicule.
View attachment 79986

Reminds me of this old photo:

 

[NoParty]

In Post #108 I complained that Elizondo used 443 words to kind of address yesterday's mess, but without any mention/admission of what was actually in the pic he was showing.

So now he puts out a video, of 1,466 words...and still refuses to say what his "important"
picture actually showed. I get that it's embarrassing to say something like:
"What I was trying to sell as a 600-1,000 foot silver space ship, was actually just irrigation circles," but having everybody else talk about what it was, when you won't...not a good look.

I've got other beefs with his video, but for brevity I'll leave it at this one...

 

[flarkey]

Lue Elizondo seems to be deflecting here and trying to turn this into an issue about pilot reporting. He didn't say that a pilot saw something strange and didn't know how to report it. Lue specifically said that the pilot saw a 'lenticular object' and 'look at the shadow being cast - it is significantly large" and "the object is potentially between 600 to 1000 feet in diameter", "It is a lenticular object and it is silver". The point he was making was that it was an unidentified craft that was seen and that the pilot didn't know how to report it - not that it was just something generally unusual.

I could accept his excuse that this was just a bad judgement call, but in this topic judgement is everything. If he makes bad judgement calls like this one and the Romanian Mothership / chandelier, what other bad judgement calls has he made regarding ufos... ?

 

[Mendel]

He's operating in Coulthart mode: someone spins him a good yarn, ideally with a photo, he goes public with it.

Vetting is done before publication.
If you publish and don't vet the tale first, you're publishing unvetted, and will be held responsible for the fallout of that irresponsible action.

If the ONLY picture he had to make the case that pilots need a reporting mechanism was something he got handed that morning, how urgent is it really?

 

[Charlie Wiser]

Elizondo's video response is pure deflection, or at the very least an illustration of his priorities - trustworthy sources just aren't important to him.

• It's not remotely plausible that a pilot mistook irrigation circles for something anomalous, given the sheer number of similar circles in the area.
• In any case, since the photo exactly matches the Jan 19, 2017 satellite image from Copernicus (if skewed slightly and with colors altered), no "pilot" took the photo.
• Elizondo's source lied to him about taking the photo, which Lue doesn't address - instead the pilot is now "upset and concerned"?! So the source is still lying to him to cover up his previous lie.

I had thought Elizondo might admit that the guy in the hallway said someone else took the photo (thus removing his culpability and placing it on an unknown person) and that Elizondo removed the middle man for simplicity when he described the photo before Congress. But no, he's doubling down on his source being the actual witness.

I made an overlay video to illustrate how the UFO photo matches a screenshot I made from Copernicus, thus proving (to my satisfaction, anyway) that there was no pilot.


Source: https://x.com/likeitmatters3/status/1918563968441876923

 

[Charlie Wiser]

you seem to be assuming the civilian pilot was an area pilot who was flying the plane. could be calling the guy a "civilian pilot" is just an appeal to authority.

there arent that many circles in that immediate area. maybe the "pilot" was just some dad from Long Island flying in another plane who had never seen irrigation circles before. when you hit the google map coordinates the circles are upside down..from that view there would be other circles in sight..but not if you rotate the map the right way.

I see 18 circles within 9mi of the "UFO" circles. These presumably change in visibility depending on the season and year.

 

[Smythe Bacchus]

Elizondo: "The person who shared the photograph with me is very upset and very concerned."

If Elizondo's source is genuine pilot, then that person's "concern" could relate to reputational damage, which is a valuable commodity for a pilot. Elizondo is obviously correct in pointing out the traditional reluctance to report UFO sightings due to fear of ridicule for that reason. His statement however did not directly acknowledge his own role in fostering that result.

I made an overlay video to illustrate how the UFO photo matches a screenshot I made from Copernicus, thus proving (to my satisfaction, anyway) that there was no pilot.

@Charlie Wiser I acknowledge your efforts in demonstrating how the original image could have been faked using satellite imagery. IMO mocking animation over Elizondo at the end is skillful but not necessary!

I expect Elizondo has begun to understand how his actions have undermined the credibility of UFO research. The irony of this: UFO enthusiasts will come to this forum looking for objective, logical and traceable analysis - learning how hard this is to find in forums dominated by fantasy over reality.

Perhaps he should have posted the image here (or directed his source here), the best part being the affordable pricing of Metabunk

 

[Charlie Wiser]

@Charlie Wiser I acknowledge your efforts in demonstrating how the original image could have been faked using satellite imagery. IMO mocking animation over Elizondo at the end is skillful but not necessary!

The mocking was absolutely necessary.

I expect Elizondo has begun to understand how his actions have undermined the credibility of UFO research.

He can certainly see the backlash, but he doesn't understand the crux of his role in it, the danger of producing unvetted context-free photos to make a point - any point.

He still (apparently) believes his source was the photographer (which cannot be true), and by saying that pilot is "very upset and very concerned" about the backlash, he's emotionally manipulating his followers into feeling bad for the pilot and angry at anyone who doesn't fall in line to swallow the BS.

And so, the mocking will continue.
(The video was made for Twitter, where I mock anyone worthy of it.)

Perhaps he should have posted the image here (or directed his source here), the best part being the affordable pricing of Metabunk

This is why his entire argument makes no sense. Civilian pilots are scared to report sightings? That's their problem. They can post here or anywhere else to crowdsource possible explanations. It's free, it's risk-free, it's anonymous, it's been proven time and again to be valuable. Elizondo is trying to create a problem so he can provide the solution (using $1B from Congress).

 

[Mendel]

Civilian pilots are scared to report sightings? That's their problem. They can post here or anywhere else to crowdsource possible explanations. It's free, it's risk-free, it's anonymous, it's been proven time and again to be valuable.

• "The other day, I saw something I can't explain, and recorded it, do you have any ideas what it could be?" plus date/time/location works reasonably well. Sometimes we can explain it, other times we come up with good suggestions we can't verify because we lack data.

• "4 years ago I saw this unnatural thing, can you confirm?" is an uphill struggle, because the person is looking for the kind of confirmation only UFO believers will provide. (But they can't really verify it's a UFO, either.)

 

[NoParty]

"The person who shared the photograph with me is very upset and very concerned."

A) I'm not 100% convinced that there is a person that provided said image to Elizondo.
Lue has some major credibility issues...I don't think they should be ignored.

B) Why would this alleged pilot person actually be concerned?
Yes, I concede that other pilots might tease him/her at the Christmas party
for mistaking prosaic irrigation circles for a giant, silver space ship.
But how is even that possible, since Elizondo did not give a name or
even weak identifying info??
(Unless, secretly, Lue was doing one of those movie things, where the first
letter of every sentence of his defense, can be used to spell the pilot's name:
"So, as I was saying...Unidentified aircraft have been...Last night some kitchen orbs...
Later that night...You'd think vetting would be a good thing, but...")

 

[jarlrmai]

Pearl clutching about witnesses is classic UFO fan defense theatre, think of all the pilots mean sceptics have upset over the years by suggesting they may have occasionally made entirely understandable errors.

 

[Ravi]

It is getting fun now, did he show any other picture recently? I mean, it would only take a day or two to find the mundane answer, surely. I have no trust anymore these folks will show anything convincing. None. And they did it all to themselves.

 

[Ann K]

Civilian pilots are scared to report sightings? That's their problem. They can post here or anywhere else to crowdsource possible explanations. It's free, it's risk-free, it's anonymous,

Remember back just a very few months, when pilots breathlessly reported Starlink satellites as mysterious anomalous lights that appeared and disappeared? After the first few dozen reports, explanations for those sightings got around the flying community and they learned what they were looking at. It remained a "gee-whiz" phenomenon for just a short time, and reports dwindled.

If pilots are reluctant to report something, my guess is that's largely because at the back of their minds they are thinking "Nobody will believe this!" That's the personal internal filter that translates to "If someone told me they saw this, I wouldn't believe it".

Let's face it, some people have an "inner skeptic" and some appear not to have it.

 

[Mendel]

If pilots are reluctant to report something, my guess is that's largely because at the back of their minds they are thinking "Nobody will believe this!" That's the personal internal filter that translates to "If someone told me they saw this, I wouldn't believe it".

A lot of the Starlink reports were framed as "is this military activity?"

I think the real problem is if you go to anyone in the news—Elizondo, Graves, Coulthart etc.—or the UFO databases, if they can't explain it right away, they'll label it as UFO (as Elizondo has done) and then you're "the guy who saw the UFO". That's what happened to the pilot here (if Elizondo's story can be trusted), he's had that picture for years and probably showed it to some friends and acquaintances, and they'd recognize the picture from Elizondo's claim, associate it with the guy, who then loses a bit of face as a result.

I'm not really sure where people could go to have unexplainable things explained (or at least guessed at) without being put in the "woo" corner, except here on Metabunk.

 

[deirdre]

I see 18 circles within 9mi of the "UFO" circles. These presumably change in visibility depending on the season and year.

View attachment 79996

yea all to the north, like i said.

 

[deirdre]

• "The other day, I saw something I can't explain, and recorded it, do you have any ideas what it could be?" plus date/time/location works reasonably well. Sometimes we can explain it, other times we come up with good suggestions we can't verify because we lack data.

• "4 years ago I saw this unnatural thing, can you confirm?" is an uphill struggle, because the person is looking for the kind of confirmation only UFO believers will provide. (But they can't really verify it's a UFO, either.)

elizondo doesnt want a central reporting place so they can determine what individual sightings actually are. he wants the feds to know where all the et ufos are showing up, so the feds can track extraterrestrial activity in earth.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

yea all to the north, like i said.

It doesn't matter which direction they're in, since the pilot at 21,000 ft would see many of them at the same time, or immediately before or after, the two that form the UFO illusion.

 

[Brian Dunning]

For the most part you can fly wherever you want, you're more likely to encounter restricted airspace in cities, but in the desert southwest US military training areas are also very common (and large). The FL210 = 21,000ft altitude, if correct, indicates this is a higher performance aircraft as you will need either a pressurized cabin or supplemental oxygen above 12,500ft.

A friend of mine rolls a PC12 and he always flies high teens or low twenties, the idea being you're above general and below commercial, and he's one of those guys who kicks back and naps while the G1000 drives.

 

[Giddierone]

Just adding this satellite photo from 19 Jan 2017 which needs to be heavily perspective warped in order for the fields in the foreground to appear as they do in Elizondo's image.

 

[Gaspa]

Elizondo's video response is pure deflection, or at the very least an illustration of his priorities - trustworthy sources just aren't important to him.

• It's not remotely plausible that a pilot mistook irrigation circles for something anomalous, given the sheer number of similar circles in the area.
• In any case, since the photo exactly matches the Jan 19, 2017 satellite image from Copernicus (if skewed slightly and with colors altered), no "pilot" took the photo.
• Elizondo's source lied to him about taking the photo, which Lue doesn't address - instead the pilot is now "upset and concerned"?! So the source is still lying to him to cover up his previous lie.

I had thought Elizondo might admit that the guy in the hallway said someone else took the photo (thus removing his culpability and placing it on an unknown person) and that Elizondo removed the middle man for simplicity when he described the photo before Congress. But no, he's doubling down on his source being the actual witness.

I made an overlay video to illustrate how the UFO photo matches a screenshot I made from Copernicus, thus proving (to my satisfaction, anyway) that there was no pilot.


Source: https://x.com/likeitmatters3/status/1918563968441876923

I have no issue at all with mocking Elizondo, his blunders are embarrasing enough so I think he is deserving of it.

But I really don't agree that it looks like the photo has been done in the way you reproduced in your overlay. I mean, you could do a similar overlay of pretty much any photo taken from an airplane, it doesn't mean "there was no airplane".

It could be the case that there is no pilot, but I see no evidence of it. The photo he showed has a lot more detail and better resolution than the Copernicus data. Especially, for me, the features that look like two rivers on each side of the circles that meet behind them have some depth to them in Elizondo's photo, and that is completely gone in your overlay.

Maybe he got pranked, maybe he is just an incompetent hoaxer himself, but as unlikely as it seems, it not impossible that a pilot took that photo a long time ago thinking "hey, this is fun, it looks like a hovering disk and its shadow", forgot about it, and then found it recently without remembering the larger context (the other irrigation circles around them) and was fooled by themselves. People can be that self-deceiving.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Maybe he got pranked, maybe he is just an incompetent hoaxer himself, but as unlikely as it seems, it not impossible that a pilot took that photo a long time ago thinking "hey, this is fun, it looks like a hovering disk and its shadow", forgot about it, and then found it recently without remembering the larger context (the other irrigation circles around them) and was fooled by themselves. People can be that self-deceiving.

IDK. I have a hard time believing any pilot that has flown anywhere out west would fly over some crop circles (it's just fun to call them that) and think it was a UFO. Even if they took the photo as a fun optical illusion, as soon as they looked at a few years later, they're going to know it's a circle crop. Most of us non-pilots here thought that almost immediately.

As for the pilot, I don't know a lot about General Aviation, but a Cessna 172 is one of the most common and ubiquitous private planes there are, and it has a service ceiling of 1400':

I'm thinking our pilot is in something more advanced than a 172 and is likely a more advanced pilot. As @Brian Dunning pointed out above, at 21,000' he's above GA and below commercial in an aircraft capable of that altitude with a likely pressurized cabin. This isn't some noob that's never seen a circle crop. Thus, I had the same idea as @Charlie Wiser, that this may not be an actual photo from an aircraft window.

If it is a photo out the window of an aircraft, I'm with you that it's just a fun "hey look at this" type thing. Or possibly a passenger that really wasn't sure what they were looking at. Even then, one would assume the pilot would have informed them.

Looking at the comparison photo from @Giddierone above, there is certainly more detail in pilot photo:

I'm wondering is some of that is seasonality. The left photo is late summer, the upper field is fallow or newly plowed for fall crops and the lower field, possibly alfalfa, has been harvested so it can go dormant in the fall. The right pilot photo is spring. The darker areas are green stuff that grow after the winter rains, particularly along the various draws and drainages. All with a light dusting of late season snow over it.

I realize Giddierone warped the satellite photo to match the pilot one, but that means anyone else could have done that with satellite imagery. I noticed some other crop circles changing colors dramatically just by changing the level of zoom in Google maps (post #91), so there could be this image out there on some mapping site at just the right level of zoom.

I'm not totally convinced by Charlie's argument, but the pilot photo seems to have a lot of grain and noise in it, like it was zoomed way in or someone has added grain. Recall that a few years ago, it was claimed a ~10 year old made the news by finding Mayan sites just by fooling around on Goggle maps. This just seems similar. Someone sees this UFO illusion and messes with it or manipulates it a bit and claims it's a photo from a plane. That makes more sense than a seasoned pilot getting fooled enough, that he needs Elizondo to look into it.

 

[deirdre]

It doesn't matter which direction they're in, since the pilot at 21,000 ft would see many of them at the same time, or immediately before or after, the two that form the UFO illusion.

i agree if the "civilian pilot" was the pilot actually flying the plane. obviously this is implied. but its also possible elizondo didn't think to ask.

in my scenario, fuzzy vision and looking out one side of the plane in an area you are not familiar with.. the "civilian pilot" doesn't need to be lying outright or deceiving elizondo outright. it is possible a civilian pilot from say NY was fooled by the optical illusion.

 

[Mick West]

Neither of the satellite images posted here is a match for Elizondo's photo. In particular look at the shadows on the sides of the draw (dry small valleys)

Not there in Charlie's - and the patterns of vegetation above the lighter circle are very different.

And this is obviously not the same photo. Compare the large light field below the dark disk and the contrast difference with the one to the left of it.

Quickly declaring it a fake is not helping. It's certainly a possibility, but unless you find an actual matching source photo then all you have is the same location looking similar.

And I don't see any issue with the transforms needed to get it to match. It's just a combination of viewpoint and focal length. When I did it in Sitrec it matched fine with a plane at 21,000 feet

 

[Mendel]

I'm wondering is some of that is seasonality. The left photo is late summer, the upper field is fallow or newly plowed for fall crops and the lower field, possibly alfalfa, has been harvested so it can go dormant in the fall. The right pilot photo is spring. The darker areas are green stuff that grow after the winter rains, particularly along the various draws and drainages. All with a light dusting of late season snow over it.

What should the actual colors be for the pilot photo?

 

[Giddierone]

Neither of the satellite images posted here is a match for Elizondo's photo.

Not arguing that it's the exact same image that Elizondo holds up. But you can't get around the fact that the circles and surrounding landscape and the animal tracks from the watering station did not appear in that configuration of light/dark at any time after January of 2017. This can be verified by reviewing the Sentinel 2 images at the link above.
The point of #183 is that it appears the photo — if it is from the satellite data — must have been manipulated to mimic one taken from an aircraft.

Should we just take it on faith that there was a pilot?

 

[Mick West]

Should we just take it on faith that there was a pilot?

Of course not, but we can't definitely claim that there was not.

The point of #183 is that it appears the photo — if it is from the satellite data — must have been manipulated to mimic one taken from an aircraft.

That sounds like a circular point. If it's from a satellite image then obviously it must have been manipulated. The question here is if it is from a satellite image, or not. The comparisons do seem to point to the date being wrong, at least. It makes a forgery seem more likely. But it does not prove it.

 

[Angatar]

If you want to argue that a 2017 capture is more likely than a 2021 capture that's one thing, but why introduce a satellite into the story? The date could just be wrong. Or maybe the 2021 date is correct and the satellite map captures you're comparing the photo to happened at times when the color was different due to the season.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

It's natural to suspect that the pilot is an imaginary person. One thing that doesn't make sense: This rather weak optical illusion is a product of this specific 2D image. It's not credible that anyone would mistake what he was seeing in real life. But this might be a "discovered UFO." The witness didn't see the UFO at the time but discovered it later in a photo that was taken for a different reason. Even that is hard to believe, though.

At the least, I think the story has been given some hard spin. Or Elizondo may have been hoaxed or trolled.

One version of this would be a "soft hoax." Some naïve person found this image on the Internet. He wanted to share this amazing UFO photo but was afraid he wouldn't be taken seriously. So he called himself a pilot to gain some gravitas. But there was no malicious intent. He just wanted the image to be taken seriously, because he himself - naïvely - thought it was important.

Who knows?

Elizondo has completely blown his own credibility and opened himself up to legitimate doubts about just about everything he says. The prima facie absurd "disinformation agent" stuff is coming from the crowd he has chosen to run with, so he's got no one to blame but himself on that one either.

 

[Mendel]

One version of this would be a "soft hoax." Some naïve person found this image on the Internet. He wanted to share this amazing UFO photo but was afraid he wouldn't be taken seriously. So he called himself a pilot to gain some gravitas. But there was no malicious intent. He just wanted the image to be taken seriously, because he himself - naïvely - thought it was important.

I'd call that malicious, though. You're deceiving someone to make them do what you want. It's clear-cut manipulation.

 

[jarlrmai]

The other big weird thing is would a pilot give a location 300 miles from the actual location? Who wrote the caption? It's so odd like it's "close" but not really close at the same time, the fact that it was near mostly featureless desert made brute force geolocation easier.

I kinda wish it had spun on for but before being found because more detail might have emerged about the "pilot" and the orginal photo.

 

[Ann K]

The other big weird thing is would a pilot give a location 300 miles from the actual location? Who wrote the caption? It's so odd like it's "close" but not really close at the same time, the fact that it was near mostly featureless desert made brute force geolocation easier.

I kinda wish it had spun on for but before being found because more detail might have emerged about the "pilot" and the orginal photo.

I think that ambiguity arises from the fact that more than one place is known as "four corners", not just the famous one. It's been mentioned on this thread by @Giddierone: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/fo...at-fl210-irrigation-circles.14173/post-343507

(There's a road near me in Ohio called "Forty Corners"; details about the origin of the name, I have no idea!)

 

[NorCal Dave]

What should the actual colors be for the pilot photo?

I guess we don't know. Maybe because we don't know the time of year.

But at least now, it looks like the lower (actually more northern) circle is possibly abandoned. Here how it looks on Google Maps right now (orientation flipped to match original, so north is down):

Original:

In addition, the idea that the pilot wouldn't understand what he is seeing is more problematic when one zooms out a bit from the UFO circles (standard north up):

There are several other circles that one would think should be visible from 21,000'. Zooming back in a bit, we see what appears to be several abandoned circles nearby (north up):

If the photo was taken in 2021, just 4ish years ago what would have been seen? Here are some photos for a 35 acre parcel for sale ~5 miles from the circle. About what one would expect, flat scrubland with some snow in season:

https://www.land.com/property/cr-3-rush-colorado-80833/22601987/

 

[Charlie Wiser]

I have no issue at all with mocking Elizondo, his blunders are embarrasing enough so I think he is deserving of it.

But I really don't agree that it looks like the photo has been done in the way you reproduced in your overlay. I mean, you could do a similar overlay of pretty much any photo taken from an airplane, it doesn't mean "there was no airplane".

It could be the case that there is no pilot, but I see no evidence of it. The photo he showed has a lot more detail and better resolution than the Copernicus data. Especially, for me, the features that look like two rivers on each side of the circles that meet behind them have some depth to them in Elizondo's photo, and that is completely gone in your overlay.

The Copernicus image has more details than Elizondo's - see also giddierone's post https://www.metabunk.org/threads/fo...at-fl210-irrigation-circles.14173/post-343768

Adjusting the contrast etc. in different ways brings out different features. I find it extremely unlikely that dips and shadows and comparative tones match - it would mean the pilot took that photo under exactly the same conditions as the satellite image, not to mention within the same few months (as the circles change appearance constantly).

 

[Giddierone]

If you want to argue that a 2017 capture is more likely than a 2021

It's not "more likely" it's definitive that the image Elizondo presented could not have been taken in 2021. Whether the image was taken from a plane (there is zero evidence this is true) or a satellite, the way the land has been managed (those circles are around 100 acres and change slowly)—and the frequent image captures every few days of the land—means that the closest match is from January 2017 and no similar matches occur at any time between then and today — I checked.

For example the field in the foreground develops into a circular farm after Jan 2017 (which is visible throughout 2021) and at other times the two main circles have bands across them, are the same tone, or have other obvious differences. e.g. "UFO" red, new crop circle blue.

Also, refer to the timelapse video in #116 that shows how the land changes during 2017.

look at the shadows on the sides of the draw (dry small valleys)

To play devil's advocate, these shadows can be emulated using Copernicus Browser's Sun Time settings, which leaves the possibility that the image Elizondo showed is a hoax based on the "stock asset" of a satellite photo from Jan 2017.

 

[Charlie Wiser]

View attachment 80016

I'm wondering is some of that is seasonality. The left photo is late summer, the upper field is fallow or newly plowed for fall crops and the lower field, possibly alfalfa, has been harvested so it can go dormant in the fall. The right pilot photo is spring. The darker areas are green stuff that grow after the winter rains, particularly along the various draws and drainages. All with a light dusting of late season snow over it.

Assuming the Copernicus dates are correct, the left photo was taken Jan 19, 2017: winter.

 

[Mick West]

The Copernicus image has more details than Elizondo's - see also giddierone's post https://www.metabunk.org/threads/fo...at-fl210-irrigation-circles.14173/post-343768

Adjusting the contrast etc. in different ways brings out different features. I find it extremely unlikely that dips and shadows and comparative tones match

But the shadows do not match. The patterns of vegetation seem to match, which indicates it's likely around the same date. But the photos are differently lit. Especially in the top 1/3 of the images. Here I've boosted the contrast a bit

And the Copernicus image has a fuzzy left edge on the light circle, and a different light region in the dark circle. These are not the same image. It is possible the Elizondo image was taken from a plane.