I recently came across the YouTube segment below that debunked the famous “Tether UFOs” allegedly caught on film by NASA. Back at one of the Ancient of Days UFO conferences (I think it was 2003) at which I spoke, another presenter, David Sereda, touted this video as absolute proof of intelligent extraterrestrial craft in earth’s orbit. David and Dan Aykroyd had collaborated on a video project (that I presume sold well) focusing on the STS-75 Shuttle mission and this video. Turns out it isn’t a video of extraterrestrial UFOs at all (I’ll pause while you catch your breath).
I remember suspecting that something was amiss in this video the first time I saw it. It made little sense to me that any camera could capture an object that was less than the circumference of my pinky at a distance of miles away, but David had a lot of physics mumbo-jumbo in its defense. I went back home to Madison and showed the video to a friend of mine who was a PhD student in electrical engineering (who also happened to have worked on the radar used in the famous Mexico “UFOs on radar” incident — they weren’t alien craft, either). At any rate, my friend, Daniel Rodriguez, tore apart the claims offered by Sereda for the STS-75 video using lots of electrical-engineering-speak which I didn’t understand either (but did appreciate). This YouTube video confirms that the Tether incident video was an optical illusion — the fellow on the video replicates the incident rather nicely. I kept waiting for Bill Birnes to just burst in and accuse the guy of being on the government dole. Bill can turn a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into evidence for aliens. But alas, the segment doesn’t include Bill’s reaction.
Yeah, I saw this one back when it aired and have to admit it’s pretty convincing. I do still wonder, though, about the pulsing effect noticed and the strange notch in the side of the “crafts”, that most of those on the video seemed to have. Not saying they’re not part of the optical illusion; just curious about exactly what’s going on there.
what they reproduced looks VERY much like the “Ufos” (notch and all). Not sure what incongruence you see.
What I meant was, I wonder what it is about the optical illusion that produces those effects, whether in the NASA footage or in the UFO Hunters’ reproduction.
ah – I wouldn’t know, as photography / photo-optics is beyond me.
Thanks for posting this Mike. That was good info.
> ah – I wouldn’t know, as photography / photo-optics is beyond me.
Your defensiveness is curious, as it doesn’t reflect the spirit of my posts. *sigh*
I’m not being defensive – I don’t know anything about photography, so I can’t contribute anything toward answering your question. SIGH (big one). I’d rather just tell you than fake a reply.
The sigh had nothing to do with your level of photographic knowledge, but rather my irritation at my initial comment being misunderstood…
In hindsight, to avoid a further misunderstanding I should probably have asked you directly what it was about my comment you interpreted as pointing out an incongruence in your post, when rather I was 1)agreeing with you, and 2)wondering out loud about the optical anomalies. I wasn’t assuming you were a photographic expert; I wasn’t demanding an expert analysis; I was simply wondering out loud. That’s all.
understood now – I just don’t know anything about the disciplines of photography or photo-optics to hazard a guess as to why the effects are produced.