South Australia "Cigar Shaped UFO" picture from Dec 2021

[Stingray]

I came across this MUFON report one day and these pictures had me scratching my head.
Camera artifact, Photoshop, bug zipping by?





MUFON case 119936 / Dec 22, 2021, 1:00 PM / Adelaide South Australia
Witness report:
"While photographing an aircraft passing over my house, I noticed a dark cigar shaped object fly pass the aircraft at speed, I was lucky enough to get a photo. The object was travelling from the east and heading west as it passed the aircraft. The duration of the sighting would have been no longer then 5 to 6 seconds."

Thank you in advance for the inputs.

Quick edit: it seem like when I uploaded the first picture to the forum it decreased in size. Let me know if this direct link works:

https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/119936_submitter_file3__IMG30843.JPG

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Cropped and levels changed

It looks like a classic rod. The regularly spaced lumps along its length are wings caught at the high and low point of the wingbeat and relatively stationary for a time. So... JAB (Just Another Bug)

 

[Stingray]

Cropped and levels changed

It looks like a classic rod. The regularly spaced lumps along its length are wings caught at the high and low point of the wingbeat and relatively stationary for a time. So... JAB (Just Another Bug)

I'm new here. Are there more examples for me to see? And how does it seem so sharp if the focus is at the distant plane? Thank you!

 

[Ravi]

It looks like classic motion blur. Bug is a good match (close to viewer, more blur wrt plane in the back).

 

[FatPhil]

I'm new here. Are there more examples for me to see? And how does it seem so sharp if the focus is at the distant plane? Thank you!

Summer in Oz, clear skies - that's going to be bright, and so stopped down quite a long way, so the depth of focus will be large. If we know the camera/lens, we can probably calculate the range that would be reasonably in focus given some reasonable guesses of the f-number (anything wider than f/12.8 would surprise me for a bright sunny day, but we don't know what the camera was set to prioritise). This blob isn't necessarily in particularly great focus (as it has motion blur too, we can't really see what the focus is like), so there's room for it to be nearer than the calculated range of focus and still be consistent with a "small but near" hypothesis.

If we know the distance to the plane and its size, we can use similar triangles to estimage distance/size pairs for this object too. X thousand times closer and Y thousand times smaller for some small X and Y seem to be believable bug-suporting parameters.

 

[Ravi]

By the way, it seems you cannot search for this case on MUFON? I tried everything, no chance. I was hoping to find details like what cam and settings, but nope.

 

[Stingray]

There's is a Metadata if you use the image from this link:
https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/119936_submitter_file3__IMG30843.JPG

Short version:


There's a lot more data, but I know nothing about this stuff, so you'd have to ask me for what else you need or use your own method.

 

[FatPhil]

There's a lot more data, but I know nothing about this stuff, so you'd have to ask me for what else you need or use your own method.

That should be enough to (a) work out the numbers; and even (b) recreate something similar as a sanity check.
However, it's the middle of the night here (my window handle contrasted against an illuminated distant hotel, distance ratio ~500, were inconclusive, but that might be something to do with aving to use ISO3200 and 6s exposures), so I'll let someone else do that! The f/10 does restrict the envelope of bug parameters more than I'd hoped, but doesn't rule it out by any means.