Spinning Comb-like UFO in Thunderstorm in Cambridge

[Ravi]

It looks like a Frisbee-like disc flown over the roof - not too big, not too far away, and spinning.
...
Now I wish I could just find the best match for the disc.

It looks like the circumferential shape is more or less hexagonal. Perhaps it helps in the search (I am unsuccessful so far).

 

[Peter I]

It looks like the circumferential shape is more or less hexagonal. Perhaps it helps in the search (I am unsuccessful so far).

Agree - excellent point. It looks so familiar...

 

[Deleted member 16321]

It appears he used a Sony ZV-1.

Does anyone know what settings you'd be most likely to use on that model of camera if you were trying to photograph lightning? (something with a fairly low shutter speed? High ISO? and wouldn't you use a tripod?) What effects might those settings produce when catching a small, fast spinning object in the foreground? Surely lots of distortion...

From reviewing the YouTube comments, he won't respond to requests to post the original file, except to tease "if people are really interested I may" but seems very keen to accept offers to re-post it on various UFO channels...

 

[DeepSpace41]

On seeing the pic at #2, I wondered if it was a piece of broken garden fencing. There were a lot of severe gales in the UK in 2020 (and some this year too). After the gales some streets were littered with bits of broken fence and other garden furniture.

A problem with any 'blowing in the wind' hypothesis is that in the video a sound is audible in association with the object. It's quite faint, but unless it is a pure coincidence (or fake) it suggests that the object is powered. The motion also seems too fast, and too steady, for something just blowing in the wind. When I first saw the video I wondered if it was a military jet flying past, as there are air bases in that region. The weird visual appearance would need to be explained as a camera artifact of some kind. But the sound seems too quiet for a nearby jet aircraft, unless the windows of the house are remarkably soundproof. A smaller powered object, like a fast-moving drone, combined with camera effects, might be a possibility.

As for fakery, it is always a bit suspicious when someone has their camera pointing in the right direction just before something remarkable comes into view.

Good point: "it is always a bit suspicious when someone has their camera pointing in the right direction just before something remarkable comes into view."

 

[DavidB66]

To me, the sound is nothing more than coincidental street traffic - especially after seeing the location of the video.

It could be. But to make this a non-hoax video, we would need a double coincidence: a coincidental bit of traffic noise that starts as the object appears; and someone happens to have a camera pointing in just the right direction when a brief and unexpected thing happens. It's not impossible, but it's a stretch. And then the same person saw and filmed another brief appearance by a UFO from the same location not long after. Maybe Avi Loeb should hire this guy for his 'UFO observatory', because he seems to have uncanny luck where filming UFOs is concerned!

 

[Trailspotter]

And then the same person saw and filmed another brief appearance by a UFO from the same location not long after.

He has made only three "UFO" videos, all within one month period: the one in OP and two more from his CCTV camera, presumably as a part of his content creation. He probably dropped the subject, as he has not returned to it for about 15 months that past since.

 

[Gary McH-P]

This guy is obviously plagued by “UFO” encounters to put three out in a one month period. Either that or he is looking for subscribers. No return for 15 months, oh well that plan went down the pan then.

 

[Ravi]

This guy is obviously plagued by “UFO” encounters to put three out in a one month period. Either that or he is looking for subscribers. No return for 15 months, oh well that plan went down the pan then.

Or he is abducted. Surely when you are up there in an UFO, there is no time to make new content! ha!

 

[Bear100]

ly dropped t

There's a bit of an odd thing in the second video posted (Cambridgeshire UFO strikes again in post #15) when the black dot emerges from the cloud. There seems to be a few stationary black pixels that appear, get darker then disappear before the moving thing appears. I suspect fakery and would apply the same guess to the principle video being discussed in #1.

I saw the same thing in a few of his videos.

The "UFO" vids, and his day at the beach video (where birds appear and disappear in the remote background sky) are remarkably steady shots in foreground, especially if the camera was hand held.

Just a guess, but I'd bet the black streaks and dots that seem to jump back and forth/appear and disappear are artifacts of image stabilization. Not saying that would explain the spiraling weird thing in the initial video in question here, but it could explain his other "UFO"s

 

[JMartJr]

artifacts of image stabilization.

Might that somehow create the "ribs" seen in the video, though? Asking from sincere ignorance. But there is something about those ribs that just look unnatural to me, more likwe artifacts of the image than properties of the thing imaged.

 

[Ashley Pomeroy]

Might that somehow create the "ribs" seen in the video, though? Asking from sincere ignorance. But there is something about those ribs that just look unnatural to me, more likwe artifacts of the image than properties of the thing imaged.

It looks a little bit like interlacing:


The Sony ZV-1 can apparently shoot interlaced video, or at least it's an option. It has a wide range of progressive video modes plus high-frame-rate footage so I don't know why you would shoot interlaced. In this case I don't think that's the problem, because otherwise the rest of the image would be interlaced.

To my eyes the trajectory looks too straight for a thrown object, unless perhaps it's being caught by the wind. My hunch is that it's a low-flying drone, or quadcopter, but a combination of [insert arcane video problem here] and compression has munged it. Perhaps he shot it at 120fps - he was trying to capture lightning - but the camera uses a software trick to generate 120fps. I don't know.

As others have pointed out it's odd that he's pointing the camera in that direction and that he seems to react to the object just before it crests his neighbour's roof. Did he hear it coming?

 

[DavidB66]

To my eyes the trajectory looks too straight for a thrown object,

I thought so too. As I said at #4 above:

... in the video a sound is audible in association with the object. It's quite faint, but unless it is a pure coincidence (or fake) it suggests that the object is powered. The motion also seems too fast, and too steady, for something just blowing in the wind... A smaller powered object, [smaller than a jet plane] like a fast-moving drone, combined with camera effects, might be a possibility.

As to 'camera effects', on advancing the video frame-by-frame, in the last 10 frames the pattern on the object appears to rotate or fluctuate in some way, but the overall shape of the object - a kind of elongated leaf shape, which I think botanists call lanceolate - does not change very much. [See also the image at #36 above.] This is odd if it is actually a rotating elongated object. One would expect the peripheral shape of the object to take part in the rotation. If on the other hand the apparent change in the pattern is in fact a camera effect, the overall shape of the object might not be much affected.

A further possibility, to be mentioned if only to be ruled out, is that the apparent shape of the object might be a trick of perspective. A flat circular disk (dare I say, like a flying saucer!), viewed obliquely, would appear elliptical, and even if it is rotating, it would still appear elliptical so long as the angle of view does not change.

 

[Deleted member 16321]

looks like the circumferential shape is more or less hexagonal

But is that just how it looks on camera? i.e. doesn't the logo on the first disc in this video appear hexagonal for a moment as it rotates and nears the camera?

To my eyes the trajectory looks too straight for a thrown object

But It doesn't seem like the distance traveled observed here is that great. It could have been a small thing thrown from a neighbours garden for example. (I know... @Trailspotter the map is useful!).

 

[Ravi]

But is that just how it looks on camera? i.e. doesn't the logo on the first disc in this video appear hexagonal for a moment as it rotates and nears the camera?

Indeed. I guess the overall shape (in OP video) is hard to determine.

 

[DavidB66]

In my neck of the woods, at least, people wouldn't throw an object of any value (e.g. a fancy frisbee) across random neighbours' back gardens, because they would never get it back. They would take it to a park. But I must say I am very impressed by the video at #53. I would not have expected a thrown object to maintain such a long, straight trajectory. Evidently I was wrong.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I would stand here, on this garage roof. A short, fairly level throw. It's just heading toward the street, or the front yard (garden?).



Just an imagined scenario... The guy's compatriot is the 12 year old kid who lives next door. The kid is standing on his own garage and throwing a homemade boomerang over the nearby roof.




The Google Map view
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.512...4!1sHtbaE5LCoP94-0AsfmXuhA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

My notion of the flightpath; in pink.

 

[Deleted member 16321]

My notion of the flightpath; in pink.

Unless...

 

[Trailspotter]

My notion of the flightpath; in pink.

The object thrown from this spot would be only about 5 inches across, like the cap on the chimney flue. And it could be easily tossed over the bungalow roof by a person standing on the ground.

 

[JMartJr]

Yall make sure you are accounting for wind age! It was a windy day, judging by the trees. Depending on the ratio of weight to surface area, it might well be that all that anybody had to do would be toss the item straight up and let the wind take it.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

It wouldn't be stable.

 

[JMartJr]

I take your point, though you could put a spin on it when you tossed it for more stability. But my main thought was that, depending on what it is, taking windage into account might be important in trying to deduce where it was launched... assuming it was launched locally.

 

[Deleted member 16321]

Lollypop stick flyer?
Spinny thing rendered at 10 frames /second.

 

[Trailspotter]

Having analysed the OP video further, I concluded that the object was about 25 cm (10 in) across and traveled with speed of 4 m/sec. This is in the assumption that the object was near the chimney at the moment it appears above the roof. If it was more distant from camera at the time, its size and speed need to be scaled up proportionally to the distance from the camera.

In addition, the object was spinning at 3.75 revolution per second, or 225 rpm. This is from the OP video frame rate of 25 fps. In the last 20 frames before going out of view, the object completed 3 revolutions.

Below is the images of an alignment of 8 frames selected at regular time intervals (every ninth), covering the full span of the object's visible trajectory, and a lattice of evenly spaced parallel rods viewed at an angle to its plane. The angle value was selected so that the projected sequential positions of the object matched those of the sequential rods.


A good match was achieved for the angle value of about 15°, thus providing us with the direction of the object trajectory relative the direction from the camera to the right of the chimney. Coincidentally, the angular widths of the sequential rods turned out to match those of the object at corresponding positions. As the distance between the adjacent rods in my lattice was 6 times greater than the rod diameter, the distance travelled by the object over 9x7=63 frames (or 2.5 sec) was approximately equal to 6x7=42 object's widths.


From the known camera location and direction, the object's putative trajectories can be plotted and measured on Google Earth. The length of its closest to the camera visible segment (green line) is about 10 meters, giving the object's speed of 10/2.5 = 4m/sec and the width of 10/42 = 0.24 m = 24 cm, similar to the size of a typical frisbee. On a more distant parallel trajectory, the visible segment (cyan) is longer, so the object would have to be bigger and faster. The beginning of the trajectory that was obscured from the camera view by the roof, is shown with yellow line. The object could have been thrown from any point of it and might have a greater initial speed if travelled a longer way.


I previously estimated the object width being about 5 inches (13 cm) by its similarity to the chimney flue cap. It was an underestimate, as that particular cap is probably more than 20 cm wide. This can be deduced from the chimney's width. Its side is 2.5 bricks wide, or about 57 cm.

 

[taurusclover21]

But is that just how it looks on camera? i.e. doesn't the logo on the first disc in this video appear hexagonal for a moment as it rotates and nears the camera?






But It doesn't seem like the distance traveled observed here is that great. It could have been a small thing thrown from a neighbours garden for example. (I know... @Trailspotter the map is useful!).

That video is much more interesting than any "UFO" video I've seen!