Skywatcher Part II: "Mapping The Unknown"

Is anyone familiar with this system to know what might be getting censored on the top left?
1744256119465.png

From another part of the video I figured the bottom right seems to be
Distance, Altitude, Speed and FOV
1744256220964.png
 
Calter said:
Is anyone familiar with this system to know what might be getting censored on the top left?
View attachment 79095
From another part of the video I figured the bottom right seems to be
Distance, Altitude, Speed and FOV
View attachment 79096
Click to expand...
If you watch the video through that 20:46 segment you will notice that the number on the right hand "dial" (that is 39 in the still) is counting down and gets to 36 before the clip ends. If that is an indicator of the elevation of their camera mount than that does show the object is falling. I guess the left dial is azimuth and the right is elevation, numbers that serious scientists would like to record when capturing data.

I note with the exception of the manta shape UAP there is nothing in the background that would indicate changes in the direction the camera is pointing. In that one the manta is obviously moving downward compared to the jet that passes through the clip. Other than that they have been careful to only show clips where any changes in the direction the camera is pointing are not apparent.

My own guess is that most of these objects were dropped from the helicopter and filmed while falling to the ground. None of the objects whose geometric shape is visible are steady, they are all gyrating and tumbling, just like irregular shapes in free-fall. The jellyfish is probably a balloon.
 
Right

So Mile High Resources is owned by Kyle Walker
Kyle Walker is also registered as an owner at Mile High Ordnance
Mile High Ordnance has a Gun License
Mile High's gun license is registered for 201 Four Section Road, Sierra Blanca, TX

https://www.gunlaws101.com/licensees/mile-high-ordnance-llc

This is where that is

1744284269257.png


The circled property is the property featured in the Skywalker videos
 

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MapperGuy said:
If that is an indicator of the elevation of their camera mount than that does show the object is falling.
Click to expand...
The elevation of the camera going down doesn't have to mean that the object is falling, it can just mean that the object is getting further away. Same thing for the Manta Ray and the reference line that the plane contrail provides.
1744294590593.png

Like so, between t1 and t2 the object is still at the same height, but you would need to decrease your elevation angle to keep it in frame.

Which is why having a laser range finder (or just more context to the video) would be incredibly useful. On the top right it seems to say Invalid so maybe the range finder can't range the object, it would still be useful to know that.

While stuff being dropped from helicopters is certainly a possible explanation, I'm personally of the belief that most of this stuff is just moving horizontally with the wind.
 
I think the left indicator is the zoom in the current lens and right is the lens selector

1744297654488.png


There are several frames that show objects being tracked and have nearly legible FOVs is this 0.5 degrees?
 
RAS said:
Let's not forget what Jake Barber admitted to in his recent Ross Coulthart interview about the release of this footage

External Quote:

anything that might look like a balloon uh balloons tend to be the scapegoat when you don't have any other bucket to put it in we all like to use the balloon bucket and admittedly a lot of this stuff looks like a balloon like you
could take a mylar balloon and we've actually played with that in the field we launch our own balloons to see if we
can um can deep fake our own data by launching balloons and seeing if we could could manufacture something that looks like the anomalous stuff we're seeing and um balloons get ruled out pretty quickly uh when you take into account wind because balloons are uh are going to move pretty close to the vector or the direction of travel of the wind and pretty much at the velocity of the wind so as soon as you start moving um perpendicular to the wind or at any angle not directly downwind at velocity is different than the ambient wind velocity balloons get ruled out pretty quickly despite how much you want to believe that it's a balloon um because there are things there are classes that um look like it could be a balloon until it starts morphing and changing like balloons aren't going to change the way they look and their radar signature also is something that's pretty distinctive now I'm not one of our radar operators I'm I'm not I'm not an analyst for radar but I'm I'm in our tactical Operation Center when we're looking at this stuff and I can tell you that um the last thing any of us want is to look foolish by putting something out to the public and saying we think it's anomalous and then having it easily explained Away by all the armchair quarterbacks watching the internet around the world
Click to expand...

They should publish all of the videos of the things they know to be balloons as a control dataset for comparison against. I don't live somewhere I feel I can in good conscience release helium balloons without a tether or without shooting it down with a pellet gun or something so it doesn't just blow away.

Also can't take their word that the motion of the "actual" UAPs were not going with the wind, unless they give information that allows independently verifying the wind data and paths of the objects.
 
If this magical summoning can't put the imagined object smack dab in the field right in front of everyone then it's meaningless.

Saying some magical prayers and blowing a Pied Piper whistle before HUNTING for any object at any distance in order to claim success is madness. No different, under these circumstances, than any other claimed sighting.
 
So recently there;s been a high profile tweet/offer to Skywatcher by a camera specialist offering to bring a crazy cinema camera for them to use


Source: https://x.com/JayHHunter/status/1910007289492517169/photo/1

But would it help?

Let's look at the lens offered, it certainly looks impressive

1744456209094.png


This looks to be an ISCO/Schneider cine lens, but what is it capable of really?

https://cslarentals.com/equipment/isco-140-420mm-t2-7-zoom/

1744456599749.png


1744456294075.png


420mm focal length covering a full frame (36x24mm)

Now I own a 500mm lens that covers a full frame sensor that I use for bird photography and there are many longer lenses that are smaller and cheaper (600-800mm)

So why is this lens so large, well it has a t stop of t/2.7 this means it gathers a lot of light, t/stop is similar to f/stop which may be familiar to people who dabble in photography they both relate to the light gathering power, f/stop is a ratio between aperture and focal length (lower numbers let in more light) and t/stop is 'true stop' that measure light transmission accounting for losses through the optical system, film makers care about that above all (because they need exposure to match across shoots/cameras) so their lenses are mostly rated to t/stops.
Also it will be other things that cinema people need but make lenses much larger.

Parfocal - ability to change focal length and keep focus
Have minimum focus breathing - Where focus changes effective focal length
Robust and connects to focus rrgs (the cogs you see)

My lens is an f/stop of f/4

So in reality this lenses size is more about the light transmission than the magnification and it's use as a Cine lens

We've seen that Skywatcher's footage is captured mostly in the day so that doesn't really matter.

Skywatcher could, if they wanted to easily go out and buy any number of much cheaper readily available off the shelf bird photography setups that would offer better distance resolution than this lens and associated cinema cameras.

So really this is just a distraction that Skywatcher probably won't take up, likely stating practicality etc.

The most useful part of the endeavour might be having an unconnected person there to see things, which is probably not what Skywatcher want which is why they only film ahead of release in a remote area of the Texas desert.

Mick made a point on twitter about better cameras extending the LIZ, which is true however let's theorise that Skywatcher are essentially cruising around the desert spotting balloons and other airborne debris then using cameras that are just bad enough to not quite show that and sharing them as UFOs they summoned.

They still have to spot them in 1st place which means likely scanning the sky with human eyeballs, and or widefield binoculars. Any camera system that can bridge this gap is worthwhile because although a sufficiently distant object would still be in the LIZ from an 800mm lens, you but never even know it was there, unless you got really lucky while scanning the sky looking through the viewfinder.
 
jarlrmai said:
So recently there;s been a high profile tweet/offer to Skywatcher by a camera specialist offering to bring a crazy cinema camera for them to use


Source: https://x.com/JayHHunter/status/1910007289492517169/photo/1

But would it help?

Let's look at the lens offered, it certainly looks impressive

View attachment 79231

This looks to be an ISCO/Schneider cine lens, but what is it capable of really?

https://cslarentals.com/equipment/isco-140-420mm-t2-7-zoom/

View attachment 79233

View attachment 79232

420mm focal length covering a full frame (36x24mm)

Now I own a 500mm lens that covers a full frame sensor that I use for bird photography and there are many longer lenses that are smaller and cheaper (600-800mm)

So why is this lens so large, well it has a t stop of t/2.7 this means it gathers a lot of light, t/stop is similar to f/stop which may be familiar to people who dabble in photography they both relate to the light gathering power, f/stop is a ratio between aperture and focal length (lower numbers let in more light) and t/stop is 'true stop' that measure light transmission accounting for losses through the optical system, film makers care about that above all (because they need exposure to match across shoots/cameras) so their lenses are mostly rated to t/stops.
Also it will be other things that cinema people need but make lenses much larger.

Parfocal - ability to change focal length and keep focus
Have minimum focus breathing - Where focus changes effective focal length
Robust and connects to focus rrgs (the cogs you see)

My lens is an f/stop of f/4

So in reality this lenses size is more about the light transmission than the magnification and it's use as a Cine lens

We've seen that Skywatcher's footage is captured mostly in the day so that doesn't really matter.

Skywatcher could, if they wanted to easily go out and buy any number of much cheaper readily available off the shelf bird photography setups that would offer better distance resolution than this lens and associated cinema cameras.

So really this is just a distraction that Skywatcher probably won't take up, likely stating practicality etc.

The most useful part of the endeavour might be having an unconnected person there to see things, which is probably not what Skywatcher want which is why they only film ahead of release in a remote area of the Texas desert.

Mick made a point on twitter about better cameras extending the LIZ, which is true however let's theorise that Skywatcher are essentially cruising around the desert spotting balloons and other airborne debris then using cameras that are just bad enough to not quite show that and sharing them as UFOs they summoned.

They still have to spot them in 1st place which means likely scanning the sky with human eyeballs, and or widefield binoculars. Any camera system that can bridge this gap is worthwhile because although a sufficiently distant object would still be in the LIZ from an 800mm lens, you but never even know it was there, unless you got really lucky while scanning the sky looking through the viewfinder.
Click to expand...

I'm normally more of a sound guy, but as person who appreciates nice kit that lens is very cool.

To bridge the gap on LIZ and eyeballs they should reach out to someone like the guy behind this video.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-b51C82-UE


Although as a downside this multicamera voxel grid tracking system looks like a UAP enthusiasts wet dream for it's ability to generate unreferenced flight paths.
 
jarlrmai said:
Mick made a point on twitter about better cameras extending the LIZ, which is true however let's theorise that Skywatcher are essentially cruising around the desert spotting balloons and other airborne debris then using cameras that are just bad enough to not quite show that and sharing them as UFOs they summoned.
Click to expand...
Of course, if they can't find a camera quite bad enough, they always have the option of misfocussing or exposing far too far to the right.
 
JimJam said:
To bridge the gap on LIZ and eyeballs they should reach out to someone like the guy behind this video.
Click to expand...
But any and all camera setups will have a distance where you can detect but not identify a given object... you can't eliminate the low information zone, you can only push it further out. And however near or far it is, that's where your UFOs live... any closer and you can see clearly that it us a balloon, bird, plane, etc.
 
jarlrmai said:
Mick made a point on twitter about better cameras extending the LIZ, which is true however let's theorise that Skywatcher are essentially cruising around the desert spotting balloons and other airborne debris then using cameras that are just bad enough to not quite show that and sharing them as UFOs they summoned.

They still have to spot them in 1st place which means likely scanning the sky with human eyeballs, and or widefield binoculars. Any camera system that can bridge this gap is worthwhile because although a sufficiently distant object would still be in the LIZ from an 800mm lens, you but never even know it was there, unless you got really lucky while scanning the sky looking through the viewfinder.
Click to expand...
In the show Barber makes some comment about the UAPs seeming to know the range of their sensors and stay outside them (as well as supposedly remotely shutting sensors down), which gives away the tautological game: The only UAPs they have footage of are those beyond "sensor range" because anything clearly identifiable is clearly identifiable as mundane.
 
JMartJr said:
But any and all camera setups will have a distance where you can detect but not identify a given object... you can't eliminate the low information zone, you can only push it further out. And however near or far it is, that's where your UFOs live... any closer and you can see clearly that it us a balloon, bird, plane, etc.
Click to expand...
That's not my point my point is there's a spotting things with your eyes and then there's identifying it.

Let's say I'm out birdwatching, I see a bird with my eyes, but I can't tell what it is.

I point my telescope at it and say oh it's a song thrush.

Now my telescope has a LIZ zone of course, but things in the low information zone for my telescope are in the 'no information zone' for my eyes, ie i never know they are there in the 1st place.

Therefore in an scenario where I'm only trying to identify things I only know are there because of my eyes, my equipments LIZ is not important. Only that it be good to erase the LIZ of my eyes.
 
Just a side note, but is there any indication about who is bankrolling this camp out in the desert?

1744476472550.png


Even an R44 is not cheap to operate or own. My neighbor had one for a while and just couldn't justify the cost:

External Quote:

Depending on numerous factors, the average price for a pre-owned robinson R44 Raven II is $475,000. A $237,500 loan over 120 months including $990 per month in interest equates to a $11,909 per - period payment.

Based on 300 annual owner - operated hours and $6 - per - GAL fuel cost, the robinson R44 Raven II has total variable costs of $140,494, total fixed costs of $169,361, and an annual budget of $309,855 .This breaks down to $1,033 per hour.
https://www.aircraftcostcalculator.com/AircraftOperatingCosts/531/Robinson+R44+Raven+II

The cost per hour above is a bit misleading, as it includes the purchase price, still ~$200 per hour is a common number I found.

The Hughes/MD 500 is step up with a turbine engine:

External Quote:

Depending on numerous factors, the average price for a pre-owned md 500E is $1,800,000. A $900,000 loan over 120 months including $3,750 per month in interest equates to a $45,129 per - period payment.

Based on 300 annual owner - operated hours and $6 - per - GAL fuel cost, the md 500E has total variable costs of $233,158, total fixed costs of $399,674, and an annual budget of $632,832 .This breaks down to $2,109 per hour.
https://www.aircraftcostcalculator.com/AircraftOperatingCosts/522/MD+500E

Slightly different numbers here, leaving out purchase and interest:

External Quote:

Combining these factors, the estimated total operating cost for the MD 500C can range from $150,000 to $300,000 annually, depending on usage and operational demands. This cost analysis highlights the importance of careful financial planning for anyone considering the acquisition of an MD 500C.
https://boltflight.com/md-500c-price-and-operating-costs/

Figuring the average of 300 hours per year, that works out to ~$750 per hour.

That seems to be a lot of money those guys are looking at from their lounge chairs.
 
jarlrmai said:
That's not my point my point is there's a spotting things with your eyes and then there's identifying it.

Let's say I'm out birdwatching, I see a bird with my eyes, but I can't tell what it is.

I point my telescope at it and say oh it's a song thrush.

Now my telescope has a LIZ zone of course, but things in the low information zone for my telescope are in the 'no information zone' for my eyes, ie i never know they are there in the 1st place.

Therefore in an scenario where I'm only trying to identify things I only know are there because of my eyes, my equipments LIZ is not important. Only that it be good to erase the LIZ of my eyes.
Click to expand...
Gotcha.... of course when they are in a helicopter they could just fly over a little closer.
 
NorCal Dave said:
Just a side note, but is there any indication about who is bankrolling this camp out in the desert?

View attachment 79246

Even an R44 is not cheap to operate or own. My neighbor had one for a while and just couldn't justify the cost:

External Quote:

Depending on numerous factors, the average price for a pre-owned robinson R44 Raven II is $475,000. A $237,500 loan over 120 months including $990 per month in interest equates to a $11,909 per - period payment.

Based on 300 annual owner - operated hours and $6 - per - GAL fuel cost, the robinson R44 Raven II has total variable costs of $140,494, total fixed costs of $169,361, and an annual budget of $309,855 .This breaks down to $1,033 per hour.
https://www.aircraftcostcalculator.com/AircraftOperatingCosts/531/Robinson+R44+Raven+II

The cost per hour above is a bit misleading, as it includes the purchase price, still ~$200 per hour is a common number I found.

The Hughes/MD 500 is step up with a turbine engine:

External Quote:

Depending on numerous factors, the average price for a pre-owned md 500E is $1,800,000. A $900,000 loan over 120 months including $3,750 per month in interest equates to a $45,129 per - period payment.

Based on 300 annual owner - operated hours and $6 - per - GAL fuel cost, the md 500E has total variable costs of $233,158, total fixed costs of $399,674, and an annual budget of $632,832 .This breaks down to $2,109 per hour.
https://www.aircraftcostcalculator.com/AircraftOperatingCosts/522/MD+500E

Slightly different numbers here, leaving out purchase and interest:

External Quote:

Combining these factors, the estimated total operating cost for the MD 500C can range from $150,000 to $300,000 annually, depending on usage and operational demands. This cost analysis highlights the importance of careful financial planning for anyone considering the acquisition of an MD 500C.
https://boltflight.com/md-500c-price-and-operating-costs/

Figuring the average of 300 hours per year, that works out to ~$750 per hour.

That seems to be a lot of money those guys are looking at from their lounge chairs.
Click to expand...
The people involved in this have access to these helicopters through their day jobs, so everything is at low/mates rates.
The land and property used seems to be connected to a company (Mile High Resources) that offers space and airfields etc for government testing but also (and probably mostly) other things like hunting from helicopters and military role play adventures.

I've been doing a lot of research behind the scenes that involves the people and businesses but I've not posted it here because of that, it's all public but no-one needs to get doxed over this.

We've tracked these helicopters to shared use by some of the people that appear in the videos and/or are connected to the property seen in the videos. The helicopters are used/operated by these people who own/run various local businesses that operate helicopters for things such as flight experiences, lessons, 'military' experiences, game hunting, and other civilian general helicopter services.

The people involved are often ex military and/or hunting/gun enthusiast types interested performing military style recreational activities so in some terms they'd be doing this anyway.

So as far as I can tell a sort of uncharitable read would be they are using resources they already have access to try and build hype for a possible Skinwalker Ranch type TV show to be picked up by a network, and of course they have some investment from people like Alex Klokus and the return for him would be expansion into the media realm.

As always it's hard to read where along the grifter/true believer scale people are though.
 
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flarkey said:
I'm aware of sondehub and habhub (High Altitude Balloon) but I don't think they offer playback.
Click to expand...
I was playing around on sondehub and found that if you click a launch site (the open gray circles) you can click the "Historical" button and it will let you select a year and a month and show sondes related to launches from that location. Then clicking on one (the smaller blue circles) there's a "Show Full Flight Path" link that will load the data for that sonde with flight path. Edit: There's also a "Telemetry Graph" button at the bottom left that will show altitudes along the flight path.

Here's one from January 21st that flew within a few miles of their location for example.

https://sondehub.org/#!mt=Mapnik&mz=9&qm=3h&mc=31.76787,-105.65002&f=24057270&q=24057270

1744489356709.png


1744496207539.png
 
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jdog said:
In the show Barber makes some comment about the UAPs seeming to know the range of their sensors and stay outside them (as well as supposedly remotely shutting sensors down), which gives away the tautological game: The only UAPs they have footage of are those beyond "sensor range" because anything clearly identifiable is clearly identifiable as mundane.
Click to expand...

So UAPs never get within clear viewing range of a sensor?

So, the defense against UAPs is to put a ring of sensors around the location you want to protect. To avoid being seen by those sensors the UAPs will stay away from your defended location? Who knew defense against UAPs was so easy?

So an interesting test of their ability to summon UAPs would be to put a ring of people with cameras around the location of the people doing the summoning. Of course you would need to know the range limit of their summoning, and place the ring at that distance from the summoners.

The test of this will probably happen when some outsiders "crash" one of their viewing sessions, the summoners will suddenly declare they can't find any UAPs to summon. Because people not being guided by the summoners might see something they are not supposed to...


Note that one of the "standard things" that groups like this do is to concentrate all of their cameras and witnesses in a single location, never multiple locations miles apart. This allow the UAPs to control the distance they are from these observers, so they all are seeing the UAP at the same distance and in the same direction and against the same sky background. How convenient. Having viewers at widely seperated locations would allow triangulation of the UAPs location and get accurate measurements of their speed and altitude. Not to mention the danger of someone being close enough to get a clear and detailed picture of the UAP.
 
jdog said:
In the show Barber makes some comment about the UAPs seeming to know the range of their sensors and stay outside them (as well as supposedly remotely shutting sensors down), which gives away the tautological game: The only UAPs they have footage of are those beyond "sensor range" because anything clearly identifiable is clearly identifiable as mundane.
Click to expand...
Makes you wonder why the supposed aliens allow the summoning but then make the effort to avoid the clear detection. Really, the pattern of deception is clear.
 
Some of you may remember the 1960s TV program Thunderbirds; the organisation International Rescue wanted to keep its technology secret (for some reason); in order to prevent members of the public taking photographs they had an 'automatic camera alert' sensor that would 'bleep' whenever anyone tried to film them.

Here it is
latest


Presumably the UAPs, whoever they are and wherever they come from, have a similar detector system that allows them to keep out of the range of cameras. I suspect that this constraint forces them into an ever-smaller fraction of the world, mostly far away from land and over featureless ocean. Gradually, our improving camera technology is driving these shy visitors away from our planet.
 
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It seems Skywatcher have taken up Jay's offer, as silly as it is to use a cine camera like this over any number of much more longer, cheaper and manageable lenses Skywatcher could easily pickup online.

It remains to be seen what happens.

My guess is they are less interested in the camera, and more interested in the collaboration that might get them some connections to get the project picked up by a network.
 
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jarlrmai said:
It seems Skywatcher have taken up Jay's offer, as silly as it is to use a cine camera like this over any number of much more longer, cheaper and manageable lenses Skywatcher could easily pickup online.
Click to expand...
Would those other lenses look as impressive on TV to the layman's eye? I don't know from lenses, but my response looking at that thing was "That's a lot of glass, I'm impressed!" (A friend who is into photography refers to his biggest lens as "a lot of glass," if that is in fact the sort of slang photographers use, that's how I happen to know it. If it is NOT the sort of slang they use, that shows how little I actually know about it. I have no idea of the qualities or quality of THIS beast:
canon-1200mm-300x252.jpg

but I know it would look impressive on TV...)
 
jarlrmai said:
That's a 1200mm f/5.6 lens from Canon
Click to expand...
It's a great lens, but what are they currently working with? How much better will their images be? They are currently posting things like:

2025-04-14_11-28-18.jpg

2025-04-14_11-28-52.jpg

2025-04-14_11-29-12.jpg


Now, there's a great camera out there in the form of a Nikon P1000, which is effectively a 1500mm optical zoom. Smaller sensor, cheaper glass. But these are daylight photos. The 1200mm Canon lens will give better pictures, but for the purpose of simply imaging a distant object to figure out what its, it's only going to be fractionally better than the P1000.

For example, here it is resolving some tic-tacs and similar.

Source: https://youtu.be/xbWTgv5NALE?t=16


and a light in the sky at night

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5YcvMqpWZs


And a jellyfish

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



And it's only $1,100 to own, far less than the $20,000 for the canon. (or more like $23,000++ with a full frame camera)

They should just buy 10 of them, and give one to everyone there.
 
Assuming they have a P1000 at maximum zoom and that the object is between 5 and 7 meters long, is it possible to estimate how far away the object would be and the angular size it would take up in the sky?
 
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The problem is that if they did have that lens and what they show is it at its max mag, they would have little to no chance of seeing it before hand to know to point a camera at it.
 
The Nikon is decent for id, but the Canon will focus faster, track objects (on new mirrorless bodies) so with the budget on show they could have both.
 
jarlrmai said:
The problem is that if they did have that lens and what they show is it at its max mag, they would have little to no chance of seeing it before hand to know to point a camera at it.
Click to expand...
Unless, of course, they have been watching it since they launched it, and have been waiting until it was far enough away to be sufficiently fuzzy before they started filming it?

I wonder, if at any of their viewing parties, they let people bring their own cameras?
 
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