Tic-tac object flying sideways?

J

johne1618

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A tic-tac object was filmed on July 28th 2021 in the late evening near Crediton, Devon, UK travelling overhead from South to North.

It was submitted to MUFON by the observers on July 29th 2021 as the second video file attached to case 117108.

At the beginning of the video it seems to be flying in a direction 45 degrees to its axis which is not consistent with it being an airplane. The direction of the object's motion can be judged reasonably easily as it seems to be flying roughly perpendicular to the overhead power line.

According to FlightRadar24.com there were no aircraft flights over Crediton at the time.

What was the object?
 
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A tic-tac object was filmed on July 28th 2021 in the late evening near Crediton, Devon, UK.

It was submitted to MUFON by the observers on July 29th 2021 as the second video file attached to case 117108.

At the beginning of the video it seems to be flying in a direction 45 degrees to its axis which is not consistent with it being an airplane. The direction of the object's motion can be judged reasonably easily as it seems to be flying roughly perpendicular to the overhead power line.

According to FlightRadar24.com there were no aircraft flights over Crediton at the time.

What was the object?

Based on such low-information-content and poorly shot footage, I wouldn't go as far as to state with any confidence that the object is flying sideways or that it isn't an aircraft. Nothing particularly amazing seems to be happening.

An aircraft is, frankly, the first thing that comes to mind. It may not be a commercial aircraft and hence doesn't appear on Flightradar24.
 
Yeah, it is telling that during the parts where some static objects , such as the power/phone lines, are in frame, the object only makes strange or fast "movements" when the static objects are also jumping around the frame, indicating the object only does stuff when the camera does stuff.
 
From 0.02 to 0.04 in the above youtube video played at 0.25 speed it seems to me that, relative to the second power line, the object has actually deviated from its straight-line trajectory and moved around in an arc.

By using the power lines as reference it should be possible to stabilize this video from camera movement.

Does anyone know how to do that?
 
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From 0.02 to 0.04 in the above youtube video played at 0.25 speed it seems to me that, relative to the second power line, the object has actually deviated from its straight-line trajectory and moved around in an arc.

By using the power lines as reference it should be possible to stabilize this video from camera movement.

Does anyone know how to do that?

It's the parallax when the camera moves. You can see the object's seemingly sudden deviation from trajectory at 0.02 (the first power line), at 0.04 (the second power line) and at 0.05 (a small distance past the second power line) exactly coinciding with the power lines also jerking downwards a notch due to unstable shooting.

If we say the object is behaving jumpily, then we must also admit that the power lines are behaving erratically in perfect synchrony.
 
I just watched the playback from FlightRadar from 3pm-midnight UTC, and there is regular air traffic around Exeter.
The sky doesn't look like "late evening", really.
But quite a few aircraft during that timespan fly within 15km of Crediton - my guess:
1627745619945.png
 
From 0.02 to 0.04 in the above youtube video played at 0.25 speed it seems to me that, relative to the second power line, the object has actually deviated from its straight-line trajectory and moved around in an arc.

By using the power lines as reference it should be possible to stabilize this video from camera movement.

Does anyone know how to do that?

This is 99.99999% a plane. It looks and moves exactly like one. The apparent strange motion comes from the camera movement in combination with video stabilization. This is explained with examples (another MUFON case) here:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cThB1zfynHQ
 
I did some analysis of the tic-tac motion using frames from the video at 1.7s, 3.4s and 5.1s. I overlaid them all onto the 1.7s frame to show that the object was not following a straight line. But, as Mick shows in his video above, due to parallax effects and image stabilization in the camera my analysis does not show true movement of the object.analysis.jpg
 
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I tried to do some analysis of the tic-tac motion using frames from the video at 1.7s, 3.4s and 5.1s. I overlayed them all onto the 1.7s frame to show that the object was not following a straight line. But, as Mick shows in his video above, due to parallax effects and image stabilization in the camera my analysis doesn't show true motion of the object.analysis.jpg
I tried stabilizing the video and the object appears to slide back and forth erratically due to the person holding the camera.
The power lines don't make a good reference point due to horizontal camera movement.

Trying to stabilize hand-held video without clear & static reference points is not easy. Parallel power lines have no clear markings to track the camera movement against.
 
If you stabilize the power lines vertically, you see the object zig zag because the camera is moving side-to-side without a horizontal reference point on those power lines.
If there were a white stripe or something on the lines to keep in track it would be more stable.
 

Attachments

  • Crediton.mp4
    1.7 MB
A bit more detail from the MUFON Database

mufon case 117108
Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 117108
It was late evening and we were outside the front of the house with the dogs. The sun was low but it was still daylight with good visibility. The sky was mostly clear blue with very high thin cloud in places and broken cumulus to the west.

I looked up to the south where a bright object in the sky caught my attention. It wasn’t bright like a star, but appeared to glow. It moved smoothly and steadily, passing over our heads, from the south to the north.

It was difficult to make out its size or altitude; but it appeared to be below the high level thin haze. To me, it appeared to be a similar height to that maintained by the light aircraft that fly from the local airport. So, not very high.

There were no visible wings or other directional or control surfaces; no vapour trails or sound. My girlfriend, who had the presence of mind to start filming it, thought she saw a flashing light above it at one point, but I did not observe any flashing, flickering or strobing.

The object continued to head north until it our view was obscured by our house roof. We then moved indoors and upstairs to where we could observe it again from our landing window. We watched it continue north at the same steady pace, with the same brightness, until we lost sight of it. We cannot be sure if it just winked out, or moved off at great speed; but it was there one minute and gone the next.

So we're looking for a plane, moving south to north, at high altititude, near the time of sunset. And as as the plane/object appears to be reflecting the orange glow of the setting sun, it is probably to east of the observers.....

Ryanair 77UW from Faro to Leeds seems to fit.... but again wiithout the exact time of the recording we cant be 100% sure. This was at 8.05pm UTC / 9.05pm BST.

Screen Shot 2021-07-31 at 18.57.50.png


Edit: On the https://ufostalker.com/ website the Crediton sighting is there and it states the sighting was at 21.07hrs, that fits with the Ryanair flght.

Screen Shot 2021-07-31 at 19.07.01.png
Full details are here: https://ufostalker.com/sighting/117108
 
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A bit more detail from the MUFON Database



So we're looking for a plane, moving south to north, at high altititude, near the time of sunset. And as as the plane/object appears to be reflecting the orange glow of the setting sun, it is probably to east of the observers.....

Ryanair 77UW from Faro to Leeds seems to fit.... but again wiithout the exact time of the recording we cant be 100% sure. This was at 8.05pm UTC / 9.05pm BST.

Screen Shot 2021-07-31 at 18.57.50.png


Edit: On the https://ufostalker.com/ website the Crediton sighting is there and it states the sighting was at 21.07hrs, that fits with the Ryanair flght.

Screen Shot 2021-07-31 at 19.07.01.png
Full details are here: https://ufostalker.com/sighting/117108

You got to love MUFON reports that note the cloud type but neglect to give a specific time.
 
A bit more detail from the MUFON Database



So we're looking for a plane, moving south to north, at high altititude, near the time of sunset. And as as the plane/object appears to be reflecting the orange glow of the setting sun, it is probably to east of the observers.....

Ryanair 77UW from Faro to Leeds seems to fit.... but again wiithout the exact time of the recording we cant be 100% sure. This was at 8.05pm UTC / 9.05pm BST.

Screen Shot 2021-07-31 at 18.57.50.png


Edit: On the https://ufostalker.com/ website the Crediton sighting is there and it states the sighting was at 21.07hrs, that fits with the Ryanair flght.

Screen Shot 2021-07-31 at 19.07.01.png
Full details are here: https://ufostalker.com/sighting/117108
Great find!
I thought it might be heading due east with the sunset reflection on it's underbelly, but the Ryanair flight seems far more likely.
More surface area visible to catch the reflection, and in the reported timeframe.
 
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Oops, I made a mistake in my flightradar24 screenshot. I erroneously posted the 29 July 2021 at 2105hrs BST - which is the date the sighting was reported rather than the date it was observed. The sighting was on the 28th which, as luck would have, also has a plane going past at exactly this time that fits the description by the witnesses.... EZY5362 Faro to Liverpool.

Screen Shot 2021-08-01 at 17.25.28.png
 
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