Image released of mysterious object shot down over Yukon in 2023

Mick West

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Article:
An image of the unidentified object shot down over Canada's Yukon territory in February 2023 has been obtained by CTVNews.ca.

Released through a Canadian freedom of information request, the grainy image appears to be a photocopy of an email printout.

Heavily redacted documents show how the image was approved for public distribution within days of the headline-grabbing incident, but then held back after a public affairs official expressed concerns that releasing it "may create more questions/confusion."


Document attached.
External Quote:
The best description we have is: Visual – a cylindrical object. Top quarter is metallic, remainder white. 20 foot wire hanging below with a package of some sort suspended from it.
 

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From Wikipedia, and please note that they call this speculation:
External Quote:


Amateur radio enthusiasts speculated that the object may be an amateur radio pico balloon with callsign K9YO, from the fact that the balloon's last reported contact was immediately before it drifted over the Yukon, at around the same place and time where the shootdown was reported. The balloon had been airborne for 124 days and circumnavigated the globe 7 times before being reported missing. High-altitude, circumnavigational pico balloons cost between $12 and $180, weigh less than 6 lb and are filled with helium or hydrogen gas. Hobbyists have been using them for a decade. Pico balloons are small enough they are not considered a hazard to aircraft, and thus this balloon was registered with the Federal Communications Commission but not the Federal Aviation Administration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Yukon_high-altitude_object

External Quote:

A spokesperson for NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canadian military organization, told NPR on Friday that from their understanding, the FBI has spoken with the balloon hobby club.

Representatives from the FBI and NORAD told NPR on Friday that they have no new information to provide, with the FBI saying that "the overall recovery operation is ongoing." But Canadian officials said Friday that they called off the operation after they searched the "highest probability area" without success. "Given the snowfall that has occurred, the decreasing probability the object will be found and the current belief the object is not tied to a scenario that justifies extraordinary search efforts," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it was terminating the search.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo
 
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Is it possible we're looking at something like bokeh? It reminds me of the camera artifacts seen in the space shuttle tether video.
 
The original image is "washed out" so I added some contrast and took down the brightness.

Balloon.png



My speculation...

The camera is looking almost straight up.

What ever instrument caught this picture has poor dynamic range, and this is a difficult subject, and it's a photocopy, so it's a poor image.

The sky is dark in this B&W image. The balloon is brightly lit because it is translucent material, and is illuminated by the Sun, which is not far from the line of sight of the camera. The fabric of the balloon has more luminance than the sky.

Like this flag.

31072242754_351dbb16fa_b.jpg


The payload is the dark shape. It's in silhouette against the fabric of the balloon and is a featureless black.

Alternative scenario: The Sun is near the horizon and the black bar that stretches to our left is the shadow of the payload. The balloon is so high that the sunrays are shining "up" at it and the payload is casting a shadow on the balloon. Which would explain why the bar is somewhat wedge shaped.

Just speculation, though.


Edited: To include the fact that this is a photocopy. I just now read the attached article. It makes sense, as this is a washed out. image. But I'll bet the original is pretty bad too.
 
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Is it possible we're looking at something like bokeh? It reminds me of the camera artifacts seen in the space shuttle tether video.
It puts me in mind of one of these images from a reflector telescope that winds up showing the structure of the scope rather than the shape of what it is pointed at, but not focused on! (Sort of Bokeh with structure from the scope, I guess...)
post-274269-0-89669200-1705098418.jpg

Not EXACTLY like it, but close enough that I was wondering if it was something along those lines. But I think Mick has nailed it (again!) so unless somebody finds a flaw in his interpretation, I'm putting this pic in the "close but no cigar" file.
 
I'm not sure how much of a fit this is, but I don't think it's a tangent. I just saw this tweet and I'm curious: we're often told we don't get to see high quality UFO images from military sources because of "means and methods"... but they were fine with this incredible photo of the Chinese balloon that got shot down on the East coast, to the point we can see the shadow of the American military jet across it's surface.

What is a plausible reason we don't thus get to see HD photos of "UFOs", if they are all prosaic in nature?

This is the tweet:


Source: https://x.com/Disclosure_D/status/1838675782677283176


Image:

GYRHxXJWgAAXjsb.jpg
 
I'm not sure how much of a fit this is, but I don't think it's a tangent. I just saw this tweet and I'm curious: we're often told we don't get to see high quality UFO images from military sources because of "means and methods"... but they were fine with this incredible photo of the Chinese balloon that got shot down on the East coast, to the point we can see the shadow of the American military jet across it's surface.

What is a plausible reason we don't thus get to see HD photos of "UFOs", if they are all prosaic in nature?

Because if they were "prosaic" they wouldn't be UFOs, right? If there is a high-quality photo of a balloon, aircraft or, as you posted, a Chinese spy balloon it's just that; a balloon or aircraft clearly identifiable as such in a photo and NOT a UFO. By definition, a UFO is "unidentified". It's what the "U" stands for.

Are you insinuating that there are multiple photos of obvious alien space craft in HD that are being concealed? If so, just state your claim.
 
My speculation...

The camera is looking almost straight up.
Why would you speculate this to be the case? We know there was a Canadian CP-140 aurora who was on site during the Canadian shootdown. Those planes have amazing optics and long range telescopic lenses. Typically a side view would be far more common the a direct up view.
 
There is a older thread on these shootdowns: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/unidentified-objects-balloons-intercepted-by-us-aircraft.12866/

Besides the really cool photo, I think the documents also say a lot. We now know there are more photos and video collected by Canada. And we now know that they held back on releasing more info because of pressure from their US counterparts. Looks like the freedom of information laws are stronger in Canada that the US, because we haven't gotten anything from US FOIAs to my knowledge.
 
Because if they were "prosaic" they wouldn't be UFOs, right? If there is a high-quality photo of a balloon, aircraft or, as you posted, a Chinese spy balloon it's just that; a balloon or aircraft clearly identifiable as such in a photo and NOT a UFO. By definition, a UFO is "unidentified". It's what the "U" stands for.

Are you insinuating that there are multiple photos of obvious alien space craft in HD that are being concealed? If so, just state your claim.

I'm asking why all these claimed sightings of UFOs, whatever their genesis or origin... why would the DOD keep them so hush hush when it's obvious we would have high quality photography of all the various 2023 shootdowns? If they're all balloons, they could release it all.

What benefit is there to let conspiracies fester?
 
I'm asking why all these claimed sightings of UFOs, whatever their genesis or origin... why would the DOD keep them so hush hush when it's obvious we would have high quality photography of all the various 2023 shootdowns? If they're all balloons, they could release it all.

What benefit is there to let conspiracies fester?
Because the camera image is taken by a camera that is classified and if the image was released, the camera could be reverse engineered by China or other foes. They government is not hiding the image but the device that captured the image.
 
Because the camera image is taken by a camera that is classified and if the image was released, the camera could be reverse engineered by China or other foes. They government is not hiding the image but the device that captured the image.

Let me see if I can be more clear: we routinely see images like the balloon one I included. We've seen up close fighter photos of Russian planes, Chinese ones and more for quite some time. Another example:

https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-j...litary-aircraft-says-us-military/6896876.html

So if that's OK, and the balloon, why not the purported UFOs? There's nothing classified about the fact our jets are swimming with a bunch of basic camera gear like these two images. Everyone, adversaries included, knows.

So why not?
 
Why would you speculate this to be the case? We know there was a Canadian CP-140 aurora who was on site during the Canadian shootdown. Those planes have amazing optics and long range telescopic lenses. Typically a side view would be far more common the a direct up view.
Because it looks like a bottom view.
-How do you see a balloon as a circle? You look at it from straight above it or below it.
-How do you see the suspended payload silhouetted against the balloon? You look at it from straight below it.
-The lighting is consistent with a view from below. Either straight up or at an angle. That's just a judgement call, though.

I'm just reporting what it looks like to me. If it doesn't look like that to you... okay.

Maybe we'll get to see the original, soon.


The story says...
The image appears to have been taken from an aircraft below it, although that has not been confirmed.
I didn't read that until after I perceived it as a bottom view. I agree, though.

But, really, we don't even know if the photo was taken from an aircraft.
 
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A phrase or adjective should be coined that encapsulates the public affairs fumble of saying: "releasing the image may create more questions/confusion" while releasing that image.
Perhaps:
Corbellization (n.)
Pronunciation: /kôr-ˌbel-ə-ˈzā-shən/
they were compelled by law to release this
though it would make sense to release the better-quality originals now, as well
 
Because it looks like a bottom view.
If you start with the conclusion that it is a balloon, and work backwards I do see your point. But my argument is valid, far more likely it is a side view based on standard operating procedures for aircraft taking video/photo. And if it indeed is a side view your balloon theory goes out the window. I will wait for more solid information and context.
 
From Wikipedia, and please note that they call this speculation:
External Quote:


Amateur radio enthusiasts speculated that the object may be an amateur radio pico balloon with callsign K9YO, from the fact that the balloon's last reported contact was immediately before it drifted over the Yukon, at around the same place and time where the shootdown was reported. The balloon had been airborne for 124 days and circumnavigated the globe 7 times before being reported missing. High-altitude, circumnavigational pico balloons cost between $12 and $180, weigh less than 6 lb and are filled with helium or hydrogen gas. Hobbyists have been using them for a decade. Pico balloons are small enough they are not considered a hazard to aircraft, and thus this balloon was registered with the Federal Communications Commission but not the Federal Aviation Administration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Yukon_high-altitude_object

That would mean it was launched by the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade

Post from their blog
https://nibbb.org/blog/page/2/

You'll have to scroll down. These blog pages are long.
External Quote:

February 14th, 2023, K9YO, Missing in Action, KD9UQB, 7th Circumnavigation.

Pico Balloon K9YO last reported on February 11th at 00:48 zulu near Hagemeister Island after 123 days and 18 hours of flight.

The 84 hour NOAA Hysplit Trajectory showed Pico Balloon K9YO making the 7th circumnavigation on February 13th around 18:00 zulu, and then traveling north of the Day/Night Change Line.
Two photos from their blog. I can't tie these photos to specific launches, but this is at least the type they launch.
launch-.png
calvin-release-balloon-3.png

The distance at which the payload is suspended would shootdown the idea of a shadow of the payload on the fabric of the balloon. But there's something else hanging just below the balloon. Don't know what.


This story...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02...ntact-with-pico-balloon-over-alaska/101993722
A US hobby group says it lost contact with its pico balloon, last detected flying over south-east Alaska on February 11, sparking speculation it could be one of the three benign balloons downed by authorities.

... includes this photo
6cb8ca85b9ecd68679de1419dd181130.png

Not necessarily the exact balloon. But it might be the right type.

The luminance of these balloons is greater than that of the sky.
 
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Bottlecap Brigade balloon
balloon 1.png


Converted to B&W
balloon 2.png


More contrast
balloon 3.png


The dark bar in this photo is explained by a wrinkle in the fabric. That area has less luminance.

The dark area in the released photo may not be a silhouette of the payload. Maybe it's a wrinkle.

Caveat: The balloon in this photo is ascending, which means it's moving through the air... which would create turbulence... which would cause the envelope to distort.

On the other hand, this is an example of how the envelope may have less luminance in certain areas. Maybe a very subtle process is at work. Lighting is tricky.

We also don't know if the original photo is from a visible light camera.
 
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If you start with the conclusion that it is a balloon,
This happened during the Chinese Spy Balloon political flap.
Under pressure from an embarrassed government, the military was specifically looking for balloons.
It was reported as a balloon.
After it was shot at, it slowly descended... like a balloon with a punctured envelope.
A club reported one of their balloons missing... coincidentally.
It looks like a balloon, in that a balloon has a higher luminance than the sky and is generally round.
We know balloons exist.



and work backwards I do see your point. But my argument is valid, far more likely it is a side view based on standard operating procedures for aircraft taking video/photo.
Is that standard operating procedure? Or are side views more common because of common conditions?
No evidence that this photo was taken from this particular type of aircraft.

And if it indeed is a side view your balloon theory goes out the window. I will wait for more solid information and context.
Are you waiting? You seem to me to be piling assumptions on top of assumptions.


Why would you speculate this to be the case? We know there was a Canadian CP-140 aurora who was on site during the Canadian shootdown.
We do? Give some details.

Those planes have amazing optics and long range telescopic lenses. Typically a side view would be far more common the a direct up view.
So? If the plane was under the balloon at the time... Then the camera would look upward.

Analogy: Cars generally travel straight. That's standard procedure. They are only in a turn a small percentage of the time they are moving. So, even if it looks as if the car was turning in this dashcam video, it probably wasn't due to probability. Wut?

Frankly, my only real interest in this photo is: How could a photo of this kind of balloon end up looking like a mirror imaged capital C? What happened... photographically? What tricks was the light playing?
 
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Let me see if I can be more clear: we routinely see images like the balloon one I included. We've seen up close fighter photos of Russian planes, Chinese ones and more for quite some time. Another example:

https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-j...litary-aircraft-says-us-military/6896876.html

So if that's OK, and the balloon, why not the purported UFOs? There's nothing classified about the fact our jets are swimming with a bunch of basic camera gear like these two images. Everyone, adversaries included, knows.

So why not?
I agree. The back engineering the camera argument doesn't seem right to me.

I think this is just a case of bureaucrats being bureaucrats.
download.png
 
What the US government decides to release or not of footage from its classified platforms seem to be often a balance between propaganda effect and the risk of useful information on the platform being made available to an adversary.

That Chinese jet footage seems to be from a non military sensor, possibly even a phone camera and probably reveals more about the Chinese aircraft than it does about US military sensor capabilities.
 
External Quote:
The best description we have is: Visual – a cylindrical object. Top quarter is metallic, remainder white. 20 foot wire hanging below with a package of some sort suspended from it.
This doesn't coincide with the photograph at all - unless the camera was pointing straight up at the bottom (white) part of the object, with the package dangling beneath.
 
But, really, we don't even know if the photo was taken from an aircraft.
If the photo was released by Canadian authorities, that doesn't mean it was actually TAKEN by Canadian authorities, and as far as I've seen on this thread no camera specs or conditions were described. Might this be a picture (or a photocopy-of-a-photocopy of the Nth generation photocopy) taken by the hobbyists, looking straight up at it when it was launched? If a tentative identification was made, I'm sure the Canadians would have asked them to furnish a photo of the balloon, wouldn't they?
 
As the object appears vaguely horseshoe-shaped, I looked up 'horseshoe-shaped balloon' on Google Images. There are actually quite a lot of them, some of them intended as good luck symbols, and others as the letter U. But none of them are a particularly close match to the object in the photo.

I agree that it is probably a balloon, but I wondered if we should consider a runaway kite as an alternative? The descriptions refer to some kind of long string hanging from it, which would be consistent with a kite. Horseshoe-shaped kites do exist, some of them described as inflatable, and some of them used for windsurfing. Some experimental types are proposed for harvesting wind energy. There is a technical paper here:

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/7/3061
 
This thing was very high and fairly large as far as I can make out, maybe above the service ceiling of a lot of even military aircraft. A kite does not fit the profile.

A high altitude balloon photographed from below with a payload hanging from it with perhaps a shadow from the payload and attachment point causing the dark area seems to match the image.

As to why the government doesn't just it was a balloon of prosaic origin and leaves wiggle room, is just likely default military secretiveness and unwillingness to confirm/deny anything. Perhaps we are suppose to read between the lines and assume balloon based on the text released that certainly seem likely, there are those that will read between the lines and assume NHI craft etc
 
External Quote:
The best description we have is: Visual – a cylindrical object. Top quarter is metallic, remainder white. 20 foot wire hanging below with a package of some sort suspended from it.
This doesn't coincide with the photograph at all - unless the camera was pointing straight up at the bottom (white) part of the object, with the package dangling beneath.
I suspect that the description, "Top quarter is metallic..." is a misperception. The luminance was greatest there, giving the impression of a shiny surface. We're not given any information as to how the witness was viewing this thing. Naked eye at a great distance?
 
I'm not sure how much of a fit this is, but I don't think it's a tangent. I just saw this tweet and I'm curious: we're often told we don't get to see high quality UFO images from military sources because of "means and methods"... but they were fine with this incredible photo of the Chinese balloon that got shot down on the East coast, to the point we can see the shadow of the American military jet across it's surface.

What is a plausible reason we don't thus get to see HD photos of "UFOs", if they are all prosaic in nature?

This is the tweet:


Source: https://x.com/Disclosure_D/status/1838675782677283176


Image:

View attachment 71817

Seems like "means and methods" are still a plausible answer to me. This image is from inside the cockpit, not the plane's optics.
 
Why would you speculate this to be the case? We know there was a Canadian CP-140 aurora who was on site during the Canadian shootdown. Those planes have amazing optics and long range telescopic lenses. Typically a side view would be far more common the a direct up view.
That aircraft has a service ceiling of ~10000 metres according to Wikipedia which claims to be sourced from a Janes reference manual.

A balloon could be at almost double that altitude.
 
Seems like "means and methods" are still a plausible answer to me. This image is from inside the cockpit, not the plane's optics.
Was that shot from a U2? the wing looks like a U2, the U2 has a reported service ceiling of 21000 metres, so could fly above even a high altitude balloon.
 
This thing was very high and fairly large as far as I can make out, maybe above the service ceiling of a lot of even military aircraft. A kite does not fit the profile.

A high altitude balloon photographed from below with a payload hanging from it with perhaps a shadow from the payload and attachment point causing the dark area seems to match the image.

As to why the government doesn't just it was a balloon of prosaic origin and leaves wiggle room, is just likely default military secretiveness and unwillingness to confirm/deny anything. Perhaps we are suppose to read between the lines and assume balloon based on the text released that certainly seem likely, there are those that will read between the lines and assume NHI craft etc
I would presume it likely that it was deemed to be a balloon with a tethered payload and that it got caught in the burocratic loops. However, the argument that it might lead to more confusion than answers suggests that, because they could not (at that time) retrieve the wreckage, releasing images would have exposed them to questions and fanciful hypotheses to which they could not respond satisfactorily. The flight paths of the object should confirm whether or not it was airborne or had significant self-propelled power.

This is to compare unknowns with unknowns, but interesting that the shape of the Eglin UAP was notched as well only in the inverse but without the horseshoe hollow (image B, electro-optical, https://www.metabunk.org/threads/eglin-afb-uap.13373/post-314803). That was also cylindrical but had no tethered payload. We don't much to go on based on that Yukon UAP23 photo yet.
 
I would presume it likely that it was deemed to be a balloon with a tethered payload and that it got caught in the burocratic loops. However, the argument that it might lead to more confusion than answers suggests that, because they could not (at that time) retrieve the wreckage, releasing images would have exposed them to questions and fanciful hypotheses to which they could not respond satisfactorily. The flight paths of the object should confirm whether or not it was airborne or had significant self-propelled power.

This is to compare unknowns with unknowns, but interesting that the shape of the Eglin UAP was notched as well only in the inverse but without the horseshoe hollow (image B, electro-optical, https://www.metabunk.org/threads/eglin-afb-uap.13373/post-314803). That was also cylindrical but had no tethered payload. We don't much to go on based on that Yukon UAP23 photo yet.
Yeah unfortunately a lot of thing just look like blobs in low information images.
 
Was that shot from a U2? the wing looks like a U2, the U2 has a reported service ceiling of 21000 metres, so could fly above even a high altitude balloon.
The picture on the left was shot from a U2. The one on the right is the new image, with unknown provenance.
 
I agree. The back engineering the camera argument doesn't seem right to me.
It feels more like a general rule of thumb of "if you don't have to, don't, since it is hard to be sure what secret might slip out" when it comes to releasing stuff. Look how much info MB can derive from the assorted images that get analyzed here, imagine what we might do with access to cutting edge equipment and large chunks of funding! Obviously a rule of thumb can be superseded by other concerns. But when there is no real advantage to releasing, keep you cards hidden.
 
This thing was very high and fairly large as far as I can make out, maybe above the service ceiling of a lot of even military aircraft. A kite does not fit the profile.
Please elaborate on this. Not sure how you can come to that conclusion with nothing else in view in a (cropped?) poor quality photocopy reproduction of a photo from which to scale or interpolate size or altitude.
A high altitude balloon photographed from below with a payload hanging from it with perhaps a shadow from the payload and attachment point causing the dark area seems to match the image.
I agree this scenario could produce an image similar to what was released (and as nicely illustrated by @john.phil in #12 above), but I still have seen nothing that conclusively proves the original photo was taken from underneath looking (almost straight) up. In this screenshot from the Korean sighting I posted in #6 above, we see a very similar shape that's clearly not seen/photographed looking straight up. In fact, if the Korean object had not rolled into the camera, we'd probably not been able to see the "c" shape.
Screenshot_20240925_083056_Chrome.jpg
Why couldn't the released image have been taken from above looking down? It was at ~ 40K ft when shot down (see below), certainly below the 50K ft service ceiling of the CF-18s and F-22s involved.

External Quote:
"The object was flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet, had unlawfully entered Canadian airspace and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight. The object was shot down approximately 100 miles from the Canada-United States border over Canadian territory in central Yukon," Anand said in a news conference on Saturday evening.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/norad-additional-object-northern-canada/index.html
 
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