Triangle object filmed / uap or cameraglitch ?

[oscaralexander]

What did you ask them?

Their take on the probability of this footage showing birds.

 

[Mendel]

If this was an alien spacecraft, would the southwesterly trajectory make any sense?
Where would come from, where would it go?

And why wasn't it detected elsewhere?

 

[Daves!]

I also looked up about the rules for flying a drone in and around Utrecht. The whole area seems to be restricted. Its also prohibited to fly drones in the evening hours or at night.
Cant rule out drones, i am wondering if you can switch off lights on a drone but are visible with NV ?
Anyone experienced with drones?

 

[jarlrmai]

Their take on the probability of this footage showing birds.

And what context did you provide them? A link to this thread?

 

[Ravi]

Watched the video many times, I now doubt any orbital object. I cannot prove it by numbers, but my impression is that the "3 dots" travel in a much lower altitude and in a straighter path, wrt an object/satellite travelling "along" the stars.

You also see that the camera pans down when tracking the dots, as we see more light pollution (lower alt).

EDIT, another one is the fact the 3 dots start to show perspective changes during the clip. This cannot happen with a satellite.

 

[jarlrmai]

I also looked up about the rules for flying a drone in and around Utrecht. The whole area seems to be restricted. Its also prohibited to fly drones in the evening hours or at night.
Cant rule out drones, i am wondering if you can switch off lights on a drone but are visible with NV ?
Anyone experienced with drones?

Do you see the triangle starts to change shape a bit around 1min (full video) I feel like the bottom rear most dot loses the formation a little, problem is there is so much noise it's hard to tell.

 

[Easy Muffin]

If this was an alien spacecraft, would the southwesterly trajectory make any sense?
Where would come from, where would it go?

And why wasn't it detected elsewhere?

The trajectory is somewhat unusual for satellites in that it appears to be in a slight retrograde orbit whereas most sats are launched into prograde orbits to take advantage of the Earth's rotation. There is however one specific type of orbit that might fit here, a sun-synchronous orbit. Somewhat disappointingly not known to harbour alien spacecraft, but home to the next best thing, the shady military and their spy sats. There's some background on why on Wikipedia.

I'm really starting to be out of my depth here but maybe there are some of these out there that are not included in the official TLE's? The observed speed is still too high for any useful orbit altitude so this would have to be an object that somehow ended up decidedly lower - when I trace out a path at 100 km the velocity would have been around 7 - 7.5 km/s so I reckon that's when we start to get numbers that make sense. I have no idea how long these objects last once they are so low but I assume it mainly depends on mass and aerodynamic cross-section? Surely it can't be very long though?

As it just so happens one of these apparently reentered the atmosphere only two days ago

https://aerospace.org/reentries/kz-1a-rb-id-49257-reentered

This was part of a rocket that had sent a Chinese remote sensing satellite into orbit two weeks earlier. Unfortunately it was also nowhere near the Netherlands or even Europe at the time in question so probably this wasn't it.

There was another Chinese launch back in early August. Reports on it are spotty but it seems it ran into problems on the way up and entered a lower than planned orbit. This is from the most detailed news item I managed to find

The vehicle took off from Site 95B at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Inner Mongolia region of China, with launch occurring at approximately 07:39 UTC. According to the Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) released prior to launch day, the vehicle pitched south from the launch center, strongly suggesting that this launch was to a polar Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) like the rocket's previous flights.

Witnesses captured the vehicle's liftoff and ascent, both of which appeared to look nominal, with the vehicle soaring through the stage of flight where the last mission failed.

There are a multitude of reports regarding what happened to the mission during and after ascent. The most official of reports was from the state owned Xinhua news agency, who released a brief statement a number of hours after launch. They confirmed the launch occurred at 07:39 UTC, and corroborated with reports that it was an unsuccessful mission, notably outlining how the satellite "did not enter nominal orbit after separation" and that mission objectives were not achieved.

Before this statement was released, several reports claimed or alluded to the possibility that the payload fairing did not separate, resulting in the payload being unable to nominally detach from the upper stage. The spacecraft colliding into the two joined fairing halves would immediately result in the loss of payload operability in orbit.

Another report claimed the vehicle successfully burned through the solid propellant first and second stages, but that the third solid fueled stage underperformed. It's unknown if this is linked to the above scenario, but the payload would not be able to offset this lack of performance with its own Reaction Control System (RCS) if fairing separation did not occur.

If fairing separation was successful, but the third stage underperformed, then it is also not known if the satellite's onboard RCS would have enough performance to offset the below-nominal orbital parameters.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/08/chinese-commercial-hyperbola-fails-return/

This presumably would have reentered and burned up way earlier than Oct 7 but still it shows that there might theoretically be something at a low enough altitude and roughly similar heading. It is of course a very slim chance and I'm not at all suggesting it is likely. I'm actually in favour of the low and slow hypotheses, so something quite close on the order of a couple hundred metres away.

 

[Mendel]

EDIT, another one is the fact the 3 dots start to show perspective changes during the clip. This cannot happen with a satellite.

With a VLEO orbit, it would. The question is, how much.

 

[JMartJr]

I believe only migratory birds fly in a V-formation

Possibly, I'm not knowledgeable about birds, but on the other hand three birds will always be in straight line -- or some form of triangle.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Possibly, I'm not knowledgeable about birds, but on the other hand three birds will always be in straight line -- or some form of triangle.

Would depend on the birds. My own observations out my back door its that, three small starlings (blackbirds) would fly around in a very chaotic pattern while heading in a general direction. Three vultures will tend glide and follow the wind and rising thermals as they make there way along. Out hunting I've seen that geese can follow along in a straight path in a V formation. After seeing the zoom in video above with possible wing flapping, I'm leaning that way. He may have just happened to catch a few stray geese at just the right distance and angle.

 

[jarlrmai]

Starlings and Blackbirds are different species..

There's a lot of uninformed ornithology happening on this thread.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_formation#Birds_that_Fly_in_V_Formation[12]

This list is not comprehensive as it does not cover all birds that fly in V formation.

• Geese
• Swans
• Gulls
• Cranes
• Pelicans
• Cormorants
• Ibis
• Ducks

Some species of birds in these groups migrate, some do not. Those that do migrate still tend to fly in a V formation when not in the act of migrating.

There are Geese, Swans, Gulls, Cormorants, Ducks commonly in Northern Europe Cranes are around as well but less common.

3 birds in flight near each other will form a triangle unless in a straight line, however the reason V formation is being bought up in this thread is the apparent consistency of the triangle shape for the video.

 

[oscaralexander]

And what context did you provide them? A link to this thread?

I sent them a link to the hi-res video and the basic details (time, location, heading). I don't want to color their judgement too much with other theories.

 

[jarlrmai]

I sent them a link to the hi-res video and the basic details (time, location, heading). I don't want to color their judgement too much with other theories.

The problem is it takes time to understand what you are looking at, they may not be familiar with IR night vision devices, they may exclude birds because "birds don't glow at night." If they don't ask the questions like what device is being used etc you are also possibly colouring their judgement.

This the purpose of Metabunk we crowd share research and knowledge and our experience from other investigations, if they come back and say can't be birds because it's night and they are glowing, then they need to be told there's a possibility there are lit by an IR illuminator etc etc pretty soon you are having the same debate/conversation we are having here.

 

[oscaralexander]

The problem is it takes time to understand what you are looking at, they may not be familiar with IR night vision devices, they may exclude birds because "birds don't glow at night." If they don't ask the questions like what device is being used etc you are also possibly colouring their judgement.

Ah, you're absolutely right. And I explained we're looking at IRNV footage and how IRNV works in case they were not familiar, so all good there. They've just replied and this is their (translated) response:

"That's an unusual question indeed! We've studied this footage with our experts and are strongly convinced that we're looking at three ducks. Ducks tend to fly in tight formations like this. At 39 seconds (video on the report page) you can clearly see the wings flapping. Since there's only three of them, it's easier to maintain their formation. With larger groups in V-formation you'll notice that the birds further back won't follow the angle as tightly."

When I asked whether by "since there's only three of them" she meant in this case or in general (I know next to nothing about ducks) she added:

"I'm talking about this footage, specifically. Ducks fly in larger formations too. Both during day and night."

So, there you have it. If it looks like an alien spaceship, flies like an alien spaceship... it's probably a duck

I'll accept this explanation unless anyone can make a strong case against it? Until then, on behalf of the Dutch UFO Reporting Center, thank you for your time and dedication to this case. Truly impressive and very much appreciated.

 

[Daves!]

Case closed ! (?) Finally and what a work from my fellow metabunk people..
Thank you all ! We will keep this studycase for future refferences because i learned a lot from all of you im pretty impressed with tge quality answers people gave here! You all deserve a big compliment.

 

[Ravi]

It is rather funny that on this forum we have a (sort of) consensus towards explainable bird like situations, whereas on other boards (reddit..) they feel it is an alien ship. Hilarious, but fun!

 

[Itsme]

Three ducks... We should have known.

 

[jarlrmai]

Glad to hear they agree with ducks as a strong possibility, but generally just accepting single subject matter experts words on this is something we should avoid doing too hastily, I think there is possibly some more confirmation work to be done on knowing that the IR illuminator was on and confirming that a flight of ducks matches for apparent size and speed at distances covered by the IR illuminator.

On that note it is a interesting co-incidence that the 2 biggest UFO vids at the moment both seemingly have a duck connection, must be duck season.

 

[Mendel]

It is rather funny that on this forum we have a (sort of) consensus towards explainable bird like situations, whereas on other boards (reddit..) they feel it is an alien ship. Hilarious, but fun!

I wonder where these alien ships come from. If they come from our galaxy, I'd expect the orbit/trajectory (it might just have been a swing-by) to be more in line with the ecliptic; if they came from above or below the galaxy, aiming for and hitting (narrowly missing) a planet seems quite the feat of navigation! And obviously all these restrictions we worked out with respect to satellites would apply to them, too!

Spoiler: Duck Season

On that note it is a interesting co-incidence that the 2 biggest UFO vids at the moment both seemingly have a duck connection, must be duck season.

 

[gargamel]

"We cannot immediately identify it, therefore we can immediately identify it as being an advanced interstellar spacecraft from a hitherto unknown alien civilization".

...And these folks call "debunkers" narrow-minded, eh?

Anyway, I thought of some dim satellite group or perhaps space debris, but as the inquiry has really dug into everything and ruled out that possibility, I suppose that birds flying at night actually tick all the boxes. Some people won't be happy until the exact species or preferably even exact individual ducks have been identified, caught and thoroughly interrogated about this particular flight of theirs I guess.

As a side note, I have seen ducks and geese of a variety of species fly at night, in V's, but more than three at any one time. If there's only three, they'd look exactly like this. I'm all onboard with this explanation.

 

[Easy Muffin]

If these ducks are locals so to speak then they might have simply been taking a short hop from one place to another - there are several bodies of water within half a kilometre of the site and there's a large pond-like thing just to the southwest with some open space and meadows around it where their path would have taken them. Of course my own duck knowledge barely goes beyond the fact that they can swim in water so this might be entirely irrelevant

 

[Mendel]

I mean, all we really found out is that nobody can disprove it was ducks.
That's not much of an explanation, and there are many other options.

When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Does anyone know if Dutch witches prefer a V formation?

 

[gargamel]

I mean, all we really found out is that nobody can disprove it was ducks.
That's not much of an explanation, and there are many other options.

When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

View attachment 47162
View attachment 47163
Does anyone know if witches prefer a V formation?

As a Swede, I take offense at the notion that witches would be flying anywhere south of Blåkulla.

 

[Mendel]

As a Swede, I take offense at the notion that witches would be flying anywhere south of Blåkulla.

I tried to find out if there are witches in Utrecht, and found this:

Article:

It was believed that witches weighed next to nothing. After all, how could you fly all night on a broomstick to a witches' sabbath if you didn't? Oudewater became famous for these weighing tests.

It wasn't that difficult to accuse someone of practicing witchcraft. A rumor was often enough for those who were superstitious or malicious to accuse innocent people of sorcery. It was much harder however to be cleared of these accusations. From the mid-15th until very late in the 18th century, thousands of innocent people, mostly women, were put to death in Europe.

The Witches Weighhouse in Oudewater became famous for its refusal to participate in the delusions about witchcraft. All of the so-called witches who were ever weighed here were not found to be too light, and were thus not sentenced.

Source: https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/destinations/provinces/utrecht/oudewater-witches-weighhouse.htm

Practical debunking, hundreds of years ago!

 

[oscaralexander]

Practical debunking, hundreds of years ago!

My hometown Amersfoort has a picturesque little bridge that I only recently learnt is named the Heksenbrug (witches bridge). Similar to Oudewater, this is where those accused of witchcraft would be pushed over the edge for the so-called 'water test'. If you would float it would mean you were light enough to fly a broom and would be put to death; if you sank (because those accused would often weigh themselves down with rocks), well, tough luck.

TL;DR 1400–1700 AD sucked big time for women.

 

[NorCal Dave]

On that note it is a interesting co-incidence that the 2 biggest UFO vids at the moment both seemingly have a duck connection, must be duck season.

Indeed! Depending on where one lives.

2021-2022 Regulations

Northeastern Zone

Ducks

Oct 2 - Jan 12

7/day, which may include: 7 mallards (no more than 2 females), 1 pintail, 2 canvasback, 2 redheads, 2 scaup. Possession limit: triple the daily bag.

https://wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting/Waterfowl

 

[Daves!]

Fascinating... How a topic of finding out about what the unknown flying objects are, is litterarly turning into a witchhunt. Some people would find that explanation acceptable if you proof enough facts about witches.

 

[GM4AJK]

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

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.

I'm one such person who "specializes" in satellites and unfortunately this video isn't anything like the NOSS trios I've seen. Sorry about that. Looks like a plane to me.