Triangle object filmed / uap or cameraglitch ?

Daves!

Daves!

Active Member
From a ufo sightning site the following was filmed
Triangle lights filmed in night vision

The person doesnt know what it was what he filmed. He regularly films the night sky as part of his astronomy hobby

Example of an satellite at 0:27 and plane at 1:37

Filmed with Luna Optics Gen 3-6x50
7 oktober 2021, om 20:53
Location Utrecht, Nederland
(Southern Night Sky)



Source: https://youtu.be/bQvGM9pOnlw


Anyone who can help indentify what it is ?
 
Possibly another plane? Eindhoven airport is to the south. Schiphol to the NorthWest. There must be a flight path bisecting Utrecht. Those three lights with plenty of zoom glare. I'll leave the finer details to the flight experts on this site.
 
Triangle of lights is usually DC-9/MD-80/MD-90
b57ecbf04ac7575d7c8ad8b39f4b2713.jpg


But there are other possibility, like a 777
20141126-094602-9zz2y.jpg
 
Too dim to be lights I think. It goes by a couple of 5th, 6th magnitude stars and appears to be of comparable brightness. It also appears like the three dots are moving a little with respect to each other so probably not one solid object.
 
If the observer is indeed interested in astronomy, he should provide azimuth and elevation, as well as verify that the gear shows the correct timestamp +/- 20 secs.


It can be deduced retrospectively by screenshotting all stable frames of background stars as he moves, matching them up in a collage, and comparing it to a sky chart, but it's tedious work - especially concerning such a narrow FoV and dim stars (I agree with Easy Muffin, at a first glance they look like magnitude +5 or below, way too dim to be seen with the naked eye in such an urban area such as Utrecht, the nightvision does all the work here).

This so that one can rule out any oddball satellite combo, using TLEs showing dimmer, more obscure ditto than the lists typically included in the usual spotting software (they are usually capped at +5, as less bright ditto are of little interest to the casual observer).

The dots are too close to each other to be a NOSS triad I think, but yeah, one has to start somewhere.
 
Fortunately you can go to a place like astrometry.net and have the computer work out what you're looking at. Once you have a starting point it's not that difficult to trace the entire path. It's something like this,

1.jpg


The object first appears in the ESE near the star Markab (Alpha Pegasi, the brightest dot at the start of the video, magnitude +2.5-ish) and moves towards the southern horizon, crossing through a distinctive triangle arrangement of stars (all roughly around mag +5 to +6) before it gets lost in the Aquarius constellation near Jupiter (which would probably show up as a very bright light source, a hypothetical plane light presumably being even brighter than that).

I had a quick look at satellites too but the only somewhat probable candidate I found is the Aerocube 6B cubesat. It fits the time to within a minute and the general path it traces is kind of the same but we'd need to know the location more exactly than just the name of the town to be able to match it up. Then of course there's the question of how a single tiny cubesat could show up as three dots. The conditions were right for sats to be visible though, so there's that at least. Sun was 18° below the horizon at the time, still illuminating objects in orbit.
 
I will ask the original poster his exact location.
Are there any more things i should ask ?

EDIT : his location is already in the original post i made a screenshot of his location.
 
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Hmm, so that doesn't fit then. Well it was a long shot anyway.

2.jpg


It parallels the path of the object in the video but is too low on the horizon, I circled the three triangle stars that it should have passed through. Also the time doesn't fit, it's off by about 40 seconds. Might just be the camera's timer is off by that amount though.

EDIT:
Looking at the sat trail it also becomes apparent that the object is the video is travelling much faster. So that's another strike against it.
3.png
The path and it disappearing somewhere near Jupiter match but it's moving too slowly and too low.
 
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Easy Muffin said:
Hmm, so that doesn't fit then. Well it was a long shot anyway.

View attachment 47074

It parallels the path of the object in the video but is too low on the horizon, I circled the three triangle stars that it should have passed through. Also the time doesn't fit, it's off by about 40 seconds. Might just be the camera's timer is off by that amount though.
Click to expand...
And if the time was exactely the same ?
You would suggest that it could have been stars ?
Just thinking with you.
 
Daves! said:
And if the time was exactely the same ?
You would suggest that it could have been stars ?
Just thinking with you.
Click to expand...
I'm not seeing anything there at that precise time. It must have been moving fairly quickly across the sky - we can't determine its speed without knowing its distance but its angular velocity is something like 2°/sec it would seem like.
 
This has been added : the objects moved East to West SouthWest
 

Attachments

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7/10/21 2053 LOCAL is 18:53 UTC

This is a stellarium capture marked for the brightest stars in the starting frame and 23 seconds in when it appears to fade out

1633779706860.png
 
Near IR imaging using an CMOS sensor, this is not the same as used in a FLIR camera (microbolometers).
Not dismissing anything, just wanted to point this out.

I don't see any reason why a 3-object satellite-system should be ruled out. Today, in the space industry, there is a strong focus on cube satellites and even smaller sized (micro satellites). There is no difficulty in launching 3 objects in the same orbital path.. Also the speed can be pretty fast (a low Earth orbit).

I remember a similar video, from years ago, where someone also filmed 3 similar looking dots travelling at hight speed. Someone analysed the footage where some stars were intersecting the path, and yes, they "pass through" the dots (=no solid object).
 
Yes could be but if i see the plane in the video which seems higher up in the sky i dont think they are satellites. Then again its pretty hard to guess the altitude of the objects.
I think due to the speed and the zoom i think they are closer than the plane ( and the satellite ).
Ravi said:
Near IR imaging using an CMOS sensor, this is not the same as used in a FLIR camera (microbolometers).
Not dismissing anything, just wanted to point this out.

I don't see any reason why a 3-object satellite-system should be ruled out. Today, in the space industry, there is a strong focus on cube satellites and even smaller sized (micro satellites). There is no difficulty in launching 3 objects in the same orbital path.. Also the speed can be pretty fast (a low Earth orbit).

I remember a similar video, from years ago, where someone also filmed 3 similar looking dots travelling at hight speed. Someone analysed the footage where some stars were intersecting the path, and yes, they "pass through" the dots (=no solid object).yes could be
Click to expand...
 
Easy Muffin said:
Fortunately you can go to a place like astrometry.net and have the computer work out what you're looking at. Once you have a starting point it's not that difficult to trace the entire path. It's something like this,
Click to expand...

Oh, thanks! Didn't know about this, I've always done it the "hard" way before.
 
Gary McH-P said:
So the above tweet says, 'Appeared only in IR'. Does this suggest there is a standard vision version?
Click to expand...

Given the apparent magnitude of some of the stars featured, and the light pollution in the Netherlands in an urban area of Utrecht, "IR" per se isn't the thing, just the light amplification in this narrow field of view in general.

Ie many of the stars in the clip weren't visible to the naked eye either. No need to bring in any mysterious "only IR" stuff.
 
To circle back to the "reflection" idea -- other UFOs I've seen that are reflections are reflections of something else in the shot, like this:
internal reflections camera 4pt5.jpg


Knowing next to nothing about the physics of what ones on inside a camera lens, is an internal reflection of something out of frame possible/common? If so, I guess it woud be a reflection of a plane with a triangle of lights, out of frame?

Also, I'm not sure I would rule out a distant plane with three lights just on the basis of the light not being bright, is it possible the plane is flying way the Heck up there, and the lights are largely aimed away from us?
 
My very first thought was it was an fake due to the pace of the speed of the object. 2nd Thought. A plane but im shifting towards the idea of birds ..but that pace is making me shift back to the idea of a plane. But like Gary From post #2 pointed out it seems that it isnt a solid object but 3 seperate objects.
3rd. Thought The camera reflection of another plane fits also in. But how to find that out is beyond me.
I dont have any experience with IR camera's
 
@JMartJr
In most imaging optics, the size of the detector plane determines the Field of View. All object not in this field of view are not imaged and cannot form an internal reflection (as there is no image of it). All these "out of view" objects contribute to stray light in the camera.

But apart from that, the camera is panning, but still the triangle moves in a nice path wrt the stars, so that cannot happen with an internal optical reflection.
 
I compared some shots from the video with objects in the sky to determine some bearings,

Code: 
Time     Azim   Elev
20:53:51 122.75 40.30
20:53:57 139.50 35.67
20:54:01 147.75 32.75
20:54:06 158.00 28.50

and mapped the sightlines in Google Earth. I also tried to get a size for the object using the same method and it seems to be about 0.2°.

For a diameter of 1 metre I wound up with this situation
4.jpg


In these 15 seconds the altitude changes from about 190 m to 140 m and it covers a horizontal distance of about 150 m, pretty much in a straight line. It would need to move over the ground at 40 kph or so.

I have no idea if a drone or something similar would fit or if an object this close would even show up as sharp as it does in the vid so take all of this with a pinch of salt.
 
Question :
Do drones emit heat, if so could that look like dimmed lightson NV ?
 
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I've pretty much settled on satellites.

There are amateurs astronomers who specialize in "satellite spotting." They keep track of known satellites and work out orbits to satellites that have no published data.

"Triads" is the hobbyist jargon term for three satellites in formation. Wish I could help with the hunt but I'm insanely busy.

You might want to start here with this article that has useful links to get you going.

http://satobs.org/noss.html

External Quote:

One of the interesting sights in the night sky are the Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellite formations, each having two or three satellites in close proximity to one another. Normally these satellites are relatively dim to the unaided eye, but on occasion they brighten sufficiently to be easily seen in a dark sky.
NOSS satellites locate and track ships at sea by detecting their radio transmissions and analyzing them using the TDOA (time-difference-of-arrival) technique.
The links are old, and I don't have time to find more up to date stuff. But this will give you the idea of how to get started. Good hunting, chaps.
 
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Z.W. Wolf said:
I've pretty much settled on satellites.

There are amateurs astronomers who specialize in "satellite spotting." They keep track of known satellites and work out orbits to satellites that have no published data.

"Triads" is the jargon term for three satellites in formation. Wish I could help with the hunt but I'm insanely busy.

You might want to start here with this article that has useful links to get you going.

http://satobs.org/noss.html

External Quote:

One of the interesting sights in the night sky are the Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellite formations, each having two or three satellites in close proximity to one another. Normally these satellites are relatively dim to the unaided eye, but on occasion they brighten sufficiently to be easily seen in a dark sky.
NOSS satellites locate and track ships at sea by detecting their radio transmissions and analyzing them using the TDOA (time-difference-of-arrival) technique.
Click to expand...
I watched Stellarium pointed at Markab for the time period shown in the video on the date shown for satellites passing through and did not see any that matched, my DB shows it has NOSS. The date/time could be out on the video I guess. Or it could be a different constellation and I need a better DB.
 
Z.W. Wolf said:
I've pretty much settled on satellites.

There are amateurs astronomers who specialize in "satellite spotting." They keep track of known satellites and work out orbits to satellites that have no published data.

"Triads" is the hobbyist jargon term for three satellites in formation. Wish I could help with the hunt but I'm insanely busy.

You might want to start here with this article that has useful links to get you going.

http://satobs.org/noss.html

External Quote:

One of the interesting sights in the night sky are the Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellite formations, each having two or three satellites in close proximity to one another. Normally these satellites are relatively dim to the unaided eye, but on occasion they brighten sufficiently to be easily seen in a dark sky.
NOSS satellites locate and track ships at sea by detecting their radio transmissions and analyzing them using the TDOA (time-difference-of-arrival) technique.
The links are old, and I don't have time to find more up to date stuff. But this will give you the idea of how to get started. Good hunting, chaps.
Click to expand...
I mentioned the NOSS "triads" in my first post yesterday

As I already said, these dots appear too close to each other to be them, and as we've learned since, completely excluded.
 
I'm not saying they are satellites. The crux of my post is to get in touch with some advanced amateurs. It's been my experience that pros/advanced amateurs will often tell me things I'd never dreamed of.
 
gargamel said:
I mentioned the NOSS "triads" in my first post yesterday

As I already said, these dots appear too close to each other to be them, and as we've learned since, completely excluded.
Click to expand...

I am not sure why you rule out satellites. Or do I misunderstand your point of view?
 
Ravi said:
I am not sure why you rule out satellites. Or do I misunderstand your point of view?
Click to expand...
Oh no, I do not rule out satellites. I mean, the reason I asked about azimuth and elevation from OP was to start looking into possible satellite candidates.

Several other posters have been super helpful in locating the exact place the camera was pointed at in the night sky, in this particular suburb of Utrecht, NL, where these three dots apparently showed up in. Based on this, and the very-well known appearance and location of the NOSS "triads" one can safely say they aren't it.

As the three dots in the footage seem to have about the same apparent luminosity as certain known stars that definitely wouldn't be visible to the naked eye at that location, we can also conclude that the three dots have to be super-super dim.

It's something else than the obvious satellite triads. Not suggesting anything otherwordly, but this footage needs more scrutiny and the original "filmmaker" (if you will) needs to provide more of *everything*.

Like I said in my first contribution to this thread - first try to rule out the obvious. Then move from there.
 
gargamel said:
Oh no, I do not rule out satellites. I mean, the reason I asked about azimuth and elevation from OP was to start looking into possible satellite candidates.

Several other posters have been super helpful in locating the exact place the camera was pointed at in the night sky, in this particular suburb of Utrecht, NL, where these three dots apparently showed up in. Based on this, and the very-well known appearance and location of the NOSS "triads" one can safely say they aren't it.

As the three dots in the footage seem to have about the same apparent luminosity as certain known stars that definitely wouldn't be visible to the naked eye at that location, we can also conclude that the three dots have to be super-super dim.

It's something else than the obvious satellite triads. Not suggesting anything otherwordly, but this footage needs more scrutiny and the original "filmmaker" (if you will) needs to provide more of *everything*.

Like I said in my first contribution to this thread - first try to rule out the obvious. Then move from there.
Click to expand...
I realy appreciate your work !! Thank you seriously thank you!
 
So what other ideas if we need to rule out reflections and satellites ?

- birds ?
- drones ?
- other ideas ?
 
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