Bright Spots on Films
A bright blur, a ring of light, or a circular image something like the typical disk-shaped flying saucer sometimes appears on a film, much to the surprise of the photographer, who had not noticed any such object when he took the picture. These UFOs are usually caused by reflections from unnoticed drops of moisture in the air or by defects in the camera itself (see [Figure 17]). If the source of the image is something peculiar, it may pose a real problem (see [Plates VIIIa] and [b]).
Figure 17. Distorted images produced on film by lens defects. A, True image; B, image produced by poor lens, not well figured; C, by astigmatism; D, coma; E, off-axis beam; F, off-axis beam and coma.
On July 24, 1957, an American tourist in Norway snapped a picture of a group of houses on a cliff above the seacoast, and was amazed to find some time later that the print showed a large white, doughnut-shaped object hovering in the sky above the coast. Puzzled by this apparent evidence of a saucer that had been visible to the camera but not to her, she submitted the facts to ATIC investigators. Thorough study of the negative, the camera, possible sources of reflection in the landscape at the time the photograph was taken, all failed to account for the mysterious intruder. Obviously not a cloud, the image closely resembled a smoke ring, but the photographer had not been smoking and there were no sources of smoke in the neighborhood. The experts were baffled until one of them thought of a new possibility and again questioned the witness: had she by any chance been wearing a ring when she took the picture? She had—a sparkling diamond. If the angle of the sun, the direction she was facing, and the position of her ring finger in relation to the camera lens and to the sun had been exactly right, the annular image would have been reflected into the lens at the instant she snapped the picture. The resulting bright ring would look exactly like the UFO that appeared on the negative[XII-1] (see [Plate VIIb]).
An unusually fine large UFO inserted itself into a photograph taken on February 6, 1959, near Boulder, Colorado. The witness had spent the afternoon climbing on Flagstaff Mountain and, about 5:00 P.M., snapped a picture of the town of Boulder, to the southeast. Although he had seen nothing unusual in the sky or in the air, the negative, when developed, showed a small black blob that printed as a white, luminous, roughly spherical object—a typical flying saucer (see [Plate VIIa]).
Civilian saucer investigators in the area procured a copy of the photograph and sent it to NICAP for evaluation. The witness himself did not immediately assume that he had photographed an interplanetary spaceship hovering over the city of Boulder; instead, he sent a print and a description of the circumstances to Dr. Menzel, who was well acquainted with the geography of Boulder and Flagstaff Mountain. Dr. Menzel suggested that the blob of light could have been produced by some type of reflection: “The sun appears to have been pretty low at the time. Is there, in the approximate position of the blob, some house with a fairly large window that could have been reflecting the sun? Stand at approximately the same spot and look over the region with a field glass. A bright spot like this often spreads enormously on the film. You can see from the picture that the sun must have been shining brilliantly. The shadow, especially of the large barn on the right, gives us some idea of the height of the sun. This was in February, and the angle of the sun will now have changed. Please make this test and let me know.”
Not until the first week of May, however, was the witness able to repeat his excursion and make the necessary tests. Using a copy of his original picture as a guide, he was able to stand in the exact spot from which he had taken the picture. He then realized that the Law Building of the University of Colorado stood in the place occupied by the UFO and that the big double window of the Law Building was at the exact center. In May no reflection appeared, but from calculations he found that the position of the February sun was such that the window, when open at just the right tilt, would reflect the sun’s image to the exact spot on Flagstaff Mountain from which he took the picture. The image of the reflected sun is extremely bright and the film had been overexposed: therefore the image had spread on the film to create the large UFO. To confirm the hypothesis, the witness tried overprinting the negative so that the entire picture came out practically black, and with successively longer exposures the size of the bright UFO diminished. As he got it down to the smallest size on the blackest print, he could see the fuzzy outline of a window[[XII-2]].
Unfamiliar Lights on Planes
In the spring of 1961, a leading saucer publication stated that unidentified objects were still surveying the earth and cited, among other cases, a bright UFO seen maneuvering the night of March 23 near Fort Pierce, Florida[[XII-3]]. The report failed to mention that unidentified lights were seen on several other nights during that week in the skies over Jacksonville, Miami, and Cocoa-Titusville, as well as over Fort Pierce. Newspaper offices and radio stations in the area received many telephone queries about the mysterious lights, which were observed from the ground and from the air for periods of time ranging from five minutes to an hour. The descriptions showed an impressive consistency: the UFO was a round, twinkling light with a red or orange color changing to white, and exhibited a bobbing up-and-down motion as it swept across the horizon. In all sightings the weather was clear and the visibility excellent.