Skywatcher Part I: The Journey Begins

C

Calter

Senior Member.
Today Skywatcher (the company Barber was talking about), released their first video.


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


It's 30 minutes long, the first 15 minutes are basically introductions. They spent a few days on the California desert and tried spotting and eventually summoning UAP.

Here's a compilation I found on Reddit of the two sightings, not sure if someone has a better or split version




The first one is shown at 18:15, where they went sky watching at night and saw a bunch of stuff

External Quote:

So, the items that we saw last night could maybe be explained as satellites in some instances or space trash, but really, when we started seeing erratic movement and we started seeing vertical tracks then tracks going from like left to right in the sky, west to east, and then go again vertical, and then we saw the tracks change and change course direction and speed, so I think that's a piloted aircraft of some sort. I think it's either an intelligent being or it's being told what to do. Didn't flash, um it got brighter when it maybe had a reflective surface I don't know exactly what it was. There's a few explanations of why that could be but I see those in a varying range of places from Emporia Virginia to fville *(some place I don't understand)* to here I've seen them everywhere, only explanation I have is that it could be reflect of light or particles that are in our inner atmosphere, um but besides that when they start moving and tracking in different directions I think we're seeing some sort of craft of some sort
18:15

The camera leaves much to be desired, it's constantly shaking, and the framerate is pretty causing the moving objects to essentially move in chunks.

Personally, I think they all look like satellites, even more so considering they would be in a somewhat clean place in terms of light pollution and the sky would show a lot more satellites than one might otherwise see. They rule out satellites based on movement, which makes me think they did not check if they could have been satellites, as far as I know they don't provide the time or precise location of the videos so we can't check either.
They mention erratic movement and changing direction, which they don't seem to show in their clips as far as I can see. At 1:09 of the compilation, they may show "erratic movement", but the stars in the scene also show erratic movement at the same time, so I'm pretty sure that's entirely caused by camera shake.

They then on the last day manage to "summon an uap", which is the footage of the last 10 seconds of the compilation

External Quote:

The psionic team claimed to be connecting with an object and our sensor data caught this.

While this was happening, Fred went up to see if he could see anything with his naked eye

So, I can hear them, uh talking through certain things, and then he said something like "it's, it's forming", as soon as he said that I stepped out to look behind me and that's when I saw uh, it, whatever it was.
Click to expand...
Suddenly Fred saw a second object appear above our base camp
It was all gray matte like, not shiny at all uh, it was elongated oval where it looked like there was you know the opposite of a seam bursting out in the middle going all the way around, so it looks like a rim cuz the bottom half of it was extremely dark.
It made absolutely no sound which doesn't make sense because of its proximity like, if it was small it was, something maybe the
size of this this razor *the small car he's standing in front of* uh then it was really close uh we were talking 500-600 ft. uh if it was larger which I kind of believe that's what it was you're looking at 5 to 8 m uh long, then probably around 1,500 2,000 ft altitude moving north to south.
You know, it looked sturdy, it looked heavy. Wasn't a bird you know it if it were an aircraft any kind of conventional thing that we have now it it would have rocked us how low it was.
So 20 years in the Air Force and and uh never even seen anything close to that, nothing. There was no observable uh propulsion, there was no wings, there was no rotor, with that kind of speed you should hear something. Especially if it was that close, so I was shaking like it was super exciting, I mean, I'm not going to start shaking over an F16 flying overhead or a bird divebombing, that that was incredible, yeah I don't know what to say
Click to expand...
20:44

They apparently caught it in their sensors, which I'm not sure what that means outside of just the cameras, but the footage they show is pretty much useless, it lasts 10 seconds when played at 5% speed and is essentially a few frames of a white blurry object moving from left to right.

The person on the rooftop gave this drawing of the object. He said he would have his phone to record but I guess it went by too fast and failed to film it.

1738116302289.png


Then Garry Nolan gives his perspective

External Quote:

I personally didn't see anything in the sky or on the ground, but what I did see was an individual uh, who in the midst of attempting to call such an object, exactly at the moment uh that he said he was, uh interacting with something, the individual on the roof *another rooftop and another individual, not Fred* who had the cameras saw something. When we reviewed what it was that the person on the roof had seen, something showed up, uh I mean it was fleeting but it was clearly not a bug, and so uh what do I have, I have a person who claims to be doing something uh it was clear that he was in distress at the moment of the uh supposed interaction, and at that moment something is seen, what do you have, you have a correlation
22:52
He also later gives an explanation on why he was there
External Quote:

I was there not to provide any conclusions. I was there to make sure that everything that was being done was being done in a scientifically accurate way, as dispassionately as possible. Uh, and to be
part of the, uh of the advisor team to make sure that this was done in a way that, at some point, if it ever wanted to be put together into a scientific paper, we had collected the kind of metadata required, uh to say well we might not have a conclusion but here is at least a story that tells us, um that the data which we're providing to perhaps some future event might be looked back to and said oh well what happened there worked that didn't work so let's try this again so that we can perhaps make it repeatable
24:28


They don't seem to touch more on the summoned object they recorded, instead working with artist renditions of the sighting that wasn't caught on camera.

1738118601813.png


1738118554772.png


I'm skeptical of both this "minimal distance" and the speeds considering they both work entirely on one person's memory. Based on the speed and distances at the furthest point, their sighting happened in 0.839 seconds, if it lasted longer then the speeds would obviously be lower (which are still too fast for long distances but might make for more reasonable numbers at shorter distances).

1738119061275.png


Lastly, the person that was doing the summoning claimed he was able to summon whenever he wanted, so it's weird that they only successfully summoned on the last day.

External Quote:

-"How many times do you feel like you've been able to summon something in the sky?"

-"Anytime I want"
17:47

Few notes:
All the external quotes are Youtube transcript + a bit of formatting, there might be errors and I added some comments as *comment*

I skipped most of the introductions since I was more interested in the actual "footage", but they might be worth the watch, especially that of the psionic summoner Michael Battista at 16:43

When they announced the video on twitter they said

External Quote:

"Skywatcher Part I will launch today around 6 PM EST. This marks the start of our journey. Before we share, a few key points:

  1. We don't have definitive answers yet—nothing we share is meant to be viewed as conclusive evidence.
  2. We will share the footage from our first outing, but obviously everyone will want more. We know this, and we are not posturing otherwise. Please be patient.
  3. The story is told by firsthand witnesses.
  4. We're not selling anything or telling you what to believe —we're simply sharing what happened.
  5. We're doing our best to push the collective movement forward in pursuit of answers. Please understand that.
This is meant to mark the beginning, not the end. We believe a breakthrough is imminent, and it's imperative we figure this out now.

We have since upgraded our operation. We are actively running more tests and remain committed to using the scientific process to gather robust data and evidence.

If you are interested in assisting, please reach out. We appreciate your support, and are responding as best we can.

It will be published on Youtube and directly on X."
So, before they released the video they tried to lower expectations.
 
Calter said:
I'm skeptical of both this "minimal distance" and the speeds considering they both work entirely on one person's memory.
Click to expand...
Never mind the memory; they are both products of one person's impression, and there is no way to estimate distance/speed without more information. The only thing that is actually measured is the time. But if they calculate a speed that is hard to believe, then that means the distance is hard to believe. According to that diagram, I think somebody said "it's over those hills". but being seen at an angle that looks like it is above the hills does NOT mean it is "over" the hills.

I think saying something is "clearly not a bug" really means "we can't eliminate the possibility it's a bug". :)
 
Ann K said:
Never mind the memory; they are both products of one person's impression, and there is no way to estimate distance/speed without more information. The only thing that is actually measured is the time. But if they calculate a speed that is hard to believe, then that means the distance is hard to believe. According to that diagram, I think somebody said "it's over those hills". but being seen at an angle that looks like it is above the hills does NOT mean it is "over" the hills.

I think saying something is "clearly not a bug" really means "we can't eliminate the possibility it's a bug". :)
Click to expand...
As I was reading it, my brain zipped right to the JMartJr Axiom, now thinking:
"Shoot, that means it's most likely a bug!"
 
So it's the same old song and dance where we are told a bunch of anomalous objects are changing direction and speed, accompanied by video showing a bunch of objects moving at a constant speed in the same direction, in addition to a single video where the camera is obviously being manipulated to produce something that might look anomalous to people that aren't paying close attention.

The Tedesco's have better material than this.
 
Mick West said:
Let's keep things polite, please. We don't want to scare off their supporters.

If it's bunk, let's just show that it's bunk.
Click to expand...
I agree with this, of late there has been a little bit of unnecessary trolling.

We want them to put forward the information so we can analyse it.
 
I watched the series of Ross Coulthart interviews at News Nation leading up to this. Most of the people in this Skywatcher youtube video were interviewed as part of that series but I did not recognize the host.

The opening scene shows a "SALT" conference. Looks like some kind of crypto entrepreneur event based on their talks page: https://www.salt.org/talks

Alex Klokus, the host in this Skywatcher video, is a founder and managing partner of the "SALT Fund":
https://www.salt.org/speakers/alex-klokus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Klokus

He has 1 previous media project on his Wikipedia page, a documentary called Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain

All this to say I guess I'm skeptical of the most prominent face in this video being crypto entrepreneur adjacent.
 
GoodDinner said:
I watched the series of Ross Coulthart interviews at News Nation leading up to this. Most of the people in this Skywatcher youtube video were interviewed as part of that series but I did not recognize the host.

The opening scene shows a "SALT" conference. Looks like some kind of crypto entrepreneur event based on their talks page: https://www.salt.org/talks

Alex Klokus, the host in this Skywatcher video, is a founder and managing partner of the "SALT Fund":
https://www.salt.org/speakers/alex-klokus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Klokus
Click to expand...

Interesting. So Dr. Garry Nolan had a discussion with Alex Klokus at a SALT conference a year ago (the clips shown in the video in OP), then retired Col. Karl Nell talked to Klokus at another SALT conference a few months later.

I assumed they just got Dr. Nolan for this video because he is the go to "science guy" for stuff like this because he's an established cancer researcher and geneticist, and also really into aliens, but Dr. Nolan and Col. Nell are both on the board of directors of UAP Disclosure Fund (UAPDF) together with Luis Elizondo, and with Chris Mellon on the advisory board.

This connection between UAPDF and SALT, and SALT and Nolan in this video, makes me wonder if Jake Barber had involvement with the "usual suspects" prior to becoming a whistleblower, similar to David Grusch.
 
This clip from the Skywalker Part 1 video shows some objects moving on screen

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxFv7t7obY7C7_GtjmEG6fxEDgWHn1wv0d?si=dUNWJvmW0H2e6kxt

This seems to be the same clip as was shown by Coulthart in his video on Jake Barber and Skywatcher etc 10 days ago, as can be seen in this clip below, although for some reason it looks more clearer/zoomed in


Source: youtu.be/3dtA9w5ldHw?si=RHJwQ9SXCmGuFzZw&t=2246


This reddit user zoomed into and slowed down the clip by Coulthart claiming it shows a bird flapping.

See here: www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1i53myp/is_this_uap_from_coultharts_program_last_night/
 
Last edited:
I'm not convinced that it is a flapping bird, if we pay attention to the stars, the stars shake as the "bird flaps", so I'm inclined to believe that it's just an effect of the low framerate streak causing a wing-like shape as the camera shakes up and down repeatedly.




I also think that if they had been watching birds, they would have caught better footage of them doing non-satellite things such as turning around, flying in groups, slowing down or speeding up due to changing winds, etc. As far as I've seen, everything they've shown shows objects moving at a steady pace on a straight line without providing a convincing argument for why it couldn't be satellite.
 
On the other hand, it is refreshing to see an actual saucer in a UFO claim. I feel warmly nostalgic.

On the satellite-birds/bugs front, all I really want to say is to bear in mind that if multiple UAP are observed, they need not all be the same thing, especially in a group primed to interpret anything seen as a mysterious UAP.
 
GoodDinner said:
I watched the series of Ross Coulthart interviews at News Nation leading up to this. Most of the people in this Skywatcher youtube video were interviewed as part of that series but I did not recognize the host.

The opening scene shows a "SALT" conference. Looks like some kind of crypto entrepreneur event based on their talks page: https://www.salt.org/talks

Alex Klokus, the host in this Skywatcher video, is a founder and managing partner of the "SALT Fund":
https://www.salt.org/speakers/alex-klokus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Klokus

He has 1 previous media project on his Wikipedia page, a documentary called Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain

All this to say I guess I'm skeptical of the most prominent face in this video being crypto entrepreneur adjacent.
Click to expand...
I never heard of the guy, but his Wiki page is an interesting mix of stuff:
A crowdfunded weighted blanket, that got the (good) attention of Time magazine. :oops:
A crypto investment fund. :eek:
A well-received documentary (I Am Human) :D
in addition to the SALT stuff discussed above...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Human_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Klokus
 
UFOlogy has a bit of a problem, which is that it constantly seems to revolve around the same few names once you pare back to details.

The idea of someone new coming out of nowhere with new information that backs up the claims of the old guard is attractive to the community. But we see here that this new group is actually connected back to people who have been around for a while and they themselves are connected back to the old guard.
 
jarlrmai said:
UFOlogy has a bit of a problem, which is that it constantly seems to revolve around the same few names once you pare back to details.

The idea of someone new coming out of nowhere with new information that backs up the claims of the old guard is attractive to the community. But we see here that this new group is actually connected back to people who have been around for a while and they themselves are connected back to the old guard.
Click to expand...
Personally I don't who they are, what I do care about is a peer reviewed paper.
 
ManInBlack said:
Personally I don't who they are, what I do care about is a peer reviewed paper.
Click to expand...

For the most part, they aren't talking to people that are interested in peer reviewed papers. Some of them, have on occasion, published a few papers, some of which have made it to threads here. I've listed them below. But the target audience is lay people, influential people and politicians.

You may not care who they are, but it is interesting to track and understand the intermingled relationships between the actors. For example, Barber seems to be the main face of Starwatcher. In the other thread on Barber's claims of retrieving crashed UFOs, he claims he spoke to members of the UAP Task Force about the "egg" craft he transported:

External Quote:

I will tell you that during this process over the last couple of years, it's been confirmed to me by ranking members of the UAP Task Force that what we were working with that night was, in fact, at high, and it was not a unique experience.
12:40

We know that the UAPTF at one time was run by Jay Stratton, former partner with Lue Elizondo at AATIP, and that the UAPTF also included people like Travis Taylor, from the TV show Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch as well as whistleblower David Grusch.

In this new video about Starwatcher, Barber expounds on his claims of "psyonic" operatives, or "psyonics" as he calls them. People that use their psy abilities to call and control alien UFOs. Again, Barber was in contact with Stratton and Taylor previously. Stratton teamed with Elizondo to run ATTIP, an unfunded and unofficial offshoot of the AAWSAP program.

The AAWSAP program used tax money to study weird stuff at Skinwalker Ranch, the same place Taylor became a TV star at. Elizondo, in his book, claims he has psy powers that he was helped with by Hal Putoff. Puthoff was involved in AAWSAP as well as the privately funded forerunner to it, the NIDS program, also at Skinwalker Ranch. Puthoff was also involved in the early stages of what became Project Stargate at the Stanford Research Institue (SRI), where he tested people like Uri Gehler, Igo Swann, Joe McMoneagle and others for psy powers back in the '70s.

While Puthoff (and Targ)'s work as SRI was found sub-par, he has always maintained it was legit and psy was real. In addition, Puthoff has maintained for years, that there is a secret government program to retrieve and reverse engineer crashed UFOs.

All that to say, by knowing who the players are, one can trace Barber's claims about UFO retrieval program and psyonics controlling UFOs, likely back to many of Puthoff's claims of the past 40 years. It's a revolving door, with new people, like Barber coming in, but really just rehashing older stories, or with the psyonics bumping them up a bit, from a small group of influential people.

Thread about Barber's UFO retrievals:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ja...art-about-non-human-technology-the-egg.13949/

Thread about a paper of some sort by Vallee and Nolan analyzing a supposed crashed UFO (don't let the title fool you):

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/is...vallee-jiang-lemke-2022-a-useful-paper.13286/

Nolan's fellow Stanford professor, Peter Struck, had a paper about the supposed crashed UFO in Ubatuba, Brazil:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237309319_On_Events_Possibly_Related_to_the_''Brazil_Magnesium
 
yoshy said:
Is this the same video Nolan said can't possibly be bugs or was that a different video?
Click to expand...
No, Nolan was talking about the "summoned" UAP,

Essentially these 5 frames unless they had something else that they didn't show for whatever reason (unlikely)

 
ManInBlack said:
Why does any of this matter? It's on them to prove that summoning UAP is real. No one is holding their breathe...
Click to expand...
This is the issue for me. It wouldn't matter who their investors are if they were just releasing high quality footage and scientific data. I'm concerned that this first video they released is in appearance, at least to me, a publicity vehicle for their crypto-venture investor, rather than any actual science.
 
This is the "suggested" location of the Jake Barber team in the SkywatcherHQ Video shown on various social media sites. I removed the overlay graphics of the alleged angle of the UFO sighting by Fred Baker looking towards the left of the image. I am interested in Geo-locating this place. Since Jake Barber has mentioned Southern California and the High Sierra ranges, I'm wondering if this is in the California desert?

Ground Pattern.png
 
NoParty said:
Thanks for your due diligence.

Looks like yet another case of: "If you're dying to believe, wow! have we got a story for you!"

And if you're looking for anything remotely like credible evidence, well, surely next time!
Click to expand...
Finally watched the entire video in Post #1.
There really is not much here at all. Just lots of "Yes I believe" and "Just trust me" statements.
If they collected more convincing data than what is presented why didn't they show it. Just a few brief videos and stills from the videos,
For people claiming to be collecting scientific data they don't appear to be well equipped.

Hopefully they will do better in the future.
 
Calter said:
I spent a while trying to manually look for it with no luck, then I figured they are probably just renting the place, so I took this screenshot of the building shown in the video
View attachment 76718
And then I googled the image + California, surprisingly it was the first result that showed up

View attachment 76719
Click to expand...

It's usually one of those things. You spend an hour on something then realize it's a click away. I want to find the Helo's Jake flies to start doing transponder tracks on them. I have located a bunch of helos. And a bunch of companies - I can't find the record of the Hughes shown in the photo. I also have contacted about 1/2 dozen helo lift companies in the US. One of them has a crew chief that is cooperating with me and my questions. He has 30 year in sling loading helos.
 
Dave Beaty said:
It's usually one of those things. You spend an hour on something then realize it's a click away. I want to find the Helo's Jake flies to start doing transponder tracks on them. I have located a bunch of helos. And a bunch of companies - I can't find the record of the Hughes shown in the photo. I also have contacted about 1/2 dozen helo lift companies in the US. One of them has a crew chief that is cooperating with me and my questions. He has 30 year in sling loading helos.
Click to expand...

From the Barber UFO recovery thread curtesy @John J. :

External Quote:

Chief Pilot
San Joaquin Helicopters & Coastal Helicopters
May 2014 - Present 10 years 9 months

Jacob is the Chief Pilot of both San Joaquin and Coastal Helicopters and specializes in government wildland fire fighting contracting and operations.

Jacob is also a Disabled Veteran and the President of HBT Innovations, Inc. HBT is. a California company specializing in the R&D and marketing of innovative wheelchair/prosthetic technologies.
https://www.helis.com/database/sqd/2418/

Maybe he got it from there? Assuming pilots can rent aircraft from a variety of places.
 
NorCal Dave said:
From the Barber UFO recovery thread curtesy @John J. :

External Quote:

Chief Pilot
San Joaquin Helicopters & Coastal Helicopters
May 2014 - Present 10 years 9 months

Jacob is the Chief Pilot of both San Joaquin and Coastal Helicopters and specializes in government wildland fire fighting contracting and operations.

Jacob is also a Disabled Veteran and the President of HBT Innovations, Inc. HBT is. a California company specializing in the R&D and marketing of innovative wheelchair/prosthetic technologies.
https://www.helis.com/database/sqd/2418/

Maybe he got it from there? Assuming pilots can rent aircraft from a variety of places.
Click to expand...
I have tracked San Joaquin Helicopters. It's a challenging proposition as many aircraft are not registered with the company that flies them. Photos online have some hits. They don't have a Hughes that I can see, and I can't find any company with one in CA with close to that tail number.
 
Calter said:
I spent a while trying to manually look for it with no luck, then I figured they are probably just renting the place, so I took this screenshot of the building shown in the video
View attachment 76718
And then I googled the image + California, surprisingly it was the first result that showed up

View attachment 76719
Click to expand...
BTW, I have asked Jake Barber and Fred Baker directly about this "set" location and "NDA" with the film company. I gave you credit for finding the set Calter.

Link to question to participants about this location :


Source: https://x.com/dave_beaty/status/1885156349668901319
 
Dave Beaty said:
Can anyone ID the model of this Hughes Helicopter? I think it's a 369D but I need the exact model. It could be a 369HM.
Click to expand...
Go to https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/MakeModelInquiry , enter HUGHES and 369.
Dave Beaty said:
This is shown in Jake Barber's post on social media. I can't read the N-number although it looks like it has XX510. It could also be XX51O?
Click to expand...
Article:
N-Numbers consist of a series of alphanumeric characters. U.S. registration numbers may not exceed five characters in addition to the standard U.S. registration prefix letter N. These characters may be:

  • One to five numbers (N12345)
  • One to four numbers followed by one letter (N1234Z)
  • One to three numbers followed by two letters (N123AZ)
To avoid confusion with the numbers one and zero, the letters I and O are not to be used.

I'm not sure if this applies to older numbers, but it looks like this is a 5-digit number. The first two digits look to me to have loops at the top, so 236890, tending to 3 as the first digit, but so far my guesses at https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Search/NNumberInquiry have not panned out.
 
Wikipedia says a 500C is either a

MD 500C (369H) Improved five-seat commercial variant powered by an Allison 250-C18B rated at 317 shp (236 kW); certified in 1966.

MD 500C (369HS) Improved four-seat commercial variant by an Allison 250-C20 rated at 400 shp (298 kW); certified in 1969.

MD 500C (369HE)A 369HS with higher standard interior fittings, certified in 1969.

I checked the FAA DB for models registered in CA/and NV

The problem being you have to click on state to see the models

I downloaded the massive CSV for all aircraft.
 
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