"Pyramid" UFOs in Night Vision Footage - Maybe Bokeh?

[Jesse3959]

My point is: why are the clouds so defined? Do we expect to be able to see them so clearly given how out of focus the camera needs to be?

I'm replying to this again because I had mistakenly thought you were referring to the clouds in a different video which didn't have clouds.

So the clouds in the leaked navy video. They have soft fuzzy edges. They look normal that way because clouds, especially thin clouds, can and often do look that way, especially with NVD.

Remember that the fuzzy region is going to be about as thick as the diameter of the bokeh, because it is in fact lots of faint bokehs all along the border.

If you take a look, the clouds are no more defined than the width of the bokeh.

The clouds are not "so defined." It's just that we expect them to look soft and fuzzy, so they look perfectly normal that way, and defocus doesn't prevent them from looking normal in an NVD.

 

[Alphadunk]

There has been no indication anyone in the Navy or government consider the subject of the video to be "unidentified." Corbell claims he received the video in an email but hasn't named a source as far as I'm aware.

I'd agree that it is curious Gough responded so quickly to inquiries about the video but I'd guess people close to the UAPTF mission do keep tabs on popular UFO sites and Twitter just out of general interest. Nothing in her statement implies the video shows something that can't be explained and there have been no further statements from government sources that I've seen. Her statement can be found here and is quoted below: https://thedebrief.org/pentagon-confirms-leaked-ufo-images-are-authentic/

“I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations,” Pentagon Spokesperson Susan Gough told The Debrief in an email. John Greenewald, who runs the popular government document archive The Black Vault, also confirmed the videos were authentic via a statement from Gough.

I'd guess a big part of the UAPTF's mission has been to catalog videos or images like this that can fool the average person on first look into believing they're seeing something unexplainable.

 

[Oklahomeless]

“I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations,” Pentagon Spokesperson Susan Gough told The Debrief in an email. John Greenewald, who runs the popular government document archive The Black Vault, also confirmed the videos were authentic via a statement from Gough.

Here’s the rest of Susan’s quote, which some outlets are have omitted:
"As we have said before, to maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to potential adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examinations of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP," Gough said.

 

[Mick West]

including those incursions initially designated as UAP," Gough said.

That's standard language they have been using for about a year. Bears repeating though.

 

[jarlrmai]

And UAP is Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, a termed likely coined to include the possibility that there is no actual object (UFO) being seen, for instance sensor glitch or a glare or some other optical effect?

 

[RTM]

One of the main push back against this kind of analysis is that how can the US military not figure this out? Who is releasing this stuff? Is it just a UFO believer in the military, is this the kind of stuff that will be released in June? A lot of people are expecting earth shattering disclosures in June?

 

[jarlrmai]

That's the rub at the moment, if these videos were to show up attached to civilians this analysis is likely accepted by all but the the most insane, the veneer of being "confirmed by the Pentagon" is now elevating them to national press coverage, but really when you peak behind the curtain there is no confirmation of anything other that "yes these are videos that were filmed by US military personal."

The question of why are they not going any further I assume because while they can't stop them leaking to people like Corbell and any public statements either way about what analysis they did and the results of such analysis are is in no way beneficial to them as it gives away even the slightest hint of military process, they have to confirm if asked if they are filmed by military personnel.

There is a slight hint in this one though by the use if the word "initially" in the statement. However we have to assume at this point they don't really care about the apparently "growing" belief that the US DOD is saying aliens are real versus keeping opsec as to how they are investigating potential drone threats.

I think it's gone like this

US DoD: Foreign drones are a growing threat, report any unusual sightings with videos etc to the UAPTF/AATIP whatever.

USM personnel: Starts sending in whatever they get remember these are people with odd flying stuff around them all the time and all sorts of gear for sensing stuff, there's always going to be odd stuff cropping up, badly tuned gear, people using stuff they don't know how to correctly etc.

US DoD: Investigates them maybe some are drones from China, 99% are the usual planes, Venus, balloons etc.

TTSA Gimbal/Go Fast/Nimitz happen.

Videos that people sent to UAPTF etc start to leak, people think they can make cash, they've seen that the US DoD will just confirm that they were taken by military personnel and say not more and then the world thinks that aliens are about to land on the White House lawn.

 

[Mick West]

Updated video.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r2oaQWmqkk

 

[Jesse3959]

Updated video.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r2oaQWmqkk

Great video, Mick!

I got more video for you, an actual plane happened to fly over (20210415_215804.mp4) so I got that same flashing type pattern.

It's four files, uploading to the same place as before, and it should be done in a few hours.

I'll have try to and check the skies just at dusk and shortly after dusk to see if I can capture more airplanes another night. I only saw that one tonight then none after that. (I think I also saw a sat going by, since it didn't seem to be blinking.)

By way of background, I've been arguing off and on all day with some redditor who claims that it can't have been a plane because the clouds are so in focus(??), and that the observer was up on the upper crows nest desk and that the antenna was 16 feet away, so tonight I set up a fake antenna 16 feet away, focused the NVD on my toes, then looked around. My antenna looked pretty similar to their antenna, and the stars gave nice triangles.

I'm pretty sure the guy literally focused the NVD on his toes, then got busy recording things.

Oh, I also made a scale diagram to facilitate the measurement from observer to antenna: https://i.postimg.cc/XjHJd1XM/USS-Russel-class-headon.jpg

Let me know if you want to make a video from the new footage or not, if not I might.

I'll also keep an eye out for more planes at night.

I also did a funny little demonstration near the end of today's longest video - a demonstration of making an un-identified-bokeh from a star to land on my simulated tower, including some simple sound effects, and some camera shake to make it seem like an authentic UFO sighting. (20210415_220551.mp4)

 

[Mick West]

I got more video for you, an actual plane happened to fly over (20210415_215804.mp4) so I got that same flashing type pattern.

Excellent, thanks!

Let me know if you want to make a video from the new footage or not, if not I might.

I'll probably do one with the flashing, let's see what it looks like.

 

[gtoffo]

US DoD: Investigates them maybe some are drones from China, 99% are the usual planes, Venus, balloons etc.

TTSA Gimbal/Go Fast/Nimitz happen.

Videos that people sent to UAPTF etc start to leak, people think they can make cash, they've seen that the US DoD will just confirm that they were taken by military personnel and say not more and then the world thinks that aliens are about to land on the White House lawn.

I think the most probable issue here is that the DoD is not investigating those reports properly due to the "UFO" taboo/stigma.

By most accounts the UAPTF is an underfunded and ill equipped organization and they often do not have all the data available.

From everything I know about the now famed 'UAP task force,' and by others' accounts as well, it is not some powerful inter-agency initiative with a solid mandate from inside the Pentagon and the intelligence community. Far from it. It is a few people in an office with very limited resources that are often hitting walls when trying to obtain critical information from other intelligence stakeholders.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...he-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos

This might result in a higher rate of misidentification of adversaries/ordinary phenomena that then leak as UFOs.

This is entirely caused by the Pentagon. We just don't know if purposefully or not. Usually in those cases "grand conspiracies" that require a lot of coordination by government agencies are highly improbable.

This seems to point to incompetence by the DoD more and more every day. Maybe some "real" UFOs are also being observed but more probably we are seeing adversaries exploiting the DoDs confusion. Very troubling from a Defense point of view.

 

[JMartJr]

Maybe some "real" UFOs are also being observed but more probably we are seeing adversaries exploiting the DoDs confusion.

I am not sure how to assign relative probabilities to "we are seeing adversaries exploiting the DoD's confusion" and "we are seeing the DoD create confusion to mislead our adversaries." Or any of the many other possibilities. Best we can do, I think, is note that there are many reasons WHY this stuff might be released the way it is being released, and responded to the way it is being responded to, but we lack data to even begin trying to figure out which one(s) might be true. What we CAN do is look at the evidence presented by the video and try to determine what the video shows. In this case I am satisfied that this has been done -- it's a plane, with a triangular bokeh.

 

[jarlrmai]

Maybe we're falling for the trick, an understaffed and under skilled UAPTF works out Metabunk is the best way to id stuff, leaks videos to UFO proponents so we graciously step in and analyse them for them, UAPTF marks another one as solved and collects their bonus.

 

[Mick West]

I got some PVS-14 objective caps (ordered last week, thinking I might rent a PVS-14, but I don't think there's a need now). They are rubber, and very easy to cut triangles into. I think the one of the left is a plausible DIY focussing aid.

 

[Max Phalange]

It's a bit of a sketchy lead, but it seems that some variants of B. E. Meyers' 'Dark Invader' scope, like Jesse3959's, were assigned National Stock Numbers — which means they were entered into the federal procurement system.

Here's an example:
https://www.wbparts.com/rfq/5855-01-447-9151.html

Scroll down to Management and there is a "Navy" tab there, with various bits of inventory management metadata. This doesn't exist for other B. E. Meyers NV scopes, so it looks like this particular one was purchased by the Navy at some point in the late 90s. There could still be some hanging around.

There are some commercially available databases where you can search for procurement history by NSN, but nothing available to the public. And also there's no way to verify if this particular model would have had the adjustable iris.

 

[Mick West]

Data point. The pyramid video was uploaded by Corbell in 1080p. However you can see the original pixels, and count them. 8 large blurry pixels spans 56 video pixel, meaning the video had to be scaled 7x to get to 1080p.

Which means the actual resolution of the video used by Corbell was about 275x155. Here it is scaled down to that, notice the quality is essentially unchanged.

So, unless it was being filmed on a 15 year old phone, this means it's a greatly reduced version of the original video. Which probably means there's a much better version out there

 

[jarlrmai]

I got some PVS-14 objective caps (ordered last week, thinking I might rent a PVS-14, but I don't think there's a need now). They are rubber, and very easy to cut triangles into. I think the one of the left is a plausible DIY focussing aid.

The slightly rounded triangle shape makes me think it's more likely the iris than a triangular focusing aid but both are very plausible.

 

[jackfrostvc]

Unfortunately UFOology has a long history of being played by the US gov to put out a false narrative to mask what was really happening


People seem to forget UFOology has been played by Counter Intelligence officers in for decades

1. Richard Doty (Counter Intelligence officer) and what he did to Paul Benowitz etc. For those that don't know, watch Mirage Men . Paul was taking pics of US airfields and craft , and Doty fed him false info that alluded it was alien craft.
2. In the early-mid 80's , John Lear was the foremost expert on A51 and had taken close up pics of Area 51 . He even outed the F-117. Then the gov started telling him they had alien craft there and instead of further investigations into the new aircraft being developed.
   Poor John fell for it and started re-telling the nonsense they started feeding him ->
   Source: https://youtu.be/LGQkkHuwm6w?t=268
   
3. Look at the Edward Snowden leak of a document titled "THE ART OF DECEPTION : TRAINING FOR A NEW GENERATION OF ONLINE COVERT OPERATIONS"https://grid.glendon.yorku.ca/items/show/87
   It's a Government Communications Headquarters presentation prepared by the Joint Threat Intelligence Research Group (JTRIG). It describes the division's covert online operations, specifically the control, infiltration and manipulation of online communication
   Look at slides: 36-39 , then read the slides which describe how they manipulate people into believing false narratives.
   Now look at the recent leaks like the acorn(batman balloon), and the other two pics Knapp released. They are still messing with UFOology, with the same tactics
4. As has been mentioned, Elizondo - if you believe he did work for AATIP, was brought on to perform Counter Intelligence. He literally said that in this interview->
   Source: https://youtu.be/pN1K-95CpMM?t=111
   

 

[MapperGuy]

Would rotating the camera and/or night vision device around its axis cause the triangle to also rotate, if it is an artifact? Obviously a triangular object in the distance would not care if the camera/NVD was rotated, it would retain its orientation with the horizon.

 

[Jesse3959]

It's a bit of a sketchy lead, but it seems that some variants of B. E. Meyers' 'Dark Invader' scope, like Jesse3959's, were assigned National Stock Numbers — which means they were entered into the federal procurement system.

Here's an example:
https://www.wbparts.com/rfq/5855-01-447-9151.html

Scroll down to Management and there is a "Navy" tab there, with various bits of inventory management metadata. This doesn't exist for other B. E. Meyers NV scopes, so it looks like this particular one was purchased by the Navy at some point in the late 90s. There could still be some hanging around.

There are some commercially available databases where you can search for procurement history by NSN, but nothing available to the public. And also there's no way to verify if this particular model would have had the adjustable iris.

Mine was previously owned by Missouri State Troupers - still had the inventory control sticker on it, or at least half the sticker. I got it on ebay about 10 years ago, and the auction said something like "Been sitting in storage for 10 years, does not work. For parts or repair. $500."

So I took a gamble on it. It came in a pelican style case with the hardware to mount it on a rifle scope.
It's definitely a model that was marketed to military and police type customers. It's eye-piece lens is specifically designed to be very large diameter which means it can work in front of a camera or scope or whatnot, even a camera that has a large input lens.

It's also designed to have a magnification of about 1x -- so however big something looks through the NVD is the same as without the NVD, so it doesn't change angle measuring through the scope or size/distance estimations.

The really sad part is there were two for sale, each $500, identical, it said they didn't work.

I've been kicking myself for a decade for not getting them both.

I just got the one, tried it, it didn't work, so I tore it all apart, tested the imager tube on a benchtop power supply, and it worked.

Then I looked at the manual *which was included* and on the first page it read WARNING: DEVICE WILL NOT TURN ON EXCEPT IN THE DARK.

so I tried it in the dark and it works. It's a safety feature to protect the image intensifier tube.

And the seller hadn't read the manual either, which is why they listed them as not working... I could have had two perfectly good $2000 gen3 NVD for $500 each if I'd just taken a little more chance. But that's life LOL.

 

[Jesse3959]

Data point. The pyramid video was uploaded by Corbell in 1080p. However you can see the original pixels, and count them. 8 large blurry pixels spans 56 video pixel, meaning the video had to be scaled 7x to get to 1080p.

Which means the actual resolution of the video used by Corbell was about 275x155. Here it is scaled down to that, notice the quality is essentially unchanged.

So, unless it was being filmed on a 15 year old phone, this means it's a greatly reduced version of the original video. Which probably means there's a much better version out there

On the other hand, maybe it is from 15 years ago. My NVD is from that era.

Anyway, that pesky fellow on reddit who I've been arguing with (howdy friend!) is seems to want to see a bunch of my raw video so shot some more which (Oh! I got another airplane!) so now I've made up about a 27 minute video with various clips including two airplanes and it's rendernig now, I'll pop a link in here when I upload it.

I also demonstrated that if the NVD had been focused at infinity, the antenna pole would have been a lot more focused, which means the NVD must have been focused at the guy's feet.

 

[Jesse3959]

Would rotating the camera and/or night vision device around its axis cause the triangle to also rotate, if it is an artifact? Obviously a triangular object in the distance would not care if the camera/NVD was rotated, it would retain its orientation with the horizon.

Rotating the night vision device around it's axis would cause the triangle to rotate.

I tested this, and it works.

It's in the video I hope to upload tomorrow after it finishes rendering.

 

[jackfrostvc]

@Jesse3959

So you captured some footage with a real plane that flew overhead, or another toy plane?

 

[Mick West]

This is Jupiter and the four stars visible.


Antares has a right ascension of 16h29m45s and declination of -26°25'55.7"
Larawag is 16h50m08.92s, -34°17'43.9"

This gives an angle between the two of 7.86 degees.

Which means the FOV (Field of View) of the Night Vision Monocular (when you can see the full circle) is about 17.2°

The field of view of view of a military standard (or at least typical) PVS-14 is 40°

So, this suggests something like a NVD with a C-mount 100mm lens, possible a zoom lens.

 

[Mick West]

A rough fit fo the video to the star field show that the two stars seen at the end of the video are Okab and Deneb al Okab Borealis (Epsilon Aquilae). The start that briefly pokes in midway is Rasalhauge

 

[Jesse3959]

@Jesse3959

So you captured some footage with a real plane that flew overhead, or another toy plane?

A real plane. It wasn't overhead, it was more towards the horizon, but very real.

Here's the video:

Source: https://youtu.be/4e4PdpsrRjQ

(Debunking navy ufo nvd video with a real nvd and a real airplane)

Start at 8:26 to see where the first plane shows up.

Start at 17:40 to see the airplane from the night before.

 

[NoParty]

A real plane. It wasn't overhead, it was more towards the horizon, but very real.

Here's the video:

Source: https://youtu.be/4e4PdpsrRjQ

(Debunking navy ufo nvd video with a real nvd and a real airplane)

Start at 8:26 to see where the first plane shows up.

Start at 17:40 to see the airplane from the night before.

First, thank you so much for doing these videos, Jesse...they're great! The sort of thing I come to this site for!

I was a bit puzzled on this one, because at 8:26 the camera is on your feet, no? Is the plane at 8:45?

 

[Jesse3959]

First, thank you so much for doing these videos, Jesse...they're great! The sort of thing I come to this site for!

I was a bit puzzled on this one, because at 8:26 the camera is on your feet, no? Is the plane at 8:45?

Sorry, the plane shows up to at 9:09 and I notice it a few seconds later. It's funny because I didn't even notice it came into my video for several seconds (tunnel vision LOL) but on playing back, there it is.

8:26 is actually where I demonstrate my recreation of what the navy guy did, and the plane showed up in the middle of that.

 

[Mick West]

A real plane. It wasn't overhead, it was more towards the horizon, but very real.

That's great, thanks!

If you're still going and happen to see another plane, then it would be really useful to get it bit more in focus while flashing, like at around 9:29, then zoom in with the phone.

 

[Jesse3959]

That's great, thanks!

If you're still going and happen to see another plane, then it would be really useful to get it bit more in focus while flashing, like at around 9:29, then zoom in with the phone.

Glad to! But please explain exactly what you have in mind.

Iris small, medium, or full?
Focus as perfect as I can get it on the plane?
Then zoom in the camera so the plane is as big as possible?
Thanks!

If the plane is perfectly in focus, the shape of the dot should be round, no matter how I zoom the camera, except for the resolution limitation of the NVD.

If the plane is slightly out of focus, then the plane will have a slightly triangular shape.

 

[Mick West]

Glad to! But please explain exactly what you have in mind.

Basically the smallest perfect triangles you can get. I think the Navy footage has a medium aperture, and not so much lack of focus. In your video when you see the plane you are focussed on the stars, then you defocus a lot. I think at that point just defocussing about 1/4 of that (or less) would give smaller triangles.

 

[NoParty]

Sorry, the plane shows up to at 9:09 and I notice it a few seconds later. It's funny because I didn't even notice it came into my video for several seconds (tunnel vision LOL) but on playing back, there it is.

8:26 is actually where I demonstrate my recreation of what the navy guy did, and the plane showed up in the middle of that.

Ha-ha! If I'd had 30 seconds more of patience, I would've seen that. Thanks.

 

[jarlrmai]

Do we have the year

This is Jupiter and the four stars visible.


Antares has a right ascension of 16h29m45s and declination of -26°25'55.7"
Larawag is 16h50m08.92s, -34°17'43.9"

This gives an angle between the two of 7.86 degees.

Which means the FOV (Field of View) of the Night Vision Monocular (when you can see the full circle) is about 17.2°

The field of view of view of a military standard (or at least typical) PVS-14 is 40°

So, this suggests something like a NVD with a C-mount 100mm lens, possible a zoom lens.

Stellaris has the oculars plugin which will simulate the FOV etc of an telescope, if knew what to enter wwe could approximate the FOV.

 

[Mick West]

A ROUGH fit of the path of the plane to the stars Okab (brighter lower star) and Okab Borealis (dimmer, upper) - correcting for camera motion and zoom to keep Okab fixed. Shows the plane move at plane-like speed in a straight line, passing under Okab

 

[Mick West]

Can the plane be determined? Probably not without accurate time and location data.

In the above, it passes Okab, which at 21:15 is at 43 degrees above the horizon, and at a heading of 101 degrees (ESE, or very roughly east)

Assuming a plane, about 33,000 feet, 5.5 nautical miles. About 45,000 feet line of sight. So traversing one degree per second, perpendicular to the camera, would be the same as travelling 45000*2*PI/360 = 785 feet per second.

FOV previously calculated at 17.2°

In the video the object is approximately in the center when Okab is at the edge, so 8.6°, a little less, so say 8°. It gets there in 10 seconds, so 0.8° per second

0.8*785 feet per second in knots = 372 knots

Again though, this assume direction of travel is perpendicular to the camera, a plane at 33,000 feet, and view angle of 45°. There are variables that would increase the speed. - i.e the time (and hence position of Okab - later = faster plane), and the altitude of the plane (higher = faster plane)

So very consistent with a plane at 400+ knots, which is what LA-bound planes were flying at.

 

[jarlrmai]

Interestingly the latest Blender in Cycles allows iris blade count as a camera property, if you set 3 blades, DoF on and a different focus object, a tiny out of focus sphere with an emission texture gives you this shape. Might be useful for any simulations we want to try in the future.

 

[Ravi]

Interestingly the latest Blender in Cycles allows iris blade count as a camera property, if you set 3 blades, DoF on and a different focus object, a tiny out of focus sphere with an emission texture gives you this shape. Might be useful for any simulations we want to try in the future.

Cool feature!

I use(d) optical simulation software for my job, called Zemax (now Optic Studio). If you would know the exact description of the optical assembly, you can optically, and correctly, simulate anything you want. However, as it is likely a protected optical design, finding out the exact radii of the lenses used (and material, thickness, positions), is hard.

 

[NoParty]

...the latest Blender in Cycles allows iris blade count as a camera property...

That amazes me! I mean, it's great...but I had no idea we were there, yet!

 

[jackfrostvc]

Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, spoke about the July 2019 flights

Asked if the aircraft were “extraterrestrial,” Gilday said he had “no indications at all of that.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...ified-navy-chief-n1263115?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

 

[scampe]

What do you lot think about people 'debunking' this hypothesis on the basis of how loud the plane is on the video?​

If a jet engine at 100 feet produces 140 dB, wouldn't a jet engine at 700ft produce about 123 dB. Wouldn't the camera filming also pick up something that loud? That's insanely loud. You can hear people talking in the background noise but no painfully loud jet.​

I'd love to hear your opinions! ​