UAP Case Study 2 - Montello WI in 2021

[DaveC426913]

This is another case study of a UAP incident that I hope can serve as a little microcosm of how (amateur) analysis can be done on a given incident for interested, but apolitical, readers.

If you are interested in a longer, yet much more ... umm ... circuitous ... analysis, it was first posted in the main UAP thread, here.

Please note: This (these) case studies are intended to concentrate on analysis of the incident - what can and can't be logically deduced from the facts present. Rhetoric, politicking and meta-arguments will be strongly discouraged.

This is a video of a man who caught something he can't explain while shooting the night sky over his house. He's subsequently recorded his analysis of his photo images, along with his daughters. It is a fun and entertaining watch (not in a facetious way - but because of his enthusiasm and the adorable antics of his daughters).


A few housekeeping items - we would be remiss in our job if we did not address these:

There is no reason to think anything about this is faked/altered/hoaxed. (It's not that it couldn't have been; its that this incident can be so easily resolved, we don't even need to explore it.)

There is also no reason to think he is being dishonest. The bulk of his account is his pictures, so there is really nothing to be dishonest about.




The context:

Witness was outside in his yard, with his camera set up, pointing over the roof of his house. He was attempting to get pictures of the Milky Way.



He captured several (six) frames of the object, moving right to left, in the sky over his house.

This is a composite I made from screenshots of his video

 

[DaveC426913]

The ghostly light beam(s)



I spent a fair bit of time examining the ghostly light beam(s) emanating from the phenomenon. Ultimately, that line of analysis proved to be a bit of a waste of time. If you want to follow it, you can see the original post, and my initial analysis here:

To make along story short: a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a pic of some ghostly light beams for your perusal:

 

[DaveC426913]

The still closeup:

This is the clincher.



The witness was taking pictures of the Milky Way. Any photographer knows that night shots of dim celestial objects require a long exposure. They can typically have shutter speeds as long as 15-30 seconds. (Much shorter and you get a starless image; mucher longer and the stars will start to blur due to rotation.)


A single flashing red light, as seen on any aircraft in the sky, when shot with a long exposure time, will render virtually exactly like that object.

Note that a long exposure would also explain why the object appears extended horizontally (same axis as the red light is moving, which, by the way would be on the PORT wingtip - as seen on any craft moving right to left, as this one is)




The long exposures will ALSO explain why the object appears so bright and blobby. It is way-overexposed for camera settings that are intended to capture a dim object such as the Milky Way. Overexposure of this magnitude blows out all detail, and makes it look like a bright blob.


Teachable moment: Even the most mundane objects, when seen under uncommon (though not extraordinary) circumstances, can easily look nothing like what we expect - even to the point of looking very classic UFO-like.


Commercial aircraft have red beacons that flash around 20-40Hz. Eight pulses corresponds to a shutter speed of 12 to 24 seconds, which is bang in the right range for sky shooting.


If each of those six exposures are 12-24 seconds, with a similar gap between them, that makes for total incident time of 130-260 seconds or about 2-4 minutes. That aircraft is either very slow or very far away.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to calculate how fast the red light is moving across the image if we assume the pulses are 20-40Hz.




(Well that was short...)

 

[DaveC426913]

OK, time's up.

A craft that takes 12-24 seconds to travel its own length is traveling pretty slow.

If it were a 110 foot aircraft (a 737), it would be traveling at a mere 100 feet per 12 seconds, or about 5 miles per hour.
Considering commerical aircraft have stall speeds of about 115mph (160feet/s), that srt of rules it out, as long as our premises, assumptions and calculations are correct.

If it were a 35 foot aircaft (say, a small helicopter), it would be travelling at 35 feet per 12s, or 2mph.

 

[DaveC426913]

Here is an unanswered sanity check: can I logically deduce that the object is travelling its own length in X seconds, or am I falling prey to an assumption here?

Just for the sake of arguement, why couldn't the craft span, say, a mere four pixels - even as the overxposed red light spans two pixels.
If that were the case, the craft could be travelling an order of magnitude faster than my calculation, or about 50mph.

Let's see if we can find a better way to deduce the possible size of the object.

Look at this pic again:

I'd say what we're seeing is an object that spans - width-wise - at least the distance between those two small arrows. That will explain why the object is parallelogram-esque. The lights across its breadth are sweeping out a line obliquely into a parallelogram. Like this:




The distance across that span is approx 150 pixels. We guess that the craft would be at least as long as it is wide, which would make such a craft about 150px long.

Those red flashing lights are 40px apart, which means the craft travels its own (presumed) length in the space of (150/40=) 3.75 flashes. We previously deduced that the flashes are 20-40Hz if it's a standard aircraft. That means it's taking 1.5-3 seconds to travel its own length.

If a 100 foot craft, it would be travelling at about 22-44mph.
If a 35 foot craft, it would be travelling at about 8-16mph.

That last one fits the profile of a small helicopter, or almost any common helicopter, such as a Bell Jet Ranger:


There's lots more work that could be done here. For example. my figures are pretty ballpark.
Note my working assumption that a craft would be at least as long as it is wide.
But a Bell Jet Ranger is barely 6 feet wide, which would change the calculations significantly.

(Again only for bonus marks here. A Jet Ranger's speed can be anywhere from 0 to 120mph. None of my calcs will fall anywhere near those bookends, so we're safe.)