GM4AJK
Senior Member
A lot has been said recently that the significant increase in "cameras in pockets" hasn't translated to more useful UAP photos and videos. So, a while back, I thought, let's test this out. How easy is it to go from seeing something in the sky to grabbing a photo of it? As an amateur astronomer, satellite observer, and someone who looks up almost constantly when walking my dogs, I decided to ensure my iPhone 13 Pro was always "near to hand" while out and about. After a few weeks, the time finally arrived with the view of a lovely black triangle hovering over the Firth of Forth here in bonny Scotland.
The observant amongst you will already have realised that the approach to Edinburgh Airport's runway 24 is out over the Forth, and if you lived here, you'd know the landing lights as seen from the Fife side were pretty much a constant feature when RW24 is in use. So it was only a matter of time before an unusual alignment popped up, and sure enough, while walking the dogs last night, at 22:21 local time, one such alignment appeared. So my goal here was "from pocket to picture" as fast as possible, no setting up the camera for night mode, exposure, etc. Just open the camera app and fire on auto. So, before we continue, let's see the picture.
A couple of points worth mentioning here:-
So now that I have bagged my evidence of a super cool Black Triangle, it's time to do the legwork, which takes much longer than uploading the image to Twitter/X.
Starting with Flightradar24, I used its playback feature to load up what was happening at that time (22:21 local time, 21:21 UTC), and these were what was in the air at that time. The red circle was my location, looking south.
As can be seen, three aircraft are all in line with me, and as will be shown, below 10,000ft, the height at which they tend to switch on the forward-facing landing lights. Once discovered, I downloaded each aircraft's KML flight file from FR24 and saved it. In the past, I might have loaded these files into Google Earth, but now we have a better alternative designed for solving these sorts of sightings, @Mick West new SitRec tool.
After setting up my location, time and look direction I loaded the three KML files along with the captured image:-
Once set up was complete, it was obvious that the three planes formed the observation despite the fact that they're almost in a straight line type of sight.
It was an interesting exercise to go from seeing something to capturing that something using a phone camera, as I have often wondered how practical it is to expect Joe Public to do something like this. I did have the benefit of being somewhat prepared. Without that preparation, the triangle quickly dissolved into a straight line and then just two lights as the top light turned towards the airport and out of view.
The observant amongst you will already have realised that the approach to Edinburgh Airport's runway 24 is out over the Forth, and if you lived here, you'd know the landing lights as seen from the Fife side were pretty much a constant feature when RW24 is in use. So it was only a matter of time before an unusual alignment popped up, and sure enough, while walking the dogs last night, at 22:21 local time, one such alignment appeared. So my goal here was "from pocket to picture" as fast as possible, no setting up the camera for night mode, exposure, etc. Just open the camera app and fire on auto. So, before we continue, let's see the picture.
A couple of points worth mentioning here:-
- When the triangle was first noticed, it was almost equilateral in shape. But the time it took to get the iPhone out, open the camera app, point and shoot, the top-most light in the image had moved to the right, breaking the nice shape first observed
- The default iPhone Camera settings fired the flash on the camera. I wasn't expecting this, as I'd typically set up the app for night mode manually and adjust various settings for the best results, so the flash took me by surprise and slightly delayed the photo being taken.
- The picture does not do the sighting justice; it looked way cooler in real life, like a morphing Black Triangle, just like many witness reports I've read of similar events.
- Although I knew the camera app would store metadata for location and time, I still noted the time and direction I was looking. I didn't need to note down the location; it's a dog walk I've done 1000s of times, day and night, and know it well enough to know precisely where I was.
So now that I have bagged my evidence of a super cool Black Triangle, it's time to do the legwork, which takes much longer than uploading the image to Twitter/X.
Starting with Flightradar24, I used its playback feature to load up what was happening at that time (22:21 local time, 21:21 UTC), and these were what was in the air at that time. The red circle was my location, looking south.
As can be seen, three aircraft are all in line with me, and as will be shown, below 10,000ft, the height at which they tend to switch on the forward-facing landing lights. Once discovered, I downloaded each aircraft's KML flight file from FR24 and saved it. In the past, I might have loaded these files into Google Earth, but now we have a better alternative designed for solving these sorts of sightings, @Mick West new SitRec tool.
After setting up my location, time and look direction I loaded the three KML files along with the captured image:-
Once set up was complete, it was obvious that the three planes formed the observation despite the fact that they're almost in a straight line type of sight.
It was an interesting exercise to go from seeing something to capturing that something using a phone camera, as I have often wondered how practical it is to expect Joe Public to do something like this. I did have the benefit of being somewhat prepared. Without that preparation, the triangle quickly dissolved into a straight line and then just two lights as the top light turned towards the airport and out of view.
