Mexican Airforce films UFOs

[wipeout]

A film has been released by the Mexican military which shows UFO filmed from aircraft infra-red cameras which were otherwise invisible. Here's the story with a picture, but I've seen no footage as yet.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040511/80/etbal.html

Anyone have any more info or ideas on this?

I'm doing some looking myself.

[wipeout]

Some additional info in this report:

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/05/11/mexico.ufos.ap/

[UnTrickaBLe]

Let's see the video. :D

[wipeout]

I'm looking for the video but even though the story is all over the news I can't find the video itself anywhere! :D

Maybe the Men in Black have got to it. ;)

[Uh_Clem]

Jaime Maussan? Isn't he same guy that released this (absurd) footage?

http://www.jman5.com/mexufo.htm

Wipeout:

NASA actually has a group called the M.I.B. It stands for Mishap Investigation Board.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/8621.htm
Although they're not so much "Moulder and Skulley" as they are typical govt' bureaucrats when you meet them in person.

[materia3]

Keep watching. FOX News (cable) has just shown the video footage a few minutes ago.

[MattO]

Here's a long article:

http://www.rense.com/general52/deff.htm


Video is on this page:

http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/video/3292568/detail.html

[wipeout]

Ah... thank you for finding the video! :D

I had to go to the main page...

http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/index.html

... as the direct link didn't work for me for some reason. It's still easy to find on that page, though. :)

Now, I'm off to watch it and see what it's like...

[wipeout]

I guess the Men in Black are at it again as the video doesn't work for me. Anyone else have any luck with it? And what do you think, if so?

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Uh_Clem
Jaime Maussan? Isn't he same guy that released this (absurd) footage?

http://www.jman5.com/mexufo.htm

Ahahah! :D Ed Wood would be proud. ;)

[/B]NASA actually has a group called the M.I.B. It stands for Mishap Investigation Board.
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/8621.htm
Although they're not so much "Moulder and Skulley" as they are typical govt' bureaucrats when you meet them in person. [/B]

Interesting -- and a crashed saucer would qualify as a "mishap" of course. ;)

[Uh_Clem]

Mozilla didn't like their page, had to use IE.

I didn't see the "darting" in and out of the clouds that the yahoo article described. Nor did they seem to be "moving about". All the lights stayed the same distance apart and traveled at a constant rate.

It's hard to judge any distance on the video but it looked to me like a large six-engine plane with lights at the wingtips flying paralell to them at about the same speed.

[Marian]

Maybe the video cut out on me, as it seemed to end abruptly. I'm hoping there was something more, because what I saw was really unimpressive.

Special effects have spoiled me, I expect so much more now. ;(

[Jeff R]

Mexico has an Air Force? I did not know that.

[Hypocolius]

I saw it on Sky News. The second film looks very dodgy, very reminiscent of reflections from the window of the plane.

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by wipeout
I guess the Men in Black are at it again as the video doesn't work for me. Anyone else have any luck with it? And what do you think, if so? The video doesn't work for me either :(

EDIT:

Here's another link to the video, it worked for me.

UFO's over Mexico? (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/HTMLTemplate/!ctvVideo/CTVNews/ufo_mexico_040511/20040511/?hub=SciTech&video_link_high=mms://ctvbroadcast.ctv.ca/video/2004/05/11/ctvvideologger1_143kbps_2004_05_11_1084327784.wmv&video_link_low=mms://ctvbroadcast.ctv.ca/video/2004/05/11/ctvvideologger1_45kbps_2004_05_11_1084327875.wmv&clip_start=00:03:21.66&clip_end=00:00:33.03&clip_id=ctvnews.20040511.00061000-00061034-clip3&clip_caption=CTV%20News%3A%20UFO%20over%20Mexico%2 0raises%20questions&subhub=video)

Seems not be a reflexion on the plane window, since the "UFO's" are seen emerging from behind the clouds in one part of the shot

[curious]

The video here (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=2&u=/ap/20040511/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_military_ufos_1) worked for me with explorer. I saw a much better/longer clip at a friends house but I'm not sure where they got it. The lights (11 at one point) weren't doing much but I couldn't think of a good mundane explanation for what I saw, assuming the video was real.

As the story goes whatever it was wasn't visible, they only picked it up with radar and IR and it seemed to sort of react to them.

[SquishyDave]

Originally posted by Hypocolius
I saw it on Sky News. The second film looks very dodgy, very reminiscent of reflections from the window of the plane. I don't speak spanish, but the video I saw was a spanish TV segment, they showed a picture of the plane, then pointed out something on the bottom of the plane, encased in a tinted dome, I think it was the infrared camera, so reflections off the windows might not be a possibility.

Isn't infrared at a lower energy than visible light? And thus visible light would travel better through air? Or is that totally wrong? If it's not wrong, those heat sources wouldn't be from lights or anything that would produce visible light, but they could be engines or exhaust from a plane or something else.

Or you know, maybe it's beings from other planets who want to explore the uncharted regions of the human anus.

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by SquishyDave
I don't speak spanish, but the video I saw was a spanish TV segment. I'd love to see that video, I guess it is not in the internet :(

Technical question: Infra-red cameras are supposed to capture the object's heat, that is, wave lenghts that are outside the "visible" part of the spectrum, right?. So, is it possible that a cloud blocks a radiation of this sort?

[SquishyDave]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
I'd love to see that video, I guess it is not in the internet :(

Technical question: Infra-red cameras are supposed to capture the object's heat, that is, wave lenghts that are outside the "visible" part of the spectrum, right?. So, is it possible that a cloud blocks a radiation of this sort? The video I saw was the one MattO linked to further up. I needed to us Internet Explorer though, it wouldn't work in Opera.

Good point, I realised I don't even know what time of day it was.

[Patricio Elicer]

Unfortunatly MattO's link doesn't work for me currently. Maybe later...

[UnTrickaBLe]

This link works quite well...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=589&e=2&u=/ap/20040511/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_military_ufos_1

It's really hard to say what was shown on that video. There needs to be a full investigation. The radar did seem to be picking up the objects sporadically, though. I believe the Xs that showed up on some of the objects indicate radar confirmation.

[richardm]

Originally posted by SquishyDave

Good point, I realised I don't even know what time of day it was.

The clock at the bottom right of this picture (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040511/80/etbb3.html) seems to indicate 17:something hours, so it was presumably daylight.

I'd have thought that the most likely explanation would be some other jets flying along. Their engines glow like that under IR viewing, while the rest of the aircraft might not be visible. Certainly, they showed up on radar which is consistent with that.

[wipeout]

Hey, it's the return of the Foofighters. :p

It's certainly more interesting than the Belgian triangle footage, which were just US Navy spy satellites you can spot if you make the effort. NOSS, they're called.

From the footage I've seen so far of the Mexican Air Force incident, I find it difficult to tell if those are just clouds or both clouds and mountains, and what the surface is and even if the infra-red sources are travelling along on the ground or close to it, and how fast they are moving or even if they are moving at all.

Could be a bunch of hot things sitting still on the ground, for all I can tell. :D

I've seen ball-lightning so I know there are some strange things flying around up there for sure, but I'm not preparing to worship our alien overlords just yet from what I've seen so far of this latest incident. ;)

[wipeout]

The airforce plane's footage gives the planes geographical position and the direction the camera is pointing in, so with a map we could work out the direction and get a rough position of the infra-red sources.

http://www.rense.com/general52/deff.htm

Now I just need to go and find a map... :p

[DaChew]

Excellent! Finally aliens are doing something useful.

Obviously, they've decided that our western civilization is the only correct way for this planet to progress and have begun providing our aircraft with missile decoys. These things show up nice and bright for heat seeking (IR) and radar guided anti-aircraft missiles so that our planes won't get hit. Of course, neither our military or our private airospace industry would ever come up with any sort of anti missile system on their own. Nope, we're just not as clever as those cow mutilating, butt probing aliens.

[wipeout]

LOL @ DaChew :D

[wipeout]

Having a look at some maps now...

18 27 N and 90 46 W

http://www.stevenwiseblood.com/files/mexico_map.jpg

[wipeout]

This is a much better map of the area:

http://www.virtualmex.com/campeche_sct.jpg

Unless my map reading is screwed up, the plane goes from very slightly west of due south of Campeche to due south as it flies along the 18 30 latitude line in the west-to-east direction.

The infra-red sources are slightly off to the left of north from the plane's perspective.

There's a main coastal road in the direction of the infra-red sources (slightly out of alignment with each other) but not a whole lot else, it seems, from looking at the maps.

[UnTrickaBLe]

Having looked at this very short video segment again at the AP/Yahoo link, I wonder if there is any way to confirm whether these objects were even moving? It could be the motion of the plane making stationary objects (flares) seem to move in relation to the clouds or the mountains, don't you think?

[richardm]

Originally posted by UnTrickaBLe
It could be the motion of the plane making stationary objects (flares) seem to move in relation to the clouds or the mountains, don't you think?

Yeah. Impossible to tell from that snippet, I think.

[AtheistArchon]

- Very interesting! A neat puzzle. Some thoughts...

- Maussan is not the reported author of the vid, and the Mexican government has already admitted that the incident was recorded by a government plane, so even though he's a documented kook, it doesn't appear to be a deliberate hoax. Also, as you can see, this video isn't natural-color video, it's FLIR (Forward-looking infra-red) and they use it for tracking drug runners. As such, we're not really seeing "lights", we're technically seeing heat.
But it's very interesting, because we also see clouds. The heat signatures pass behind the clouds, so it doesn't appear likely that we're looking at a light reflection of any type (which would then have to cause heat), and since this camera is enclosed within a dome on the underside of the plane, reflections like this would have to be a feature on or very near the aircraft or the dome (or the camera itself). I don't know a heck of a lot about IR cameras, but it makes sense to me that a heat signature would fade when passing behind a dense cloud of ice and water vapor, and that's what we see.

- The little + signs popping up on the video is the software trying to pinpoint targets, and it uses brightness, not radar, to do it, so those don't mean very much. You can see them tracing out the lighter areas on the ground in the beginning. However, according to my two Spanish-fluent officemates, the pilots say that at one point, two of the signatures do show up on radar... but only two. This is important, because if that's true, then it's pretty hard evidence that the objects we're seeing are at least actually flying. The altitude of the Mexican aircraft at the time was around 11k feet, and even though we could say that perhaps the signatures might have been stationary and it was actually the plane that was moving (possibly indicating heat sources on the ground, 'passing' behind clouds), that doesn't work if the signatures are 11k feet up in the air with the plane.

- Also interesting is the number of signatures at different points in the vid. First there's one ("un punto", a point), but others appear as they 'chase' it. The stereotypical "formation" is seen in that these signatures seem to be moving at the same speed and in the same direction. At first I thought we might be looking at a large jumbo-jet with several engines along each wing, but the camera pulls back to show up to 11 or 12 signatures, some hotter than others (due to distance, apparently). Still, they do appear to come in groups of 2 or 3... but this doesn't explain why we don't see all the heat signatures throughout the video, each "engine" as bright as its twin. I know it's possible for a fighter aircraft to fly on just one engine, but I'm not sure why a formation of them would fly along switching them on and off... and I'm also aware of no jets that have three engines.

- The next thing I thought of was meteor burns; a chunk of rock breaking up in the atmosphere and leaving pieces falling behind it. But this is nonsense, because meteors skipping off the atmosphere, even very large ones that might break up, travel WAY too fast to be captured for so long, even by an airborne camera. Besides, astronomical agencies would have been able to detect such an event, and it would have been visible for hundreds of miles... with noise to boot, I wager. And thinking of this, I discovered another interesting thing: the heat signatures are rounded, not streaking and leaving long heat-trails behind them. Obviously not meteoric, but then again, wouldn't a jet engine leave an elongated heat trail? And wouldn't a pilot be able to see a visible vapor-trail created by traditional jet engines? THAT kinda makes me scratch my head. I can only guess that the government has developed planes that don't leave vapor trails, a-la stealth aircraft, since a vapor trail would kinda give the game away if you're trying not to be detected. It makes sense that this could be a stealth aircraft of some sort, but with 11 engines turning on and off? Maybe a wing of them flying in formation, but how often do several stealth aircraft fly four at a time in formation? I don't know.

- On the still-pictures page there, the third and fourth vid pictures show a marked similarity between the two most prominent groups of three signatures. Note they are similar, not symmetrical. Each group of three seems to have the middle signature slightly positioned closer to the right, with the left-most signature down a bit. If they were symmetrical, that would be a very strong indicator that we're looking at a reflection or a camera distortion of some sort, but that's not the case. It does appear, however, that each group of three signatures is either fixed onto one object, or fixed individually onto two objects with three "engines" each, flying beside each other. But why would they be arranged like this? The plane could be in the middle of a bank or a turn, and so dipped down to the left a little, but that wouldn't be sustainable for nearly as long as we see the vid.

- I'm stumped. I don't believe these are alien spacecraft, but I also don't know what these actually are. They will probably turn out to be experimental aircraft of some sort, but to be perfectly honest, I wasn't aware that Mexico had ANY Airforce, much less newfangled stealth aircraft. They may be ours, on loan to help with the drug runners? Or... spying on Mexico? But why spy on Mexico with billion-dollar aircraft?

- Hrmmm. A nice puzzle.

[DaveW]

I'm not up on Mexican radar technology, but it is possible that denser parts of clouds would show up as radar objects (I have seen it before on a US Navy radar set).

[UnTrickaBLe]

AtheistArchon, have you seen the entire video? Where can it be viewed? I have only seen about fifteen seconds of it so far.

[AtheistArchon]

- Untrickable: I used this link, which shows a great deal of the footage, but is in Spanish: http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/video/3292568/detail.html

[Joe_Black]

infrared picks up heat i think.

[UnTrickaBLe]

That video is much longer. It doesn't really look like exhaust from a jet.

Did the Mexican plane produce any hard evidence, like how high or how fast-moving the objects were on their radar?

[Uh_Clem]

athiestarchon,

Very good post. I would like to point out that there's a few commercial jets with 3 engines though.

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/dc-10/

Although if they were persuing a couple of passenger aircraft you'd think they would show up on radar or you'd be able to feel the wake from them.

[mummymonkey]

Looks to me that the heat sources are on the ground some distance away to the north. Perhaps at sea.

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon
- Untrickable: I used this link, which shows a great deal of the footage, but is in Spanish: http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/video/3292568/detail.html Not much revealing info to cast light on the issue, at least at first glance.

The conversation between the plane crew reflects the excitement of the moment, those men were in awe, or at least that seems to be the case judging from the video.

The introduction from the presenter indicates that it's a plane of the Mexican Air Force searching for planes that may introduce drug into the country.

Here are some highlights from the crew exchange

[excited tone]

- What is that?, oh my God

- Juárez, Juárez,... What is that?
- It's a dot

- Look for what is coming behind us!

- One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight .. on the screen

- Amazing!

- Their speed is,.... ohhhh!

- Chase them, don't lose them

- Eight, nine, ten, eleven,...

- We don't know what they are, we only see some luminous objects at the same altitude as ours.

- We can't make out how far away from us they are

- Fasten your seats belts!

- Speeds of 60 nods, increasing to probably 120 and 300 nods

[/excited tone]

A pilot in the interview says: "We could never identified them visually"

Yes, seems to be a nice puzzle :)

[FFed]

My guess is space junk. I had the good fortune of watching a russian rocket break up as it entered the atmosphere. Really cool. Just out of nowhere these big slow moving fireballs where travelling thru the sky. So that's my guess.

[Chupacabras]

Originally posted by wipeout
18 27 N and 90 46 W

HEY!
You are disclosing military intelligence here! :)

Mexico does have an airforce. I think that the latest jest we have are some eight or ten F5's that only make a couple of low-passes over the crowd on the November 20th parade. Our other gear is Thunderbolts and Zeros.

My bet is those are cuban Fagots. You know, MIG 15's. They were dropping videos on government corruption for us to find.

FWIW, Maussan is the ultimate and most notorious a**hole we have on the media.

On IR - consider that there is "near" and "far" IR imaging. With one, you can actually see through synthetic clothes, but I'm not telling you which! Video from "entry-level" cameras is rather not heath, but reflected IR from a lamp in the camera.

[Chupacabras]

Just read this in the news:

The Defense Secretary, Ricardo Vega García, decided that "there was no use" to archive the UFO video as a military secret, and then decided to hand it over to someone who has researched the subject for so long, such as Jaime Maussan. His military personel "is forbidden to talk about UFOs or flying saucers, because that's where doubts and mockery starts".

A copy of the video, he says, is available for the scientific comunity, if someone wants to study it. (No, it doesn't say "where" - I found no mention of the matter at the ministry's web page, http://www.sedena.gob.mx )

The conclusion of journalist Jaime Maussan [...] is that the objects in the recording are UFOs. "That's [his] point of view, that's what the video was given to him, so he could draw his conclusions... but this is already his version, not the Ministry's".

This issue is not regarded as National Security.

The mexican surveillance plane is a Merlin C, during a routine mission agains drug smugglers.

News link (in Spanish): http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=222175&tabla=notas - this is daily news page, so expect the link to be broken by tonight.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Chupacabras
HEY!
You are disclosing military intelligence here! :)

They left the numbers on the footage themselves, so they can't get me for it! :D

My bet is those are cuban Fagots. You know, MIG 15's. They were dropping videos on government corruption for us to find.

Interesting - is this something that happened recently?

Certainly, the heat-sources could well be low flying planes on the coastline.

On IR - consider that there is "near" and "far" IR imaging. With one, you can actually see through synthetic clothes, but I'm not telling you which! Video from "entry-level" cameras is rather not heath, but reflected IR from a lamp in the camera.

Ah, I had wondered about the camera-type which reflects people's eyes but had never checked it out. Must be the lamp version.

[Chupacabras]

Originally posted by wipeout
They left the numbers on the footage themselves, so they can't get me for it! :D

Darn! I smelled money for a second...


On the videos about corruption:
Originally posted by wipeout
Interesting - is this something that happened recently?
Yes. A complex story, but basically, our diplomatic relations with Cuba have deteriorated rather dramatically in the past days. One of the current themes is about the origin of certain video tapes which supposedly incriminate our government on cohercion / corruption practices. Really, I don't care much about that, but I would be suspicious of anything that happens half-a-world around Cuba.


Originally posted by wipeout
... Must be the lamp version.

Also, many remote controls (TV, A/C) have IR LEDs. Also PDA's use IR communications, and they emmit light, not "heat". You can see them at work with "night vision" home cameras.

Please note the wording in the news above - Maussan concluded they are UFO's - he is SOOOOOOOO smart!!!!

[AtheistArchon]

- So, Chup, notice any crop circles in your part of the world recently? :D

- And just for reference, wasn't it Mexico that the first alien was discovered in Signs?

[Reginald]

I think you will find that the Cubans are only responsible for the "Strange cigar shaped" objects.

[Batman Jr.]

This story will be featured on the Oddball segment of Keith Olbermann's Countdown on MSNBC.

[Chupacabras]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon
...notice any crop circles in your part of the world recently? :D

Well, there are no crops in the desert in the first place! :)

Sonora is the greatest producer of wheat, but this year has turned particularly low - I hope UFO's have nothing to do.

Originally posted by AtheistArchon
... wasn't it Mexico that the first alien was discovered in Signs?

Uh, haven't watched Signs. But one of the opening scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind had the research team in Sonora, finding a WWII squadron of planes sitting in the desert. A blinded old man repeated inncessantly: "El sol salió anoche y me cantó" - The sun came out last night, and sang to me.

I never get out on last nights ever since! :)


Reginald: :crazy: ROTFL !!!!!!

[Batman Jr.]

Originally posted by FFed

My guess is space junk. I had the good fortune of watching a russian rocket break up as it entered the atmosphere. Really cool. Just out of nowhere these big slow moving fireballs where travelling thru the sky. So that's my guess.

I would normally concur with your assessment, but wouldn't space debris be visible without the aid of an infrared camera? If not, please explain.

[The Don]

A few thoughts....

Firstly I think it's quite interesting that a story like this has hit the media only a few weeks after UFO UK Magazine had to close on the grounds that UFOs were just "so cold war". Just interesting that's all.

Light on/light off is not so unusual if a refective surface is tumbling.

Heat would always be there if it's space debris

[plindboe]

It's funny the reporter, in the video, says that the pilot says they fly in formation. It's just a freaking aircraft! :rolleyes:

[AtheistArchon]

- Mmm. Space debris sounds plausible, until you look at the similarity of the two main groups of three lights. They're more than just similar, they're dang-near identical; two parallel and close to each other, and one on the left farther away and down a notch.

- Unmodified Airforce pic:

http://www.the-archon.com/images/lights1.jpg

- The two groups of three lights in closer comparison:

http://www.the-archon.com/images/lights.jpg

- Also note that in the video, the lights appear to be moving parallel to the ground; the FLIR cam is mounted on the underside of the aircraft.

- No, I think we're looking at fixed objects... at least fixed in relation to each other.

[AtheistArchon]

It's funny the reporter, in the video, says that the pilot says they fly in formation. It's just a freaking aircraft!

- You're probably right! But I don't know of any single aircraft that has that kind of design or that brings back two radar signatures. I'd rather know for sure.

- I'm really surprised that there's not more hubbub about this in the media... maybe it's the whole war & torture & death & crappy-ass economy & misery thing going on and stealing the spotlight?

[curious]

How could the air crew not know it was just a regular aircraft if that's what it was? I mean, I don't know what's going on with those lights but those guys track aircraft all the time, right? What would have to have been going on for them to not realize they were just looking at heat signatures off regular engines? It seems like a fundamental problem with trying to figure out what they saw is that the air crew is much better qualified to interpret their equipment then probably most of us.

[AtheistArchon]

How could the air crew not know it was just a regular aircraft if that's what it was? I mean, I don't know what's going on with those lights but those guys track aircraft all the time, right? What would have to have been going on for them to not realize they were just looking at heat signatures off regular engines? It seems like a fundamental problem with trying to figure out what they saw is that the air crew is much better qualified to interpret their equipment then probably most of us.

- That's a good point. And furthermore, apparently not even 'our' pilots and operators are making any sense out of this stuff, so we're all probably shooting in the dark here. On the other hand, some of us do have experience with frauds, hoaxes, deceptions, and misunderstandings. :)

[Joe_Black]

Space junk would burn up long before it was that bright unless it was very big.

It would not be in formation too.

[curious]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon

- That's a good point. And furthermore, apparently not even 'our' pilots and operators are making any sense out of this stuff, so we're all probably shooting in the dark here. On the other hand, some of us do have experience with frauds, hoaxes, deceptions, and misunderstandings. :) Well if it's total hoax or fraud it's easy to explain but that's no fun. ;) I'm accepting (atm) the idea that the video and basic report is real though the crew comments have likely been heavily massaged or taken out of context to overhype what happend.

Looking at some of the pictures (http://www.rense.com/1.imagesG/C26AFLIRFRAMEA.jpg) I'm wondering if the IR image is superimposed on top of a regular visible light image. That light/dark contrast in the clouds seems very extreme to me, is there really that big of a heat shift in the cloud or is that more like a regular shadow?

[!Xx+-Rational-+xX!]

This is a classic case of a camera hallucinating!

Dismissed! Next!? Evidence!? There is no evidence!

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by curious
Looking at some of the pictures (http://www.rense.com/1.imagesG/C26AFLIRFRAMEA.jpg) I'm wondering if the IR image is superimposed on top of a regular visible light image. That light/dark contrast in the clouds seems very extreme iunless that's just regular shadows. I'm far from being an expert in infrared imaging, but as the video was shot in the daylight (around 5 pm), it makes sense to me that sunlight reflected by the clouds will imprint the camera's heat-sensitive film, while the opposite side, which remain in shadow, will not.

As for the possibility of a hoax, I find it hard to believe that air force officials would put their careers at risk by playing along with a fake of this sort.

I've listened to the pilots conversation in Spanish over and over, and I really find no indication that they may be faking the situation. Also, they repeatedly say that the objects are at the same altitude as that of their plane, again, hard to believe that they mistakenly interpret the instrumentation data.

This case will surely catch the attention of "believers" and "skeptics" alike. I think we'll soon hear from P. Klass or R. Schaeffer or J. Oberg on this puzzle.

[wipeout]

Found some more footage, as a lot of the previous links hadn't worked for me:

http://www.tgcom.it/video/popup/videopopup20038.shtml?mode=adsl&id=20038#

[wipeout]

Downloadable videos...

http://www.ufocasebook.com/mexicanmilitary.html

Edit: which don't work! Until I used DivX player. And are very brief anyway.

It's simply unbelieveable how many videos I've found online of this UFO story which have failed to work.

[Silicon]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon


- I'm really surprised that there's not more hubbub about this in the media...

This was front page above the fold in the Daily News here in LA. The whole Iraq prison abuse was small print, and this was in big bold UFO SIGHTING? Mexico Airs Puzzling Videotape

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2145349,00.html

So there's your "mainstream media" hard at work getting to the bottom of something, and not sensationalizing it at all. *snort*


I say we get Randi on the Batphone hotline, and he puts the smackdown on this story.

[Patricio Elicer]

http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/video/3292568/detail.html

This link, posted by AtheistArchon, works fine for me, and is the best and most complete video of the event I've seen so far. It's viewable with Windows Media Player

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/video/3292568/detail.html

This link, posted by AtheistArchon, works fine for me, and is the best and most complete video of the event I've seen so far. It's viewable with Windows Media Player

Thanks but that just doesn't work for me for some reason.

[Batman Jr.]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer

This case will surely catch the attention of "believers" and "skeptics" alike. I think we'll soon hear from P. Klass or R. Schaeffer or J. Oberg on this puzzle.

I thought Philip Klass died.

[Batman Jr.]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon
- Mmm. Space debris sounds plausible, until you look at the similarity of the two main groups of three lights. They're more than just similar, they're dang-near identical; two parallel and close to each other, and one on the left farther away and down a notch.

- Unmodified Airforce pic:

http://www.the-archon.com/images/lights1.jpg

- The two groups of three lights in closer comparison:

http://www.the-archon.com/images/lights.jpg

- Also note that in the video, the lights appear to be moving parallel to the ground; the FLIR cam is mounted on the underside of the aircraft.

- No, I think we're looking at fixed objects... at least fixed in relation to each other.

But their configurations don't remain constant throughout the entire duration of the video. At one point, you can only see two balls of light side by side spaced farther apart.

[wipeout]

Well, since I brought the mystery up, I thought I'd try and solve it. :D

The numbers on the footage give the aircraft's exact location.

http://www.mexicanshowroom.com/state/gif/campecheMap2.gif

From the numbers for longtitude and latitude and how they change over time, I worked out that the aircraft is just a little below Escarcega and is flying eastward at 9 degrees to the left of due East.

Now, there are two other important numbers on the footage:

One number (actually just a pointer) is just left of zero and has a range -180 to 0 to +180. And it is pointing at around -140 or so.

The other number is azimuth which is around -140 degrees or so.

Which could mean the camera is pointing left and behind, pointing to the Northwest.

Ciudad del Carmen is to the Northwest...

At about the right distance...

And it has an airport... :D

As you can see from that little map above.

The airport is has a single runway and operates from 1 PM to 1 AM. I don't think it's very busy place.

http://www.azworldairports.com/airports/p2090cme.htm

Why would it have a lot of strong heat signatures which appear randomly, stay on for a matter of minutes and disappear?

Might be this...

http://www.orangeblossomballoons.com/images/Balloonstn.jpg

Maybe it was balloons taking off at Ciudad del Carmen airport?

Now I have no idea if balloons take off from there, though.

Well, that's my theory anyway. :D

But if that number and the pointer mean the camera is pointing Northwest, then it is pointing at a town big enough to have a small airport.

You could have all sorts of heat sources from a big town if something was going on there.

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by Batman Jr.
I thought Philip Klass died. Eh?,... that's probably not so. I just checked my latest issues of Skeptical Inquirer, where he is a fellow, and there's no indication of his passing. In fact he is still listed as a fellow. Well, unless he died just a few days ago. I hope that's not so :(

[Thomas]

A major danish news bureau, TV2, have made a poll concerning this mexican UFO phenomena, this is the result so far:

True or false?

True: 36%

False: 39%

Don't know: 25%

Based on 5841 votes.

The reporter behind this story says that there were 11 objects viewable on IR, and three of them showed up on radar. He finish the story in a good manner (translated):

'For years Mexico have often been reporting about UFO sightings, but almost all of them have showed to have natural explanations like weather ballons and meteorology phenomena'(source (http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/article.php?id=751697)).

I think that wipeout's ballon-theory is worth taking into account, the formations, and the changes here of, are of course rather akward in this perspective. It's all just rather silly speculations with the data we have at this point. Furthermore, the videoclip I have is clearly edited, I would like to see the original version.

[wipeout]

As I say in my analysis above, the camera appears to be pointing at a fairly large town with an airport. It looks like the map says it has a port as well.

Balloons are just one idea for the heat sources. There's nothing from the footage I've seen so far to suggest the sources are even moving.

If there is industry, it could be some sort of flares from a chimneys or similar.

[Zombified]

Is it possible these are flares dropped by other military aircraft on exercise in the area? Seems to me there was a case like that in the US a few years ago. If I recall correctly, the flares stayed airborne because they were suspended from parachutes that filled with hot air from the flares. Such flares put out a lot of IR because they are designed to spoof seeker heads on IR guided missiles.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
If there is industry, it could be some sort of flares from a chimneys or similar.
But three of them were detected by radar, and estimated to be in the same altitude as the airplane. As for what I've heard from the media.
Originally posted by Zombified
Is it possible these are flares dropped by other military aircraft on exercise in the area?

Just weird that the mexican airforce didn't knew about the other airplanes in the area then. But it's still a possibility, actually I also thought about flares because of the apparently systematic formations, when I first saw it. It would also make sense that there could have been 3 airplanes (3 radar detections), which then dropped 8 flares (11 IR detections).

I would really like to see the original version, the version I have seen, seems to be dramatized slighty - highlights from the episode.

[Thomas]

Now I'm beginning to be convinced that this is three helicopters/airplanes, that drops eight flares.

(three objects caught on radar, and elleven objects caught on IR)

A flare with a normal camera:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/flareparachute.jpg

Two flares with IR close-up view:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/flares.jpg

Six flares with IR distant view:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/lights1.jpg

The parachutes are filled with hot air from the flares, as Zombified proposed. It's not conclusive, but I think it's a good theory though. Also because if you look at the videos, you'll see that the objects caught on radar (indicated by a white square), have a diffrent shape than those I/we belive to be flares. I belive that a three flare formation becomes a two flare formation at a point, because one the flares simply run out.

Any objections or additions to this theory?

[wipeout]

I like the flares idea but a problem is that the objects were invisible to the pilots and I'd expect flares to be visible at that range.

There is the possibility of someone testing some new kind of flare that doesn't give out light but still gives out infra-red to protect planes or helicopters from heat-seeking missiles while flying at night.

I think(?) normal flares light a plane or helicopter up and show where it is to everyone at night.

Like I say, the video suggests the infra-red objects were in or above a large town with an airport and a port, so you'd expect a lot of people to notice something going on, whether it was balloonists or helicopters flying around.

Originally posted by Zombified
Is it possible these are flares dropped by other military aircraft on exercise in the area? Seems to me there was a case like that in the US a few years ago. If I recall correctly, the flares stayed airborne because they were suspended from parachutes that filled with hot air from the flares. Such flares put out a lot of IR because they are designed to spoof seeker heads on IR guided missiles.

Ah, those were the famous "Phoenix lights".

http://www.wiolawapress.com/phoenix/phx_lights9.gif

I remember video analysis showing that the flares descend veeeery slowly.

[Joe_Black]

The pilots said that the objects turned back during a chase and surrounded the plane.

Apparently the screens showed they were behind them too the left and in front of them.

Flares can't move that fast, and neither can balloons.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
I like the flares idea but a problem is that the objects were invisible to the pilots and I'd expect flares to be visible at that range.

I think(?) normal flares light a plane or helicopter up and show where it is to everyone at night.

I belive this was all taking place in daylight? I wouldn't think a flare to be very visible in daylight?

[wipeout]

No footage I've seen has suggested any sort of movement from the objects at all. Relative to the clouds, they appear to be at least 10 miles away and stationary or slow-moving.

If much more dramatic footage existed of the objects moving around or closer then surely they'd show that instead?

Trust no-one. :D

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Joe_Black
The pilots said that the objects turned back during a chase and surrounded the plane.

Apparently the screens showed they were behind them too the left and in front of them.

Flares can't move that fast, and neither can balloons.
Did they say how many of the objects started to chase them? And do they have any videoclip or documentation of this chase/surrounding?

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
No footage I've seen has suggested any sort of movement from the objects at all. Relative to the clouds, they appear to be at least 10 miles away and stationary or slow-moving.

If much more dramatic footage existed of the objects moving around or closer then surely they'd show that instead?

Trust no-one. :D
Yea, maybe they started building on the story when they came home. Tomorrow we'll here how they suddently remembered that they were actually abducted and anal probed.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Thomas

I belive this was all taking place in daylight? I wouldn't think a flare to be very visible in daylight?

Yeah, it's late-afternoon, just after 5 PM that the incident takes place. The camera is pointing northwest and slightly downwards and the clouds' shadows are on the right.

You could well be right about flares being difficult to see because of daylight, I don't know. :)

The intensity of the sources makes me wonder, though, that a flare that hot would not also be fairly bright as well.

Maybe the source was mostly in the camera's sweet-spot in terms of infra-red, and that makes it look far hotter than it really was.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout

Like I say, the video suggests the infra-red objects were in or above a large town with an airport and a port, so you'd expect a lot of people to notice something going on, whether it was balloonists or helicopters flying around.

We're talking an altitude of 3500 meter above surface, a helicopter and a ballon is quite small, if not invisible, at such a height.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Thomas

We're talking an altitude of 3500 meter above surface, a helicopter and a ballon is quite small, if not invisible, at such a height.

I think that's the height the plane is at, and a lot of news reports say the same for the objects, but the camera is pointing downwards at something distant, so it's much lower, and closer to Ciudad del Carmen which makes me wonder what people there saw, if anything.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Joe_Black
The pilots said that the objects turned back during a chase and surrounded the plane.

Apparently the screens showed they were behind them too the left and in front of them.

Flares can't move that fast, and neither can balloons. 9 years of de-briefing aircrew on radar and imaging systems means I refuse to believe a word they say without double checking everything first. One weapons operator claimed the full moon was causing his system to lose lock.
I saw the IR footage (edited) but I didn't see any radar film. Radar film should give the objects range.
As it stands I still think the objects may be on the ground some distance to the north. Perhaps at sea. Are there oil/gas rigs in that area?
I'd like to view the whole film unedited.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by mummymonkey
9 years of de-briefing aircrew on radar and imaging systems means I refuse to believe a word they say without double checking everything first.

That's cool that we have someone here who has experience of that. :D

I'd always wondered about the "oh, but they're a trained observer" argument that gets used about soldiers, police, etc. who witness UFOs is not giving them a bit more credit than many are due. ;)

Amateur or professional astronomers or meterologists are the ones that know the sky best and what's usual or strange but, oddly, don't ever seem to photograph much of anything I note...

[Hexxenhammer]

Awesome thread!

On the History or Discovery channel recently they had a show on UFO's that was actually (shock!) of a skeptical nature. They recreated 3 famous UFO/plane encounters down to the last detail. One was a original flying saucer sighting in Oregon(?), the second I can't remember, and the third was an encounter a P-51 pilot had that led him to crash and be killed. In all cases the scientists and researchers were able to recreate the encounters by mundane means.

Wait! the second was Roswell and the experiment was on false memory. They led a bunch of people they told they were taking on a nature hike past an area where they planted a soldier, some crime scene tape, and some scrap metal. People remembered all kinds of wacky stuff that never happened.

What's interesting here is the IR. If your typical alien spacecraft moves without any visible engines, I see no reason why they would have a bright IR sig. Also, you just can't judge size, distance, or airspeed with your eyes while flying, and that might even be more true if you're just looking at a screen.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by mummymonkey
As it stands I still think the objects may be on the ground some distance to the north. Perhaps at sea. Are there oil/gas rigs in that area?
I'd like to view the whole film unedited.
Then it's a hoax from the pilots wouldn't you say. I have never been a pilot myself, except in about 8-12 computer flight simulators :) ..I don't know about in real planes, but in a simulator you can't look down at sea level from any height without knowing that you're doing it, especially not in daylight(these guys claims that the objects is at altitude 3500m) Would that also go for the real thing?

If the explanation should be oilrigs, then it's pretty pathetic, because it's a routine flight looking for drug trafficers, i.e. they should have seen them before. I see no reason to assume those objects were not at the altitude they claim?

And furthermore, why would 3 of them show up on radar, and the other 8 don't?

reuters bureau
Mexico has a long history of fanciful UFO sightings, most of which are dismissed by scientists as space debris, missiles, weather balloons, natural weather phenomena or hoaxes.

[AtheistArchon]

- On flares: every flare I've ever seen has been fired from the ground upwards, i.e. military infantry flares used to mark pick-up points and to illuminate the battlefield. These have always been colored in some manner, never just white light. I don't know about aircraft-dropped flares, although I don't suppose there would be a need to color those.

- Also, I was under the impression that aircraft flares used for the purposes of missile evasion were rather short-lived. I dunno.

- But anyway, it would be quite a coincidence to me to see two sets of three flares in almost the exact same geometric pattern hovering right next to each other. The angles are too precise.

- And still, I'm really at a loss here... I want to say these are experimental aircraft of some sort, but we're talking about a large, sandy area of Mexico here. Unless the USAF outsourced its clandestine ops? (That's actually not a bad idea now that I think about it. Hard to keep things like test flights a secret in our society, easier in "Tobasco, Mexico".)

- Meh. Like someone else said, it's all speculation at this point. I'm still leaning towards fixed objects on an airborne platform of some type.

[wipeout]

I think the explanation will turn out to be that the aircraft's infra-red camera picked up heat sources from the coastal town of Ciudad del Carmen and the aircrew misinterpreted distance, altitude and direction as they passed in and out of cloud and relied on a zoomed-in camera view pointing downwards.

What the heat sources actually were in the town or at its port or its airport, I just don't know.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Thomas
Then it's a hoax from the pilots wouldn't you say. I have never been a pilot myself, except in about 8-12 computer flight simulators :) ..I don't know about in real planes, but in a simulator you can't look down at sea level from any height without knowing that you're doing it, especially not in daylight(these guys claims that the objects is at altitude 3500m) Would that also go for the real thing?

If the explanation should be oilrigs, then it's pretty pathetic, because it's a routine flight looking for drug trafficers, i.e. they should have seen them before. I see no reason to assume those objects were not at the altitude they claim?

And furthermore, why would 3 of them show up on radar, and the other 8 don't?
I doubt if it's a hoax by the pilots. Looking at the film again I noticed the camera elevation is 1-2 degrees. (Presumably wrt the horizon). Which would put the heat sources more or less at the same height as the aircraft.
I can't speak Spanish so I've no idea what the radar operator is saying, but I'm puzzled that the radar was able to pick up and track these objects. Radars are very directional and would have a hard job tracking any object buzzing closly around the aircraft. They also have a minimum range.

[wipeout]

I'm puzzled that the radar was able to pick up and track these objects because the aircraft is pointing east and the camera is pointing northwest...

Not sure about it doing that! :D

I think the elevation might be the plane's itself, amounting to a very slight climb, as the camera is pointing downwards as can be judged by the clouds moving beneath in some footage.

[anduin]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon
And still, I'm really at a loss here... I want to say these are experimental aircraft of some sort, but we're talking about a large, sandy area of Mexico here. Unless the USAF outsourced its clandestine ops? (That's actually not a bad idea now that I think about it. Hard to keep things like test flights a secret in our society, easier in "Tobasco, Mexico".)


Just some nitpicking. The Yucatan is not a sandy area, it is quite green. This is a link to Ciudad del Carmen, the closest spot to the event:

http://www.sanbachs.net/cgi-bin/mexico/mexico2.cgi/City%3DCAR

[richardm]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon
- On flares: every flare I've ever seen has been fired from the ground upwards, i.e. military infantry flares used to mark pick-up points and to illuminate the battlefield. These have always been colored in some manner, never just white light. I don't know about aircraft-dropped flares, although I don't suppose there would be a need to color those.


I think it depends on what you want to use them for. You certainly used to be able to get magnesium flares (e.g. in Star Shells), which burned with a while light that was used to illuminate an area. Sometimes they'd be coloured for use as signals. I imagine that in these days of night vision hardware they're hardly used for illumination any more, though.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by wipeout
I think the elevation might be the plane's itself, amounting to a very slight climb, as the camera is pointing downwards as can be judged by the clouds moving beneath in some footage. I'm sure the elevation refers to the camera. It's shown as a figure along the bottom and by a cursor on the left. At the start of the film when the camera shows some ground features the elevation is -30 then -14. It also changes as the camera is tilted up. Later, when the camera is pointing at the objects, it's indicating +2.

[SCSimmons]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon
- These have always been colored in some manner, never just white light.

Remember, they never made visual contact with these objects. The footage you're seeing is from an IR camera, and has no relation (other than positional) with what the objects would look like visually. Whatever they were, they were obviously hotter than they were bright ...

My main question is: how did they determine that the radar contacts were from the same source as the IR contacts? The contacts evidently didn't match in number or duration, and distance isn't measurable in the IR footage that was shown. The parallax gives some information, but not enough; they could have been objects a mile away tracking the course and speed of the plane, or stationary objects twenty or more miles away, or something in between. I don't know how you'd match up the radar contacts with that little to go on ...

-Christian

[Hellbound]

Originally posted by AtheistArchon
These have always been colored in some manner, never just white light.

Um, no.

You've only seen signal flares, most likely the non-parachute ones (what we call star clusters), which generally are colored. However, white signal flares exist, also, and are used for battlefield illumination. Also, almost all the artillery launched or vehicular launched flares are white, for illumination purposes. Our artillery would launch white flares every night over the town nearby, from 8Pm local to about 10PM. Always white. Provided visibility for patrols in the area.

Even with night vision we still use flares for illumination, because NVGs are not very good for detail, leave out color, have problems with contrast, restrict field of view, have a slight magnification effect making it hard to do up-close work (like checking your indicators and radio dials inside the vehicle), and just don't provide the equivalent of normal, lighted vision. In a situation like Iraq illum flares were great, because the enemy did not have long-range weaponry that could target the flare source (not to mention artillery launched flares, and even hand-held illum flares, don't light up until after the top of their arc, making source identification difficult to impossible). Also, considering that we had all the tanks and helicopters, and they had very little that could take those out, the light was considered more beneficial than not.

Anyway, the formations of the lights do seem to be more precise than flares, as even with little wind the flares will move around in relation to each other.

To get to my point, outside an immediate combat or emergency situation (where signalling is important and can't be done via radio), you're more likely to see white flares than anything else.

[wipeout]

I also thought the elevation number referred to the camera, but it's +2 in the first photo which has the clouds beneath:

http://www.rense.com/general52/deff.htm

Video of the same bit:

http://www.ufocasebook.com/mexicomilitary1.mpg

An alternative explanation is that it is the camera angle but the plane itself is tilted left so the camera is level relative to the plane and pointed downwards relative to the ground. The longitude and latitude don't change relative to each other to any great amount in those photos over a few minutes, however, so the plane is still flying roughly eastwards.

If the plane is tilted that much and is still travelling roughly eastwards over the few minutes of footage those photos were taken from, then that suggests high winds maybe?

Which goes against my balloons idea I'd guess.

However, the first link says "winds no bigger than 35 kms. / hour" ...

So the pilots were possible flying at a strange angle for reasons best known to themselves. ;)

[Q-Source]

Yesterday a group of scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico said that the lights captured by the Mexican airforce were not UFOs but an atmospheric phenomenon known as "centellas". This is a sort of electric shocks caused by gas in disequilibrium.

As usual, when something weird turns out to be just a natural event the media lose interest and do not talk about it. So, I cannot provide any link in English, I only watched the conference that those scientists gave on TV and read it on a newspaper in Spanish.

[wipeout]

Hey, see what I've just found... :D

The Campeche coast on the Gulf of Mexico, where the objects were filmed, is Mexico's main oil- and gas-producing region. Oil platforms there release or burn off some of the gas they produce.

It's from an article in which a scientist puts forward a different theory about "electrical flashes emitted spontaneously by the atmosphere" way up in the sky.

Edit: I just noticed Q-Source just mentioned the same idea just before me that those scientists suggest.

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2147323,00.html

Personally, I don't go with the scientists and I go back to our earlier camera-pointing-downwards-at-distant-industrial-heat-emissions theory.

It would also show why they were intermittent, extremely intense, a surprise to the pilots and have a pattern if they were from some sort of oil platform just off the coast near Ciudad del Carmen. An oil platform could show up on radar too.

People, I hope we may have found a winner here.... :D

[wipeout]

As far as I'm concerned, unless new footage shows something different, then the mystery is solved.

It was a UFO all right... ;)

Unidentified "Flying" Oil-Platform... :D

Opposition party members in the poor southern state of Campeche said soldiers and police used violence to get the workers off the platform in Campeche Sound early Friday, arresting them and hauling them off in helicopters. "The judicial authorities had been using helicopters since yesterday to intimidate the workers," said Camilo Massa Perez, a PRD opposition official in the oil mining city of Cuidad del Carmen. "They used the Mexican navy to besiege the platorm ... the workers were treated like animals, they tied them up with ropes and handcuffed them," he added. "They resisted arrest, and were treated very violently."

http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/970907/97090703.html


Unbeknownst to the Foreigners, many Domestics share the penchant for Carmen-complaining. "People complain about Carmen, and many move away, but they always come back," one Carmelita passionately says. The ties that bind Carmelitas together don't dissolve if they do move away. Often the drifters stay in such close contact that they know the latest gossip almost as soon as the inhabitants do.

One factor compelling stray Carmelitas to return home is the surrounding Gulf of Mexico waters, which cool hot mental and physical temperatures. Its tide softly laps up to the hard-sanded, sporadically oil-splattered beaches within the city. On clear nights, beach visitors can see the blazing lights from the offshore oil platforms, which lie about a mile from the shore.

http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/lwatts/lwcarmen.html


The plane's camera was pointed at the city of Ciudad del Carmen and the oil-platform with blazing heat sources is only mile from it! :D

Ahahahaha! :D It really couldn't fit much better. :)

The pilots were being "chased" by an oil-platform... :D

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
[B]As far as I'm concerned, unless new footage shows something different, then the mystery is solved.

There is just couple of things that the oilplatform-theory fails to explain:

Why did only 3 of the 11 objects show up on radar?
Why did the pilots say the objects where at altitude 3500m?
Why did 6 of the objects appear in somewhat two identical formations? (I dont belive that oil is found in formations?)
Wouldn't the pilots have to be quite stupid to not knowing that the IR camera where pointing down at ground-level if the airplane was tilted to the side while filming the entire 15min phenomena?


I have never heard about 'centellas', and I don't know anything about them, but I think it sounds reasonable that this phenomena could be the cause if the oil platforms burn off some of their oil in that exact area.
On the other hand, the quote in the previous post supports the helicopter/flare-theory because it states that the police in that area use helicopters. It also explains the radar/IR contradictions, the altitude, the formations(+changes) and doesn't involve that the pilots are stupid.

Nothing is conclusive, but among the theories we have by now, I think that the oilplatform-theory failes to explain too many things and involves a too basic flaw from the pilots that makes no sense to me.

/thomas

[Thomas]

*quote/edit mistake*

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Thomas

There is just couple of things that the oilplatform-theory fails to explain:

Why did only 3 of the 11 objects show up on radar?
Why did the pilots say the objects where at altitude 3500m?
Why did 6 of the objects appear in somewhat two identical formations? (I dont belive that oil is found in formations?)
Wouldn't the pilots have to be quite stupid to not knowing that the IR camera where pointing down at ground-level if the airplane was tilted to the side while filming the entire phenomena?


1. Maybe the radar could only detect or make sense of some parts of the oil platforms sticking up high enough from the surface.

2. The pilot operating the camera seems to zoom in to avoid the infrared from the sky blinding it, and it then becomes difficult to have any idea of size, distance or altitude of the objects since the horizon is no longer visible and nothing one the ground is either.

3. That depends on the lay out of the oil platforms themselves, and I've tried and failed to find pictures of them. I don't speak Spanish and that doesn't help when searching.

4. I believe the sky is visible early on at the top of the footage. It's blindingly bright to the camera, so I think he knew he was pointing the camera at the ground during the footage.

I think they were just misinterpreting what they were seeing.

I think we have good evidence from the numbers of the footage that they were pointing an infrared camera at region of the Earth's surface with several oil platforms.

And when they burn off something, I'd guess it'd look exactly like what we saw in terms of intensity of heat at that range.

[wipeout]

I found some pictures from the relevant Campeche area. This is an interesting one... ;)

http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/pics/rw06apr02.jpg

If there are more than a few of those in the oil industry area we know the camera is pointing at, then that would be our answer.

Note that there are three towers there, close together but one is not switched on. Looks a lot like one of the groups of three heat sources in the footage. Also, the flames are not bright visually, but are obviously very hot so it might be hard to spot them from a distance by eye but not by infrared camera.

So I believe it's not a big oil-platform at sea, but lots of little "burner"(?) towers like those on land. In the airforce footage, we see some burners go on, burn for a little while and go off again.

My investigation is doing okay, I think. :D

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
So I believe it's not a big oil-platform at sea, but lots of little "burner"(?) towers like those on land. In the airforce footage, we see some burners go on, burn for a little while and go off again.
Interesting indeed. Chimneys. I like that idea because it also explains the formations far better than oilrigs.

As far as I have understood this, the calculations of altitude is based on the radar (the 3 objects), and not on the IR cams. However, if that is not the case, and thier calculations are entirely based on the IR, then I think the chimney-theory is rather plausible. But only if they don't have any radar confirmations of the altitude of the famous three objects.

Secondly, the chimney-theory still fails to explain why only three of the elleven objects showed up on radar. As far as I know radar tech., objects at ground level doesn't appear without they have been marked in advance, including chimneys, towers etc., but I'm not sure, maybe mummymonkey can clear that up?

All-in-all, looking at the videos, I think it's a good theory, but the issue with the three objects still needs to get cleared up. If the altitude calculations are based on the radar, then the entire chimney-theory needs modifications at the least. And flying objects or 'centellas' need to be part of the theory. As I see it, it could very well be a scenario of mixed events.

1) Was the radar used to determine altitudes?

If not,

2) How sensitive is a radar concerning high ground objects?

3) Is the pilots lying or have they been paranoid when they say that the objects started chasing them?

[wipeout]

I don't know anything about the radar.

I do think it's odd that the plane is flying east and the objects being filmed are in the northwest how radar might pick them up. I don't know how that's possible as I think most aircraft radars are forward-looking. It suggests to me that the plane turned around, but I haven't seen any footage to confirm that.

As to the objects chasing and surrounding the plane, the impression I get is that there are oil platforms and towers dotted all over the Campeche coastline and offshore. It could be other distant burner towers started going off from several other places and this spooked the aircrew even more.

I'm thinking of e-mailing Mr. Randi himself about the oil-facility theory as it seems to be fitting together reasonably well.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
I'm thinking of e-mailing Mr. Randi himself about the oil-facility theory as it seems to be fitting together reasonably well.
I don't consider this UFO-theory debunked yet, there are still unsolved issues, especially concerning the radar. But do it, and let's hear what the man has to say.
Another possibilty is to ask Phillip Klass what he thinks of the theory, he have even more experience with debunking UFO sightings. This email is to the public relations director of CSICOP Kevin Christopher: kchristopher@centerforinquiry.net, he can forward the theory to Phillip Klass. If you choose to do it, then please post the reply in this thread.

[Batman Jr.]

Originally posted by Thomas

Another possibilty is to ask Phillip Klass what he thinks of the theory, he have even more experience with debunking UFO sightings. This email is to the public relations director of CSICOP Kevin Christopher: kchristopher@centerforinquiry.net, he can forward the theory to Phillip Klass. If you choose to do it, then please post the reply in this thread.

Good idea. It still bothers me though how I had come to think him dead.

I do admit that the smoke stacks in the picture which wipeout provides above bear a suspicious resemblance in configuration to the lights.

[Zombified]

Originally posted by Thomas
2) How sensitive is a radar concerning high ground objects?
I think less advanced radars have problems detecting or tracking objects at significantly lower altitudes because of radar scattering off the ground, which forms a "background." I don't know how modern the radars are in the Mexican airforce, or these particular planes, but it's possible that either (a) only some chimneys returned enough energy to be detectable, others being lost behind the noise or (b) none of the "aerial" objects were actually detected on radar, but something on the ground nearby produced large enough returns to be detected, like a large building or something.

That assumes, of course, that the radars were aimed below the horizon to a significant degree.

BTW Thomas, don't take this the wrong way, but your avatar looks freakishly like my unemployed slacker brother-in-law. Every time I see it, I suddenly need to check to see if my fridge has been raided... :)

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by Q-Source
Yesterday a group of scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico said that the lights captured by the Mexican airforce were not UFOs but an atmospheric phenomenon known as "centellas". This is a sort of electric shocks caused by gas in disequilibrium. Yes, I just read about it a moment ago. A totally new explanatory line may be emerging. I admit I had never heard of the "centellas" atmospheric phenomenon before, and obviously I don't know the english word for it. I've only heard the Spanish exclamatory expression "Rayos y Centellas!" ("lightnings and centellas!") :D

I could only find a link in Spanish about it: http://cnnespanol.com/2004/tec/05/13/ovnis.ap/

The relevant part of the article says:

The 11 luminous objects filmed by the Mexican Air Force pilots might be "centellas", a very rare atmospheric phenomenon, and not UFOs as some have speculated, a Mexican scientist said.

"Sometimes electrical discharges take place in the atmosphere, where, unlike the lightnings where the electrical current flows from one terminal to the other, the current keeps self-contained in a sphere-like shape", said Julio Herrera, researcher of the Institute of Nuclear Sciences of the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM).

"This is a hypothesis we have yet to confirm" said Herrera, and added that they will ask the Secretary of Defense to hand over to them all the information available about the objects filmed in March 5th.

Well, as I said, I have no idea of what this "centella" phenomenon is all about, but it seems odd that a self-contained lightning would be active for ten minutes (that's the period of time pilots alleged the phenomenon was visible).

Also, there's the problem of how to reconcile this explanation with the fact that the objects were seen in the radar, although the Philip Klass' 9th ufological principle may account for it: " Whenever a light is sighted in the night skies that is believed to be a UFO and this is reported to a radar operator, who is asked to search his scope for an unknown target, almost invariably an "unknown" target will be found. Conversely, if an unusual target is spotted on a radarscope at night that is suspected of being a UFO, an observer is dispatched or asked to search for a light in the night sky, almost invariably a visual sighting will be made. (Klass UFOs: The Public Deceived 304)

[curious]

Since it was drug interdiction aircraft that spotted the UFO's what if some drug smugglers were using some low budget stealth technology aircraft which was the initail contact and when they realized they been detected they dropped a bunch of special flares, and chaff(?) and maybe used some ecm. Then they bribed the scientists to say it was centellas.:D

Side note:Watching the longer movie again I noticed at the end one of the 3 light formations turns into being 4 lights.

[T'ai Chi]

I've only heard about it and seen a clip. So without knowing the specifics, I'll guess it was meteorites or space junk breaking up upon entry.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Zombified
BTW Thomas, don't take this the wrong way, but your avatar looks freakishly like my unemployed slacker brother-in-law. Every time I see it, I suddenly need to check to see if my fridge has been raided... :)
Well, just for the record: I'm not unemployed, and I'm certainly not a slacker. But I just might raid your fridge anyway, go have a second look ;)

If your avatar resemples you in any way, you shouldn't be too worried about your brother-in-law.

[Zombified]

Originally posted by Thomas
Well, just for the record: I'm not unemployed, and I'm certainly not a slacker.I never suspected otherwise... but the resemblance is startling.
If your avatar resemples you in any way...Only when all my beer is missing.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by curious
Since it was drug interdiction aircraft that spotted the UFO's what if some drug smugglers were using some low budget stealth technology aircraft which was the initail contact and when they realized they been detected they dropped a bunch of special flares, and chaff(?) and maybe used some ecm.
I've had similar thoughts myself, I just waited for someone else to say it. This entire scenario could be a diversion from a billion dollar smugling event in one way or the other :)
But let's stick to the facts we have so far. There are certainly signs of many other solutions. It could be very interesting to see the original uncutted version.

From Reuters bureau
...nuclear science researcher Julio Herrera said the blobs of light may have been nothing more than ball lightning -- glowing spheres that are little understood but often sighted near the ground during thunderstorms.

"Just as you have lightning between clouds and ground, you can also have it within the clouds and sometimes ball lightning can develop. I feel this is one of these rare events," said Herrera, based at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

"It's a very rare atmospheric phenomenon and it would be very interesting to be able to analyze all the information these pilots obtained," he told Reuters.

UFO follower Jaime Maussan said on Tuesday the objects seemed "intelligent" after they turned around to surround the plane chasing them -- but Herrera said electrical discharges in ball lightning could have been attracted to the plane as a conductor

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Thomas
As far as I know radar tech., objects at ground level doesn't appear without they have been marked in advance, including chimneys, towers etc., but I'm not sure, maybe mummymonkey can clear that up?
It all depends on what kind of radar the aircraft is carrying. The civillian version of this model is fitted with a basic Bendix weather radar while the latest US drug enforcement type has a radar similar to that carried in an F16. What the Mexicans have I don't know.
Most radars will be able to pick out a metal chimney on the ground although if they're close together, as in the photograph, they will appear as a single 'return'. However the radar operator will know they are on the ground.

[wipeout]

By the way, I'm sure you noticed that the two "headlights" in the footage seem to have dimmer points beneath them:

http://www.rense.com/1.imagesG/C26AFLIRFRAMEB.jpg

Could this by any chance be infrared light from the oil-chimneys reflecting off the water around the bases of the chimneys? You can see water in the picture below of the chimneys in that area:

http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/pics/rw06apr02.jpg

Maybe more evidence that the pilots were being chased by an Unidentified Flying Oil-facility? ;)

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by wipeout
Could this by any chance be infrared light from the oil-chimneys reflecting off the water around the bases of the chimneys?
I doubt if IR reflects off water. I'm no expert though. When I saw this image I assumed it was being caused by something internal to the camera.

[wipeout]

I think it would depend how far into infrared we are talking about.

Infrared light is reflecting off the clouds in the footage and we humans can't see that even though we can see the clouds and it's still essentially water.

So I think it makes some sense that water like the sea or lakes is not limited to reflecting what we humans can see but can reflect wavelengths a bit wider than that.

[Joe_Black]

Perhaps its ET in origin.

[wipeout]

Well, I just sent an e-mail about the oil-flare theory to Mr. Randi, so I hope we'll get to find out what he thinks.

I've never spoken to anyone famous before. :D

[wipeout]

More footage has turned up here:

http://www.ufocasebook.com/mexicanmilitary.html

Needs Realplayer and is rather jerky, but still useful and 2 minutes long.

There are random spots appearing on the footage at various points. Not sure what they are. Looks more like something camera related, possibly the "x" that you see in in the video stills.

Nothing I see contradicts the oil-flare theory.

Plus two sources are shown not moving relative to clear ground features at 7 seconds in... :D

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
Nothing I see contradicts the oil-flare theory.
Except this quote from that same site:

It was there that the aircraft, belonging to the 501st Air Squadron was performing its routine patrol when it suddenly detected the presence of an object on its radar at an elevation of 3500 meters, as well as through its infrared equipment (FLIR).
This has to be false for the chimney-theory to be true. You don't find any chimneys that tall. Or it could be a misinterpretation of the explanation given by the aircrew, from the media or Jaime Maussan. That is, it could mean that they detected an object when they were at altitude 11.000 feet, but to my knowledge modern radars also tell you the altitude of the objects they detect. I'm not sure about the radars the mexican SEDENA uses. Maybe someone else knows for sure?

[wipeout]

I meant nothing in the footage contradicts the oil-flare theory. :p

The news reports contradict the oil-flare theory, but then the news reports also contradict the footage I've seen, and that 2 mins 9 seconds here is said to be all of it:

http://www.ufocasebook.com/mexicanmilitary.html

Not sure if that's true, though.

As to the radar picking things up, check this out...

Consider the camera direction relative to the aircraft. Numbers at the bottom of the footage go:

-180....-90....0....+90....+180

I interpret it to mean the camera is pointing behind to leftwards to forwards to rightwards to behind again.

http://www.rense.com/1.imagesG/C26AFLIRFRAMEA.jpg

Now, during the 2 mins 9 seconds of footage, the pointer on this reading for camera direction goes:

Time - Direction of Camera

0:00 - behind and left*
0:04 - behind
0:07 - forward
0:09 - behind
0:15 - behind and left
0:17 - behind and left
0:31 - behind and left
0:38 - behind and left
0:48 - behind and left
0:54 - behind and left
1:40 - left
1:57 - behind and left
2:00 - behind and left

*implied from other footage

In other words, how can the aircraft be picking all these objects up on radar when only twice are objects in front of it? That is, between -90 degrees left to +90 degrees right? And one of those is 90 degrees left as well, right on the limit of being in front of the plane, so only once is the camera pointing truly in front of the aircraft. And that's when it shows two sources and the ground at 0:07 seconds.

Doesn't radar usually cover only forwards? Maybe someone can tell us or web search might find out.

So, unless that plane has backwards-pointing radar or there is additional footage, then it was radar-blind to almost all of the objects.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
I meant nothing in the footage contradicts the oil-flare theory. :p

I know, I'm just pointing out that chimneys don't explain the altitude of the objects. It contradicts the theory if that is true, and calls for new perspectives.

In other words, how can the aircraft be picking all these objects up on radar when only twice are objects in front of it?

Well they didn't pick up all those obejcts, they only picked up three objects on radar. Which actually fits well with the directional coordinates of the IR camera.

Doesn't radar usually cover only forwards?

They do in all those flight simulators I've tried :) (F18/F16/F15/MIG-X/Commanche/Commercial etc.)

So, unless that plane has backwards-pointing radar or there is additional footage, then it was radar-blind to almost all of the objects.
Yes, it was blind to eight of the elleven objects as the story goes. And picked up one-to-three obejcts in the altitude: 11.000 feet.

I got a pizza to eat and an episode of Futurama to watch along with the feast, see you later fella.

[wipeout]

Having looked at the picture of a similar plane, then without major modifications, it certainly looks like the radar could only be at the front end of the plane... ;)

http://www.futura-dtp.dk/Flysiden/images/C26.jpg

Something that makes me wonder about the radar of the aircraft and how it was behaving is this quote from the General who released the footage:

He added that "of course, the phenomenon is unexplained" and made it clear that Mexican military personnel "never speak of UFOs or saucers or anything like that--only the sighting of very strange contacts, incomprehensible in that situation, since there was absolutely nothing flying in the area, accoridng to reports from the Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche airport."

http://www.ufocasebook.com/suspicious.html


That could mean simply that the airport detected the objects on radar like the plane did but they were just not known traffic... or that the airport didn't detect anything on radar at all and only the plane did!

If the second meaning is the correct one then considering that -- unlike the plane -- the airport would have uninterupted radar coverage during the whole incident, if the airport's radar didn't detect anything then we've got to wonder what the plane was picking up, and where it was.

Assuming the airport has radar, of course. ;)

That the only time in the footage that any infrared sources are right in front of the plane is when the plane is pointing at the ground makes me wonder if that was the only time they got radar contact as well.

Maybe the pilots only saw radar contacts of the objects they knew were close to the ground and that hasn't been mentioned.

Something else a bit weird, however, is this....

These military men were interviewed and claimed having never seen a similar phenomenon, since the speed and movements detected by radar confirmed the fact that the [objects] were not aircraft.

http://www.ufocasebook.com/mexicanmilitary.html


Uh.... what movements are they talking about? :D

Something is a bit funny about the radar if it's picking up objects speeding around and yet the only sources which are in front during the footage are stationary relative to clear ground features in front, below and the closest to the aircraft at 7 seconds into the 2 minute video.

Something strange is certainly is going on somewhere... :D

[wipeout]

I just got a positive sounding e-mail reply from Mr. Randi about the oil-flare theory. :D

He's forwarded the idea to someone of some knowledge whom he thinks might find it "interesting"... ;)

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by wipeout
I just got a positive sounding e-mail reply from Mr. Randi about the oil-flare theory. :D

He's forwarded the idea to someone of some knowledge whom he thinks might find it "interesting"... ;) Congrats and thanks for the effort. This case has caught my interest, and I'd love to see it solved to everyone's satisfaction.

I can't wait to hear from the "big boys" of the skeptic side of the coin, though I've also been interested in what UFO advocates have to say about the case as well.

[Marian]

Originally posted by Q-Source
Yesterday a group of scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico said that the lights captured by the Mexican airforce were not UFOs but an atmospheric phenomenon known as "centellas". This is a sort of electric shocks caused by gas in disequilibrium.

Is that 'ball lightning'? That was the last explanation I saw presented on the news here in Southern California. (It was on the local NBC news, they said (IIRC) jist: mystery solved, experts say that it was an atmospheric phenomenon known as ball lightning that caused the images' etc.

Just wondering if that's the same thing? Or if the ball lightning is then an alternative theory?

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by Marian
Is that 'ball lightning'? Yeah!,... I now know that centella=ball lightning

[Batman Jr.]

Are the centellas invisible to the naked eye, or are the scientists just assuming that they weren't obvious enough to have been noticed without the I.R. camera?

If centellas are ball lightning, I'm guessing the latter.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Batman Jr.
Are the centellas invisible to the naked eye, or are the scientists just assuming that they weren't obvious enough to have been noticed without the I.R. camera?
Now I have done some reading on those ball lightnings.

There are several kinds of ball lightning, and two types are invisible to the naked eye: Those are the types: silver and black, they are only detectable by radar - and now IR cameras. They come in a variety of diffrent forms, shapes, colors, brightness's and behaviors. Their lifetime ranges from seconds to minutes.
They contain a massive amount of energy:

In the city of Habarovsk, Russia, a sphere of ball lightning fell into a reservoir containing approximately 7,000 liters of water. In ten second the water started to boil. It boiled for approximately ten seconds. Then the sphere of ball lightning exploded. The yield of this ball lightning was the equivalent of two tons of TNT.

Source (http://www.chukanovenergy.com/bl/)

It's a weird phenomena. However, it's not just theory, one can actually replicate it in a microwave oven (http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/cwillis/microwave.html). They often have the speed of a walking person, and they are known to get attracted by airplanes. This provides a good explanation to why these mexican pilots claimed to be followed.

The more we know about lightning, the weirder it gets. And probably the weirdest of all are balls of lightning - which have invaded high-flying jets and scared the daylights out of the passengers.

Source (http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s127660.htm)

If we hold all the provided data together:


They were invisible to the naked eye.
Detectable by radar and IR equipment.
Were estimated by radar to appear at an altitude of 11.000 feet.
Chased the airplane.
Seemed to be in formation.

Then this very much looks like the silver/black ball lightning phenomena. I think the story goes like this: They detected something on the radar in the altitude of 11.000 feet, which they couldn't see with the naked eye. They then started to use the IR equipment. Now they could 'see' the silver/black 'invisible' ball lightnings appear in front and behind/left of them. However, they only detected three of them by radar due to the nature of radars as discussed in previous posts. The ball lightning started to chase them because it gets attracted by metal objects and are known to invade airplanes.

Ball lightnings are well documented, and has been researched by several scientists:

Ball lightning bibliography (http://www.fis.unipr.it/~albino/documenti/Bibliografia_BL.html)

I find that silver/black ball lightning is far the best theory we have so far. It explains more than any of the other theories suggested.

The oilflare-theory fails to explain the altitude of the objects, it fails to explain the chase and it includes that the pilots and mexican researchers would have failed to consider ground objects. I find that highly unlikely. The researchers from SEDENA who have analyzed this phenomena know what there is to know about the given radars and IR equipment, they know the area the observations took place in better than we do, and I really don't think they haven't thought about alternative explanations before they published the videos. Furthermore, they have experience in analyzing observations by their own aircrews.

The flare-theory includes additional airplanes/helicopters and/or white flares with a long lifetime, at the altitude of 11.000 feet. I find that equally unlikely as it fails to explain the invisibility of the objects.

The ball lightning-theory, only fails to explain the formations of the balls, and that was what made me consider other alternatives. On the other hand, nature is known to make formations from time-to-time, and these ball lightnings are quite weird. Actually the most weird meteorlogical phenomena I can think of. However, they do indeed exist, have killed and injured several people, and are well documented.

I think the nuclear researcher Julio Herrera is right when he told the media that this merely is a ball lightning phenomena. I consider this case solved, unless new data should appear. No visits from aliens included, just meteorology - again.

[Zombified]

Interesting summary, Thomas.

It would be good to find a more credible source for information on ball lightning that chukanovenergy.com, since they don't seem to believe in conservation of energy... It seems to be one of those free energy/zero point energy outfits...

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Zombified
Interesting summary, Thomas.

It would be good to find a more credible source for information on ball lightning that chukanovenergy.com, since they don't seem to believe in conservation of energy... It seems to be one of those free energy/zero point energy outfits...
The only information from that site used for the summary, is the quote you see above the source. The descriptions of ball lightning is from other sources. The phenomena has only been the object of scientific study for a few decades now. It doesn't suprise me that alternative groups would use a new field of study to their own advantage.

Also, that the amount of energy in the phenomena should be smaller than chukanovenergy estimate, doesn't change the credibility of Julio Herrera's theory.

This should however be a reliable source with a mixture of skepticism and evidence as premises (http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/tesla/ballgtn.html). It contains further links.

[wipeout]

Ball lightning exists all right. I know because I've seen it.

I don't think that's what's in the footage, though. It lacks a thunderstorm, for example.

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by Batman Jr.
Are the centellas invisible to the naked eye, or are the scientists just assuming that they weren't obvious enough to have been noticed without the I.R. camera?

If centellas are ball lightning, I'm guessing the latter. I'd like to point out something with regard to this, that may contribute to clear things up to some extent.

To my knowledge it was ufologist Jaime Maussan the person who spread the news that the objects were invisible to the naked eye. Many ufologists are well known for their lack of objectivity when it comes to assess evidence regarding ufo sightings.

It's quite possible that the objects may indeed have been visible to the naked eye. I reviewed the conversation in Spanish between the crew members once again, and I got the strong impression that they made eye contact with the objects through the plane windows.

In the aftermath interview, crew member Magdaleno Castañón Muñoz said these words literally: "Nunca pudimos identificarlos visualmente, a simple vista nunca", meaning: "We could never identify them visually, never with the naked eye"

Note that he said "we could never identify them", and not that "We could never see them". This account suggests me that they saw the objects with the naked eye, but that they could not explain what they were.

Alright, I know that this may be just a semantic subtlety, but it's a possibility.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
Ball lightning exists all right. I know because I've seen it.

I don't think that's what's in the footage, though. It lacks a thunderstorm, for example.
Yea, they are usually connected with a thunderstorm, but not always. All the sources I have read about this phenomena says that they 'often' and 'usual' are seen during or after a thunderstorm.
There have even been reports of these bastards occuring in submarines.

What is even more interesting is that several people have described these ball lightnings to appear in formations, here is an example:


On May 10th 2002 in Hershey Pa around 11:10pm I was standing outside waiting for a friend, when I saw what I thought was a formation of jets in the sky (Ft. Indiantown Gap is nearby) when my eyes adjusted I soon realized that there were about 15 objects resembling balls of light swarming around each other in a close cluster. the entire group was traveling west. it then stopped and traveled east until it was out of my view. no noise was heard, and it was fairly calm with clear sky. I couldn't really tell what altitude the objects were at, so I'm not sure what speed they were traveling at. If this is what ball lightning is, I'm glad I got to see it.

Source (http://www.amasci.com/weird/unusual/bl.html)

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
Note that he said "we could never identify them", and not that "We could never see them". This account suggests me that they saw the objects with the naked eye, but that they could not explain what they were.

Alright, I know that this may be just a semantic subtlety, but it's a possibility.

It could indeed be interesting to hear what they actually saw, if they saw anything of course. It doesn't make it very comforting that all the information we have, has been filtered through an UFO-advocate.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Q-Source
Yesterday a group of scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico said that the lights captured by the Mexican airforce were not UFOs but an atmospheric phenomenon known as "centellas". This is a sort of electric shocks caused by gas in disequilibrium.

Wipeout's research which suggests that there may be industries in the area working with oil and gas, is then 100% plausible with the ball lightning-theory if this electric phenomena can be the product of gas in disequilibrium.
If the gas was released in a regular steady pace from the facility, which most likely is the case, this also provides a good explanation to why the objects appeared to be in a 'manmade' formations.

I consider this UFO mystery solved.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
To my knowledge it was ufologist Jaime Maussan the person who spread the news that the objects were invisible to the naked eye. Many ufologists are well known for their lack of objectivity when it comes to assess evidence regarding ufo sightings.
No sh*t. Jamie Maussan is the one who released this (http://www.jman5.com/mexufo.htm) in 1997. The video looks like an episode of the british childrens SCI-FI series Dr. Who, from the 60'ies. Jamie Maussan is nothing but a laugh.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Thomas
The oilflare-theory fails to explain the altitude of the objects

The only time the plane could get altitude from radar was when the objects would have been in front of it, and the only time anything was clearly in front of it -- in what is supposedly the complete footage that we've seen -- is when objects are clearly on the ground or close to it at 0:07 into the 2:09 footage.

This suggests to me that all altitude estimates of infrared sources were visual.

Also, you'd expect Ciudad del Carmen airport to be able to confirm all the details from its own radar if it has one but there's not been anything from there other than that they didn't notice anything.

it fails to explain the chase

The footage we've seen shows no evidence of a chase that I can tell. Most of the footage shows the sources in the same direction and some way distant.

and it includes that the pilots and mexican researchers would have failed to consider ground objects. I find that highly unlikely.

I don't rule out that the people looking at the UFO footage could have missed something that fundamental, as if they go from what the pilots say and the pilots are wrong, then they will also be wrong themselves.

Hey, I just found a great big video (19 megs), the same stuff as before but higher quality. You can read all the numbers. :D

http://207.150.221.99/leftmedi/UFO/UFOVideos/MexicanAirForce/mexico-03-05-04.mpeg

I got that from here:

http://www.ufoevidence.org/specialfeatures/mexicanairforce/mexicanAFvideos.htm

[wipeout]

You can see at 0:09 that same footage of two infrared sources apparently on the ground I mentioned before.

Then at 0:17 you see more footage showing two more infrared sources also apparently on the ground, footage which is new to me.

The time for both is almost the same:

0:09 is at 16h 42m 54s
0:17 is at 16h 42m 58s

The camera is panning upwards and both shots are from the same bit. Someone edited the film and it hides that this is the case.

So we then have 4 infrared sources apparently on the ground, very early on in the incident.

Looks like what you'd expect oil-flares to look like... :D

[Thomas]

Come on, you have to change several given facts to make the oilflare-theory fit. This is what you have to assume:

SEDENA lie when they say they caught the objects on radar.
SEDENA lie when they say the altitude of the objects was 11.000 feets.
SEDENA lie when they say they were chased.
SEDENA forgot to consider ground objects, or their conclusion was dismissed because general Gerardo Clemente Vega Garcia like UFO's.

You can't just change the given facts and conclude that the SEDENA people are liars and fools, only to falsify the given facts so they will fit your oilflare-theory :)

If we can just add and delete to the given facts, this could be atleast ten things I can think of; ranging from drug traffic diversions to Santa Claus :)

When ball lightning can be the product of gas in disequilibrium, it fits all the given facts like a glove:

There are gas facilities in the area.
Elleven objects were detectable by the FLIR STAR ZAPPHIR II camera.
Three of the elleven objects were detectable by an AN/PS 143 BRAVO VICTOR 3 radar.
Three of the elleven objects were estimated by the radar to appear at an altitude of 11.000 feet.
The objects were attracted by the airplane.
The objects were in formation.

All the claims, and all the material we have, supports the ball lightning-theory 100%.
With the oilflare-theory we have to both add and delete to the given facts.
Furthermore, the flames from the chimneys should have been quite huge to come out that big on the FLIR when the chimneys is much more than 11.000 feet away from the camera.

Unless new evidence should appear, I'll stick with the Julio Herrera theory. All I have read about ball lightning, and all I have heard and seen from the episode, supports that theory 100%.

[wipeout]

Albert Einstein at one of the famous Solvay Conferences said he had proven that quantum theory was inconsistent, and showed how. Niels Bohr and his collaborators worked hard over the next few days and found out that Einstein was wrong and had forgotten to include the effect of something... general relativity. :D

If Einstein can screw up that badly, then don't tell me the military can't. ;)

All but four of the infrared sources in the footage shown are in the wrong direction to be detected by radar, and those four are perfectly stationary relative to clear ground features and so appear to be on the ground.

I'm not going to dispute that ball lighting exists as I've actually seen it once (and a house roof was damaged in the exact area it landed!), but human error is much, much more commonly observed than ball lightning.

We can only go for exotic theories once we rule out the mundane ones. :)

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
We can only go for exotic theories once we rule out the mundane ones. :)
Then let's go for the Santa Claus theory, I would say that's quite exotic, and not at all mundane :)

No really, you can assume anything if your basis for your assumption is that all given data is based on misinterpreted observations and failed calculations. Gods, Ghosts, UFO's, anything.
I take account on the given data within certain limits, but when I have to choose between two theories, I will go for the one that explains the most. If both theories explains equally much, the next criteria is to choose the one that calls for the least modification of the given data.

A superior criteria is that the theory have to fit the given laws of nature. This is of course not bulletproof, because it keeps out theories that contains radical changes of science. They are however quite rare. The Einstein/Bohr-problem you mentioned, is an example of such a phenomena.

That's the far most secure way to choose between two theories, and that's how science works.

'Most exotic' and 'least mundane' is not considered a good starting point :)

[wipeout]

Actually, I just noticed that at the clip at 22 seconds in, if you look closely at the rear of the aircraft, you can see a object underneath it, which may be some kind of radar.

http://207.150.221.99/leftmedi/UFO/UFOVideos/MexicanAirForce/mexico-03-05-04.mpeg

So maybe the plane can use radar in all directions after all, if that's what that is.

However, even if the plane was detecting radar objects, that still doesn't change the facts that the infrared camera is pointing at a city surrounded by oil facilities, or that four strong infrared sources are clearly visible on the ground at 0:09 and 0:17 in the footage, or why Ciudad del Carmen airport didn't notice anything at all, amongst other problems like why a radar, if that's what it is, only picks up a few of the objects....

It'll only be settled if a map of the oil facilities around Ciudad del Carmen shows the arrangement of potentially strong infrared sources like chimneys.

[Joe_Black]

"I can't wait to hear from the "big boys" of the skeptic side of the coin"

You mean the debunkers. Skeptics withhold judgement till the is enought evidence too assume something is true.

Debunkers assume is it true, and go too any length or explaination too prove it.

[feyd rautha]

:dr:
first hello to you guys and thank you for all and hello to you Mr. Randi!!! hope you follow this case because it is amazing footage!
and i dont like sylvia brown(and other frauds including all sorts of religions), to make that point clear. she should sit in jail instead of a villa in sunny cali.

but i do think that intersolar spacetravel is(for us, one far away day will be) possible and therefore visitation from et if he is older and more experienced than us is possible.


on http://www.rense.com/general53/mextt.htm is a transcript of an interview with the pilots. u people dont like rense do you?



as for the theories asuming this transcript is real and the whole thing is not a hoax:

a)oilrig, maybe if it has wheels or is able to fly otherwise nonsense.

b)balllightning, if there is a force that connects several of this balls together than this is the most probable explanation as they are not visible for the eye but are visible to FLIR.

c)ballons, dont move that way and would have been seen by the pilots at a distance of two miles.

d)flares, maybe but why wouldnt they be visible to the eye.

one of the sceptics on cnn states that he thinks that those 2 triangular assigned formations are a reflection, the same could be said about those 2 ballonlike objects sooner in the video.

any idea how such a vertical reflection could happen with an ircam or is this guy only a not knowing mr.blabla(MICHAEL SHERMER, SKEPTIC MAGAZINE on cnn transcript athttp://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/12/acd.01.html )???

@thomas u look more like slackeractor johnny depp or did you borrow his photo?:p

[wipeout]

Thanks for those links, feyd rautha! :D

The transcript one is just what I wanted to read.

[wipeout]

Oh, and as to why the radar might pick up something in the air if it was chimneys that were giving the infrared sources, what if dust and soot from the oil facilities can give false radar readings?

That could be the key to explaining this. :)

[feyd rautha]

in my opinion( i have watched 5 different versions of the videos including the mpg2 which is of the best quality) these objects moved in a clear horizontal path without signifficant change of altitude.

dust and soot: radar only picks up objects of a certain size. birds for example are not detectable by aircraft radar.

i hope the whole footage and data will be made available to the public one time.

i do not say or even think these objects are of alien nature, but neither do i believe in one of the theories provided from the debunkers. those explanations are for the dumb masses not for me.

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by feyd rautha
on http://www.rense.com/general53/mextt.htm is a transcript of an interview with the pilots. Hello feyd rautha, and welcome to the forums.

Thanks for the transcript. That puts my point to the rest, then

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by feyd rautha
in my opinion( i have watched 5 different versions of the videos including the mpg2 which is of the best quality) these objects moved in a clear horizontal path without signifficant change of altitude.I don't believe it's possible to say if the objects are moving or not from the footage. I think they are at roughly equal altitude to the aircraft but may be stationary or moving only slowly.

Originally posted by feyd rautha
dust and soot: radar only picks up objects of a certain size. birds for example are not detectable by aircraft radar.Radar is quite capable of picking up anything that reflects radio waves. That includes rainclouds, dust clouds and yes, flocks of birds. When a radar set is faulty and producing spurious returns, they are known as birdies, because they resemble the returns given from flocks of birds.

Originally posted by feyd rautha
i hope the whole footage and data will be made available to the public one time. Agreed.

Originally posted by feyd rautha
i do not say or even think these objects are of alien nature, but neither do i believe in one of the theories provided from the debunkers. those explanations are for the dumb masses not for me. A career in the diplomatic corps awaits.

[feyd rautha]

i dont think that military radar is adjusted to pick up such small objects.


before the objets vanish behind the clouds they are left of the plane and move faster then the plane or do i understand the perspective wrong?


and why do woowoos have the ugliest looking websites without exeption? is it because of LSD?http://www.crank.net/
that carla baron is sure the hottest woowoo(but again buttugly website!!http://home.att.net/~carla.baron/mainpage.html)!
hmm as i am a webdesigner maybe i ll write a tutorial for woowoowebsites?!?:D

[wipeout]

Well, the transcript tells us that the aircraft's radar can indeed detect backwards.

So, some conclusions from the footage and the aircrew transcript:

The main group of 11 infrared sources seen in the footage all over the news was almost certainly the oil facilities at Ciudad del Carmen. Infrared picked it up but radar never saw it because it's on the ground. The city is in the exact direction they were looking with the infrared camera so there is no real mystery there anymore.

However, three objects were detected on radar and these were to the front, front-right and behind, and their behaviour was completely erratic.

It sounds like at first, they detected a radar object behind them, but looked and saw the 11 infrared sources in a slightly different direction and kept that onscreen while they followed the first radar object and the other two radar objects by radar alone.

The mystery now isn't the infrared objects, it's the erratic radar ones we haven't seen.

Maybe dust and soot from the oil facilities was playing with their radar and giving false readings? If that was the case then the whole incident seems pretty much answered as a mystery.

[feyd rautha]

if these 11 objects are the oilfacilities than this must be known to the pilots no doubt about that!!! therefore-->hoax

if not, consider it took two months for them to go public, they would have thought about that possibility and would have investigated it.

oilfacilities dont move, watch the video again these objects move relativ to the clouds before they vanish behind them!!!

and what about the doubt about the radar detecting backward? every aircraftradar can do that! probably u seen only the hud-display in flightsims!?!:p

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by feyd rautha
i dont think that military radar is adjusted to pick up such small objects. I don't know what radar set the Mexicans have, but any radar will detect any object, of any size, as long as it reflects radio waves. Remember that chaff, designed to jam radars, is only tiny strips of metal.

Originally posted by feyd rautha
before the objets vanish behind the clouds they are left of the plane and move faster then the plane or do i understand the perspective wrong? Judging by the cameras azimuth readings at the bottom, the objects are either close to the aircraft and moving at the same speed, or far away and stationary, or something in between. The azimuth barely moves as the objects pass behind the clouds, meaning that their angular position wrt the aircraft was hardly changing.

[wipeout]

I've certainly began to wonder about it being a hoax as this video clip show 4 similar objects were visible and seem to be on the ground at different place long before the "flying" ones were seen:

http://207.150.221.99/leftmedi/UFO/UFOVideos/MexicanAirForce/mexico-03-05-04.mpeg

That is a 19 megabyte download.

If you watch it at 9 seconds and 17 seconds into the clip, you will clearly see the ground with 2 objects both times.

Now look at the time at the far bottom right, and it shows both clips are just before the time of day is 16 hours 43 minutes.

So 4 glowing objects are seen at the same time and seem to be on the ground.

The rest of the times in the other bits of footage are later than that.

So why would the aircrew or the military people investigating it think the later objects are flying when they'd already seen similar things apparently sitting on the ground?

Something is very strange about that.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by feyd rautha
and what about the doubt about the radar detecting backward? every aircraftradar can do that! probably u seen only the hud-display in flightsims!?!:p The vast majority of aircraft radars point forward only and have a detection area of roughly 60-90 degrees each side of straight ahead. The elevation limits are about the same or slightly less. I note from the transcript that this radar set can detect objects behind the aircraft. This is highly unusual and requires either two antennae, one pointing forward and one pointing backward, as in the abortive Nimrod aircraft; or more likely a single antenna in a pod under the wing or body of the aircraft. Like the old Shackleton. The AWACS aircraft has a massive rotating radome carried above the aircraft.

[wipeout]

mummymonkey,

I noticed earlier today that the plane does indeed have a sort of tub underneath it near the back, with an arrow pointing to it in the TV footage, so that's probably the radar.

[feyd rautha]

@mummymonkey

ok i brabbled about radar:bs:, sorry, but do you agree that the objects are moving and not on the ground???

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by wipeout
mummymonkey,

I noticed earlier today that the plane does indeed have a sort of tub underneath it near the back, with an arrow pointing to it in the TV footage, so that's probably the radar. It will be. I see rense has the radar set listed as RADAR AN/PS 143 BRAVO VICTOR 3. This is most likely the AN/APS-143B(V)3 'Ocean Eye' maritime surveillance radar made by Telephonics. I don't know the exact capabilities of this set but it is a new synthetic aperture design. Its primary role would be the detection of surface ships but it may have some limited air to air capabilty.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by feyd rautha
do you agree that the objects are moving and not on the ground??? I no longer think they are on the ground for the reason I gave earlier in this thread. (camera elevation)I'm unsure if they are moving for the reason I gave about two replies back. (camera azimuth)

[Kitty Chan]

Im new here so Hello all.

I came to the boards when I heard about these UFO's thought if anyone would be trying to solve it, it would be here:)

I read with interest all the ideas, I dont know enough about radar etc to be of any help.

(Other than being a former believer in such things), so at least I know what its not.

And I myself cant say what it is or are.

Which leaves me with perhaps why? I wonder if that area just needs a little boost in the ole Tourism area. Call me crazy but one never knows the other half of it. Eco Tourism is big business.

As for the pilots I wonder what their beliefs are towards ufos? I would not say they were the cause of a hoax. But certainly not the first to be victims of one.

just a little conspiracy theorist at heart :D

[wipeout]

Hello Kitty Chan. :)

From Patricio Elicer's translation earlier in the thread of some of the aircrew's chatter, I suspect the aircrew were genuine in their puzzlement and some also kind of like the idea of UFOs... ;)

[excited tone]

- What is that?, oh my God

- Juárez, Juárez,... What is that?

- It's a dot

- Look for what is coming behind us!

- One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight .. on the screen

- Amazing!

- Their speed is,.... ohhhh!

[wipeout]

Originally posted by mummymonkey
I no longer think they are on the ground for the reason I gave earlier in this thread. (camera elevation)

The camera elevation of a couple of degrees above horizontal is not a problem if the plane is flying slightly tilted.

[Hellbound]

Originally posted by wipeout


The camera elevation of a couple of degrees above horizontal is not a problem if the plane is flying slightly tilted.

I have to wonder about this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most airplane-mounted cameras set to get a true elevation (relative to horizon) rather than a relative elevation (relative to the plane)? It seems that the elevation relative to the plane would be useless for just about anything, and considering that all modern aircraft come with horizon sensors and other things to determine the actual orientation, it wouldn't be hard to have the cameras and other sensors report a true elevation. Now, I'm not a pilot nor do I have experience with aircraft (other than riding in the back of one praying not to be hit by SAMs), so I'm curious if anyone knows the answer to my query.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by wipeout
The camera elevation of a couple of degrees above horizontal is not a problem if the plane is flying slightly tilted.
You're assuming the elevation is wrt to the aircraft axis and not the horizon. Assuming you are right, the aircraft would have to have an angle of bank inversely proportional to the distance from the objects. Fancy doing some trig? Even small bank angles will cause loss of height and deviation from course.

[wipeout]

You may well be right, Huntsman.

I had wondered initially if the elevation means the planes angle relative to the horizon in front of it and not the camera's.

I'm wondering about something different as well, namely if the horizon would be visible in an infrared camera or if the ground to sky is just one seamless "blank" as it seems to be in the video.

The camera is pointing horizontally and yet there is no visible horizon, so it certainly seems that way.

The most important thing about the footage is that the plane's position and camera direction are accurate as, if so, that means the camera definitely is pointing in the direction of oil facilities. Knowing the lay-out of hot-spots in the facilities in question and if they match the arrangement of the infrared sources is something that should confirm it.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Huntsman

I have to wonder about this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most airplane-mounted cameras set to get a true elevation (relative to horizon) rather than a relative elevation (relative to the plane)? It seems that the elevation relative to the plane would be useless for just about anything, and considering that all modern aircraft come with horizon sensors and other things to determine the actual orientation, it wouldn't be hard to have the cameras and other sensors report a true elevation. Now, I'm not a pilot nor do I have experience with aircraft (other than riding in the back of one praying not to be hit by SAMs), so I'm curious if anyone knows the answer to my query. It would be odd if it did not have an input from the aircrafts flight instruments so that it could sense the horizon, I agree.

[Kitty Chan]

Hi again

There has been mention of this James Mussan guy. I was surfing around and found this link

http://www.alcione.org/0VNI94/OVNI94_engx.html

I dont know if I did that right but theres always copy and paste!

Anyway, as you all seem to know hes suspect from before, I think Im on track with the Tourism thing:)

At least there is the whole other half of whats driving this, drug cover up perhaps? Politics in the air? $$.

I find it convenient that the US has a Area 51, Russia has a Area 51 as does apparentely Mexico. The ufoers are exicited about a Government Finally coming forward.

I find it funny that they have been mad at the Government and not trust it for not coming forward. Now, its come forward they suddenly trust it???? My Momma taught me never trust the government.

My little theory goes like this What better way for the government to "hide" what its up to? Better to have the alien bunch sneaking around than have to explain what they are up to.

If you think thats nuts think about the poor guys told to stand there put on these sunglasses and tell us what that bomb looked like. Then again, maybe we dont want to really know.:(

[Thomas]

Originally posted by feyd rautha
@thomas u look more like slackeractor johnny depp or did you borrow his photo?:p
I bet you're a hideous little doofus :)

Anyway, I have managed to get conclusive new evidence in this case! The phenomena is now 99% revealed, and have encountered no objections from the involved scientists. Julio Herrera admit that he was wrong about the gas theory, and that the facilities producing gas in the area most likely never release any gas anyway.

In an astounding effort from the scientists behind the FLIR technology, and me, it is now possible to convert the infra red images to normal pictures! This shows that Michael Shermer wasn't all that wrong about the mirror effect, and that this indeed was a diversion from a major drug smuggling scam!
The scam includes a malicious conspiracy made by the Mexican goverment and a very well known man from the media and several supermarkets.

The picture here shows the FLIR image, and the image converted with our new Biased Skepticism X-89^2 technology, below:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/revealed_santa.jpg

As you all can see, Santa Claus is sitting in a hot air ballon stacked with a huge amounts of illegal drugs. A flying mirror is following him and this indeed proves Michael Shermen's theory of the mirror effect.
Santa was caught by the customs officers of Greenland while trying to fly in 1.3 tons of uncut cocaine and five ki's of marijuana.
He admit that is was him the SEDENA pilots saw with their FLIR camera, and explains that he was invisible because the Mexican goverment had granted him a ring of invisibility. However, our new astounding technology is immune to magic.
Santa said to Reuters Bureau that: "I was just trying to smuggle the cocaine to Greenland so the elfs would work faster, and make more presents for the suffering children of this world." - when asked about the marijuana he simply replied: "Dude, no further comments!".

This next revealed picture shows how the Mexican goverment tried to make a diversion from Santa's smuggling attempt:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/revealed_tortilla.jpg

The Mexican conspirators used an old conjurer trick involving magnetism, to send up four levitating steaming hot tortillas near Santa's ballon. These tortillas were of course closely followed by four flying mirrors, and yet again Shermen's theory of the mirror effect proves its worth. That the two formations on the FLIR image isn't entirely accurate, is due to a rather embarrassing flaw from the Mexican goverment. They simply didn't adjust one of the mirrors correctly.

The tortillas were invisible because each of them were filled with invisibility rings like the one Santa had.

This furthermore explains why the pilots thought to be followed the objects, because we all know that magnetic tortillas gets attracted by FLIR equipment and mexicans.
We have failed to identify the last object which obviosly was without an accompanying mirror, but we belive it to be a pegasus or a chinese dragon. This is the only thing that doesn't makes this revelation 100% conclusive.

I rest my case.

[wipeout]

LOL :D :D :D

[wipeout]

I've been doing some better map calculations of the position of the plane and direction of the infrared camera. It turns out the camera is pointing much more to the right of Ciudad del Carmen than I thought it was before from my earlier, rougher looks at this.

This doesn't change very much about the oil-flare theory, other than the possible locations of the chimneys. If they are on the coastline, then they are 90 km away but they may well be much closer.

[JimTheBrit]

Originally posted by Joe_Black
Perhaps its ET in origin. Perhaps it is, but before I accept an explanation involving ETs I'd like to know what other possibilities were investigated and why they were discounted.

[wipeout]

The infrared footage screws with people's perceptions in that the horizon is invisible to the camera. It's too far away to be picked up.

It misleads people into interpreting the background of the footage as blank sky or blank ground or sea, but it's not.

The horizon actually runs right across the middle of the footage!

It's right there but we can't see it.

Any time the camera is pointing at the group of "objects" the horizon is there too but we can't see it, with the sky, the ground, the sea and the horizon just a blank space as a result of the ambient infrared being beneath the intensity the camera can pick-up, while what I believe are distant oil-chimney flares giving the heat sources that are the "UFOs" burn bright enough to be seen at that range.

[Patricio Elicer]

Question: Does anybody know what the plane's course was at the moment the UFOs were filmed?

We know from the crew members accounts that the objects were at the left hand side of the plane, and we also know that the time of the sightings was around 5 pm.

Judging by the said info, and by the light-shadow pattern in the clouds, the plane's course must have been somewhat North-East. Is that correct? Can anybody tell from the IR screen data, or from some other source?

[wipeout]

Yeah, I worked out the direction of the plane, it was one of the first things I did.

It's flying very nearly due east, but slightly to the left of that.

Have a look at the four pictures here:

http://www.rense.com/general52/deff.htm

Here's the two positions for the two lower pictures:

18 28.16 N, 90 35.84 W at the time 17:06:49
18 28.29 N, 90 34.98 W at the time 17:07:05

So the plane goes 00 00.13 degrees northwards and 00 00.86 degrees eastwards in 16 seconds.

We can also work out from the camera azimuth of -139.1 and -139.2 degrees that the camera is pointing backwards and to the left, to the northwest.

That's one of the unique things about this footage, is that we know when and where and in which direction. :D

[Patricio Elicer]

OK, good insight. Thanks.

So all the info we have to date seems to be consistent with a real UFO sighting, though we still can't tell whether it was alien ship piloted by small green beings or not :D.

I'd love to see the entire, unedited tape of the event. To my knowledge there's no more than 10 minutes of taped material, that may be crucial to unveil the mystery.

[Wolverine]

Questions:

Has there been any confirmation of the "objects" from ground-based radar or other equipment, or is all this data solely from the C26A's onboard systems?

What were the weather/atmospheric conditions in the region at that time?

Was any seismic activity recorded in the region at that time?

[wipeout]

We have a heat-sensitive camera pointing at a place on the distant horizon covered with flaming oil-industry chimneys... and the heat sensitive camera picks up lots of red-hot dots in this exact place. I'm not seeing a whole lot of mystery here! :D

Unless the aliens are running the Mexican oil industry, then I think we can rule extraterrestrials out entirely. ;)

[Wolverine]

Originally posted by wipeout
Unless the aliens are running the Mexican oil industry, then I think we can rule extraterrestrials out entirely. ;)

Try telling that to this guy (http://www2.kbcitv.com/x5154.xml?ParentPageID=x5157&ContentID=x53419&Layout=KBCI.xsl&AdGroupID=x5154). :eek: :D

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Wolverine
Questions:

Has there been any confirmation of the "objects" from ground-based radar or other equipment, or is all this data solely from the C26A's onboard systems?

What were the weather/atmospheric conditions in the region at that time?

Was any seismic activity recorded in the region at that time?



The city of Ciudad del Carmen airport 100 km away saw nothing, it's unknown if they have radar. As far as I know, it's all from the plane.

For your second and third questions, near the bottom of this page are answers for weather and seismic activity, which is fairly good weather and no seismic activity:

http://www.rense.com/general52/deff.htm

[wipeout]

By the way, from the reports, here is the rough guide as to what went on, generally correct as far as I can know...

1) Aircraft radar picks up an object behind
2) Infrared camera turns and sees a different object to the behind-left
3) Infrared camera sees more and more objects to the behind left until there are 11 of them
4) Radar picks up 2 more objects in front and in front to the right
5) Radar readings of the 3 objects are bizarre and erratic

Important points about what the aircrew did and didn't see...

The 11 objects on camera are never seen on radar
The 3 objects on radar are never seen on camera

Also, the 11 objects on infrared camera are close to being in line with the horizon, and never change positions relative to each other, while the 3 objects on radar bounce around like angry fleas.

Basically, I think the radar went a bit nuts for some reason and the aircrew looked with the infrared camera at the distant oil-facilities on the Campeche coast and got spooked when they mistook the 11 heat sources there for lots of flying objects like the 3 objects the radar was imagining during its episode of radar-psychosis.

Simple as that. :D

[Wolverine]

Originally posted by wipeout
http://www.rense.com/general52/deff.htm

Is there corroborative data available which doesn't trace back to Jeff Rense's web site? Rense as well as Jaime Maussan could proclaim the sky to be blue, and I'd still have to go check. ;)

[wipeout]

Not that I know of for weather or seismic, so it's the best we got...

... and yeah, you made a good point about the quality of that website as the general report there contradicts the aircrew transcript on a different part of the same website! :D

[wipeout]

I've mainly been going by the footage, and this transcript...

http://www.rense.com/general53/mextt.htm

Yes, it's that site again but the transcript sounds plausible enough.... maybe I should look for the same transcript somewhere else, just to be sure. ;)

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Wolverine


Try telling that to this guy (http://www2.kbcitv.com/x5154.xml?ParentPageID=x5157&ContentID=x53419&Layout=KBCI.xsl&AdGroupID=x5154). :eek: :D

Ahahaha! Good stuff. :D

This whole incident has taught me is that even with clear numbers on the footage showing the location of the plane and direction of the camera, a lot of scientists, skeptics and UFO believers just go off on theories without looking at the details, in this case checking where the plane was on a map and what its camera might be looking at. :D

Trust no-one. ;)

[mummymonkey]

Wipeout, here are some figures I've come up with.
Assuming height = 3.5km & distance to coast 90km.

Distance to horizon = 230km
Angle below level flight of coastline = 2.2 degrees
Angle below level flight of horizon = 0.9 degrees

(You might want to check my trig!)

Now lets have a look at this image:

http://www.ibrox.freeserve.co.uk/images/ufo1.jpg

The numbers going up the left hand side never change throughout the footage and I am assuming they are the vertical gimbal limits of the camera. In other words, the camera can point up a maximum of 30 degrees and down a maximum of 120 degrees. The marker is just above zero which agrees with the elevation displayed underneath of 2 degrees.
The fact that the numbers on the left never vary is important because it strongly suggests that the camera is fixed wrt the aircraft and that it is not adjusted to allow for aircraft bank. This is important when we compare the image with the next one:

http://www.ibrox.freeserve.co.uk/images/ufo2.jpg

In this image taken some 16 seconds later, the camera's elevation is the same, but the objects now appear above the horizontal marker. If the camera is fixed, this would be caused by either:
1. The objects all moving in a synchronised manner
2. The aircraft altering its angle of bank slightly
If the camera is stabilized however it can only be caused by the objects moving.

The specs for the camera are here. (http://www.flir.com/imaging/nmc/media/original/8d4ea580-9857-4ac3-9df6-ef770a603101.pdf) They state that inputs from the aircraft navigation systems are optional.

Now, to return to the numbers I gave at the start. This means that it is possible for the camera to pick up heat sources as much as 100km or more out at sea. At that distance, even a tiny change in the angle of bank will result in significant vertical movement of the displayed objects. The spec sheets gives the fields of view for the camera but I can't tell what it is set to in these pictures.

Anyway, enough from me for now.

[wipeout]

I'll take your trignometry as all present and correct. :D

The plus 30 minus 120 is indeed confirmed on the specifications at the link you give.

You can actually watch that exact bit of footage if you want.

You can turn down the brightness and read the time, the pictures in your post coming at 1:40 to 1:56...

http://www.ufocasebook.com/mexico-03-05-04.mpg

The camera elevation in degrees goes 2, then 3, then 2, then 1, then 2 during those 16 seconds.

I'm guessing most of it is the aircraft moving around.

It seems slightly bumpy, so it's maybe no surprise if the camera is pointing up slightly above and below 0 degrees during the footage.

I did find one link that talks about picking up the heat signature of a human at 30,000 feet for a different system(?) on the same aircraft:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/c-26.htm

A red hot ball of fire from an oil-chimney at tens of kilometers distant suddenly sounds more like something really noticeable.... :D

[Patricio Elicer]

I've made an analysis of the situation, based on the following 2 IR camera screens:

http://www.boomspeed.com/pelicer/mexico-ufo-a.jpg

http://www.boomspeed.com/pelicer/Mex-Ufo2a.jpg

First, the raw data:

FRAME 1
Time: 17:03:41
Plane location:18º 26.52' north latitude, 90º 46.27' west longitude

FRAME 2
Time: 17:07:05
Plane location: 18º 28.29' north latitude, 90º 34.98' west longitude

From these data I've figured out the following info:

Plane direction: E 8.91º N (or 81.09º Azimuth)
Elapsed time between the two captions: 204 seconds
Angles swept out between captions: 1.77' northbound, 11.29' eastbound.
Aprox. distance covered by plane between captions: 21 km
Average plane speed between captions: 370 km/hr

The following sketch shows both the plane direction and the IR camera direction:

http://www.boomspeed.com/pelicer/mex-ufo-dir.jpg

And here's a map of the region with the aprox direction info (plane direction in red, IR camera direction in blue)

http://www.boomspeed.com/pelicer/mexico_map1.jpg

So, it seems to be quite correct that the IR camera was pointing to Ciudad del Carmen at the moment the UFOs appeared, but is not consistent with the pilots version that they saw the objects at the left hand side of the plane. Rather, they appear to be in the behind-right side.

Please feel free to correct me if I've got something wrong

[Hand Bent Spoon]

After seeing this footage on CNN, IMHO those are just reflections of light on what I would assume to be a glass dome covering the camera.

Seeing the broadcast version of the footage, as opposed to the compressed avi footage available on the net made all the difference.

[Batman Jr.]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer

Plane direction: E 8.91º N (or 81.09º Azimuth)

I see that you have derived the plane's direction by taking arctan(1.77/11.29)=8.91º. Though a minute of latitude always corresponds to approx. one nautical mile, the distance of a measure of longitude depends on the latitude of the points which define the horizontal measurement (as you move away from the equator, a given measure of longitude is equivalent to progressively smaller distances). 8.91º may, however, still be close to the real value as the plane was relatively close to the equator where longitude becomes about equal to latitude in distance. Lat/Long bearing equations are kinda messy, so maybe someone else here can work them out as I don't have the time right now.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
So, it seems to be quite correct that the IR camera was pointing to Ciudad del Carmen at the moment the UFOs appeared, but is not consistent with the pilots version that they saw the objects at the left hand side of the plane. Rather, they appear to be in the behind-right side.

True, they said the eight FLIR-only objects appeared at nine o' clock.

They also said that they discovered the objects when they made a turn for Campeche. According to the direction you have calculated, it seems that they cancelled that direction shift at some point.


Please feel free to correct me if I've got something wrong

I would have to argue that the sample size of two, is too small to determine the entire route of the airplane. It is possisble that they got quite confused when they saw the objects and shifted direction several times. Perhaps you should use a larger sample size for the calculations. You may be right though.

I have written an email to FLIR Systems Inc., and asked them some questions concerning the technical details of their StarSAFIRE II cam which is left out in their brouchure. Their answer can clear up a lot of things, so now we'll just have to wait and see.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Hand Bent Spoon
After seeing this footage on CNN, IMHO those are just reflections of light on what I would assume to be a glass dome covering the camera.
However, infrared images should not respond to refections of light, only to heat sources. Infrared is an energy with a longer wavelength.

[Prester John]

Synchronised in flight refueling?

[Patricio Elicer]

Thanks for your input, Batman

Yes, I think I made a mistake in my calculations, as you clearly pointed out

For determining the direction of the plane, I first determined from the raw data, that in those 204 seconds the plane moved 1.77 minutes of arc to the north and 11.29 minutes of arc to the east. Then, by assuming the earth to be a perfect sphere of 40,000 km in circumference, 1.77' translates to (40,000/360/60)*1.77=3.28 km across the surface of the earth, northbound.

Then I wrongly calculated the eastbound shift assuming the same 40,000 km circumference, that obviously at 18º latitude is less than that.

As you said, being close to the equator, the difference may be insignificant. I know I can do the proper calculations, but at 3:20 am and after 2 whiskey-coke glasses, I don't think I'm lucid enough to do them :). My guess is that the real angle may be around 10 degrees.

EDIT:
My mistake makes the distance covered by the plane and its average speed to be a bit less than what I calculated originally

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by Thomas
True, they said the eight FLIR-only objects appeared at nine o' clock.I reviewed the video once more, and the pilots said twice that the objects were at seven o'clock, though other direction figures are heard as well in their conversation.

I would have to argue that the sample size of two, is too small to determine the entire route of the airplane.Ohh yes, it's perfectly possible that in those 3.4 minutes (204 seconds) the plane shifted direction, so the direction I calculated for the plane is just an "average direction", so to speak.

I'll see if I can refine my analysis later.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
The following sketch shows both the plane direction and the IR camera direction:

http://www.boomspeed.com/pelicer/mex-ufo-dir.jpg

And here's a map of the region with the aprox direction info (plane direction in red, IR camera direction in blue)

http://www.boomspeed.com/pelicer/mexico_map1.jpg

So, it seems to be quite correct that the IR camera was pointing to Ciudad del Carmen at the moment the UFOs appeared, but is not consistent with the pilots version that they saw the objects at the left hand side of the plane. Rather, they appear to be in the behind-right side.

Please feel free to correct me if I've got something wrong
The displayed camera azimuth may be referenced to the aircraft's heading, rather than North.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by wipeout
The camera elevation in degrees goes 2, then 3, then 2, then 1, then 2 during those 16 seconds.

I'm guessing most of it is the aircraft moving around.

It seems slightly bumpy, so it's maybe no surprise if the camera is pointing up slightly above and below 0 degrees during the footage.
The camera is stabilized so there should be no movement other than that commanded. Any change in elevation should happen only due to inputs from the operator. (Or maybe the aircraft's flight instruments)

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by mummymonkey
The displayed camera azimuth may be referenced to the aircraft's heading, rather than North. Well,... yes, that's quite possible, and adds another piece to the puzzle.

But,... not being an expert nor having any experience on the field, I'd tend to think that azimuth referenced to the plane's heading won't be of much importance, a rather usless info, seems to me.

This is a technical definition of "azimuth": Azimuth is the angle along the horizon, with zero degrees corresponding to North, and increasing in a clockwise fashion. Thus, 90 degrees is East, 180 degrees is South, and 270 degrees is West.

Taken from http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/AltAz.html

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
But,... not being an expert nor having any experience on the field, I'd tend to think that azimuth referenced to the plane's heading won't be of much importance, a rather usless info, seems to me.Maybe, but it may be useful to get a targets position in terms of aircraft heading. In the pictures sown, azimuth is displayed as (minus)139 degrees, that's an odd way to show it if it is referenced to North. Why not 221 degrees?

[wipeout]

We seem to be getting somewhat different results for the aircraft's position. :)

I used this map:

http://www.virtualmex.com/campeche_sct.jpg

Go straight down from the city of Campeche to just below the 18 30 latitude line and that's roughly what I got for position at the time 17:07:05.

That was 18 28.29 north, 90 34.98 west.

At that time, I get the plane's position as about 15 km south-east of Francisco Escarcega.

The camera is pointing north-west, at an area quite some way north-eastwards of Ciudad del Carmen itself, maybe 50 km from the city.

I actually made a mistake when I originally said it was Ciudad del Carmen itself the camera was pointing at, but it was a lucky mistake as that took me straight to the fact that the oil industry is based around the city. :D

If you just look at a map without details of what the oil industry have in the exact area the camera is looking at, you might never make the connection. It's perhaps the case that my rough estimate of camera direction has taken me to the truth when a precise calculation is unlikely to have.

I wonder if this is what happened to the official investigation.... ;)

I think the infrared sources are somewhere around the land on the east side of the huge lagoon ("Laguna de Terminos") that Greenpeace were muttering about the pollution in.

http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/mexico/rwprapr07.html

I believe it is something oil-industry related in this area that the camera is seeing:

http://www.maps-of-mexico.com/campeche-state-mexico/campeche-state-mexico-map-b2.shtml

Could be at sea or on land, but somewhere around that map...

[Patricio Elicer]

I worked out my calculations about the camera direction based on the definition of "azimuth" I found on this page:

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/AltAz.htmlAzimuth is the angle along the horizon, with zero degrees corresponding to North, and increasing in a clockwise fashion. Thus, 90 degrees is East, 180 degrees is South, and 270 degrees is West.

So, an angle of -134º would be measured counterclockwise starting from the north direction, and would be on the third quadrant. But of course I assumed the camera is set according to this standard definition of how azimuth is measured. As Mummymonkey said before, the angle on the screen may be referenced to the plane heading.

Hey, too many pieces of this puzzle to put together :)

[Hellbound]

If it is labelled Azimuth, as it seems to be, my assumption would be that it references north. Remember, this is not a combat plane, but a recon plane. Thus, the data it gathers is typically routed to ground units who analyse the information. The ground units would need the real azimuth, as referenced to north, to make sense of the data. Otherwise, they have to figure the actual map direction of the camera by playing around with the plane heading numbers. Much as I pointed out earlier the sense in having camera elevation independant of the aircraft, the same would hold true for azimuth, IMO.

This seems to fit with what I recall of U.S. military intel, also, although that is not my field and my memory is sketchy, so I won't vouch for my accuracy :)

[wipeout]

A rough estimate from the sunlight on the clouds, the nearness to the equator, the time of year and the time of day in the footage suggest that the sun is low in the western sky, and since the shadows on the clouds are on the right then the camera is pointing roughly in the northwest-north-northeast direction.

The way the longtitude and latitude change show that the plane is flying roughly east, so the 140 or so azimuth reading must refer to the nose of the plane.

[Hellbound]

Cool, good detective work :)

[wipeout]

Thanks. :D What the azimuth meant was something I wondered myself, so I checked it that way a few days ago.

[mummymonkey]

Azimuth can also mean lateral deviation. Usually expressed in terms of positive degrees (clockwise or right) and negative degrees (anticlockwise or left). In the past I've used a large metal jig with the angles etched on it for calibrating radar dishes elevation and azimuth.

[wipeout]

Ah, cool. :D

My own investigation of this footage has reached as far as it's going to go, as the map of the layout of a dozen oil chimneys in Mexico which would confirm the oil-flare theory is not something which is easy to find... ;)

[mummymonkey]

Check out the oil rig fires in the bay. I can see a row of five at least.

http://www.gesource.ac.uk/satellite/899.jpg

[wipeout]

Where are they?

[Patricio Elicer]

Perhaps?, though they are not in the "right" location and too far apart from each other.

http://www.boomspeed.com/pelicer/oil-flares.jpg

I would guess that the oil flares explanation is beginning to make sense, although there are yet some key aspects to solve: 1) the object's altitude that pilots repeatedly said it was 3,500 m; 2) the objects' proximity to the plane, that according to crew member Magdaleno Castañón, was as close as 2 miles at one point; 3) The objects' sudden "acceleration", reported change in speed from 60 knots to 300 knots in a matter of seconds.

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by wipeout
A rough estimate from the sunlight on the clouds, the nearness to the equator, the time of year and the time of day in the footage suggest that the sun is low in the western sky, and since the shadows on the clouds are on the right then the camera is pointing roughly in the northwest-north-northeast direction. Determining the direction of the sun rays judging by the light-shadow pattern in the clouds, may be a tricky thing. The shadows on the clouds seem to be on the right indeed, but it's hard to tell for sure. It's also possible that the sun is hitting the clouds in a more pronounced angle with respect to the plane trajectory.

We could get a definite answer should we know how the azimuth is measured in that particular plane.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
Perhaps?, though they are not in the "right" location and too far apart from each other. Those are sediment plumes that you've highlighted. I took the row of smoke colums out in the gulf to be the oil rigs.

http://www.ibrox.freeserve.co.uk/images/rigs.jpg

I'm not saying these are the actual heat sources; just that they show how rigs in the gulf are positioned. (In rows and close to each other). These just happen to be the rigs that were flaring the day the satellite photograph was taken.

Satellite images of mexico. (http://www.gesource.ac.uk/worldguide/html/958_satellite.html)

[Hand Bent Spoon]

Infrared cameras can and do pick up light reflections (infrared wavelength light, of course!) Some computer systems use reflected light to track eye movement.

I still think it's merely light reflections on glass. The above theories are very well thought out, but needlessly complex.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Hand Bent Spoon
Infrared cameras can and do pick up light reflections (infrared wavelength light, of course!)

Ergo, the objects generate energy above the wavelength of reflected sunlight. Furthermore, reflected sunligt fails to explain the radar readings (altitude/distance) connected with the objects.

Some computer systems use reflected light to track eye movement.

Besides the point.

The above theories are very well thought out, but needlessly complex.
Agreed.

However, I have recieved some answers from a technician of FLIR systems Inc. concerning diffrent aspects of the StarSAFIRE II camera. There are still a few more issues I would like to get cleared up with him, I expect to be able to give a full summary of the Q&A later today, or in the beginning of next week.

Maybe I should say, that the answers I have from him so far, falsifies the oilflare theory. This can however still change. The questions I have asked him now, will provide a definitive conclusion in this aspect.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
I would guess that the oil flares explanation is beginning to make sense, although there are yet some key aspects to solve: 1) the object's altitude that pilots repeatedly said it was 3,500 m; 2) the objects' proximity to the plane, that according to crew member Magdaleno Castañón, was as close as 2 miles at one point; 3) The objects' sudden "acceleration", reported change in speed from 60 knots to 300 knots in a matter of seconds.

From an aircrew interview transcript, I think it's important to make a distinction between the 14 objects, which are 11 objects seen on infrared and 3 other objects seen on radar.

http://www.rense.com/general53/mextt.htm

So, to answer your points...

1) the object's altitude that pilots repeatedly said it was 3,500 m

The 11 lights seen on infrared footage are never seen on radar, so their distance, speed and altitude must simply be a guess by the aircrew!

Lieutenant German Ramirez Marin, RADAR operator: The eleven targets were not detected on the RADAR screen. Initially, only one target was detected by the RADAR. Then another target appeared at one 'o clock, that's how we describe the position that is in the front but slightly to our right. And then a third one in back of the plane. Those were the only three targets that appeared in the RADAR screen during the incident. The other ones that were at nine 'o clock, on our left side never appeared on the RADAR.

Since the 11 sources on the footage don't have any known distance, speed, direction of movement or altitude as only radar could tell the aircrew that, then there are no problems with the 11 infrared sources being distant oil-flares at all. :D

The aircrew don't know where the 11 objects on the infrared footage are, it's all simply assumption by them.

2) the objects' proximity to the plane, that according to crew member Magdaleno Castañón, was as close as 2 miles at one point; 3) The objects' sudden "acceleration", reported change in speed from 60 knots to 300 knots in a matter of seconds.

Since these objects have known distances, speed and direction of movement according to the aircrew, they must be on radar and so must not be the 11 objects on the footage as they were not detected by radar.

These are 3 more objects, detected behind, in front and to the front-right.

(The 11 objects on infrared are to the behind-left.)

These 3 objects rapidly and constantly changed direction, speed and position in a fairly wild way.

And, as far as I know, these 3 radar objects were never seen by the infrared camera. I say this because I believe all the infrared sources in the footage never seem to jump around like the ones on the radar are said to have done.

So we have two kinds of objects, the 11 ones seen on infrared which don't seem to do very much, and the 3 ones seen on radar which jump around madly.

I think both groups of objects are completely unrelated.

I think the infrared camera simply picked up distant oil-flares (the 11 fairly static objects) and the radar was just going nuts on its own (the 3 erratic objects).

I think the aircrew made a connection between the radar readings and the infrared sources which there isn't any evidence of.

So, anyway, that's my theory. :D

[wipeout]

Patricio Elicer and mummymonkey,

Thanks for highlighting the satellite images. :)

My own thoughts from first looking at the pictures were that the brown patterns in the sea on the coastline were sediment from large rivers, and that the white clouds were just white clouds, which is why I asked what you were seeing.

It's not easy to interpret satellite data, so either or both of you might be right or not, I don't know.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
Determining the direction of the sun rays judging by the light-shadow pattern in the clouds, may be a tricky thing. The shadows on the clouds seem to be on the right indeed, but it's hard to tell for sure. It's also possible that the sun is hitting the clouds in a more pronounced angle with respect to the plane trajectory.

We could get a definite answer should we know how the azimuth is measured in that particular plane.

The are really only two interpretations of the azimuth reading I can think of, that zero azimuth is the direction of the plane or that it's the direction of north.

If it's north, then the camera is pointing south-west and I'd expect we'd see shadows to the back of all clouds given the time of day, and not to the right of the clouds as we do in the footage.

So I think it's direction of the plane that azimuth is talking about. :)

[Thomas]

Now, for a short summary of the answers I have been given by Andrew Griffin of FLIR Systems Inc.:


Thomas: How far can this camera pick up heat sources?

Griffin: The rule of thumb for the distance – is the larger the target the greater the range. It is not unusual to detect oil tankers in a maritime environment at ranges in excess of 50 km.


So, you can detect an oiltanker in the range of 50 km. However, the flare of oil/gas-platforms and facilities, is nowhere near the size of an oiltanker.

Now, remember this image:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/abovehorizon.jpg

Here the objects is above the horizon marker, so let's do a little math on that.

The distance to the horizon is aproximately: 230 km

The altitude of the airplane is aproximately: 3.5 km

This gives us these calculations:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/horizon.jpg

Ok, so if you look at these calculations, and asume that the objects was 50 km away, and the size of an oiltanker. The chimneys would either have to be more than 2.739 km tall, or airborne.

I have asked Andrew Griffin some further questions; I have asked him if the radar can pick up objects and transfer their coordinates to the FLIR monitor. However, his answer in this regard was rather hazy, but I belive he tried to say that the radar can send information to the FLIR equipment about the coordinates, but the only thing that will show up on the monitor is a white square to point at the coords. This is also plausible with some of the video clips we have seen. I have asked him to elaborate that part, and furthermore asked him if the azimuth is relative to North or the airplanes heading.

Wipeout, the chimneys have to be more than 2.7 km tall or airborne, and then there still is Patricio's questions to answer:


there are yet some key aspects to solve: 1) the object's altitude that pilots repeatedly said it was 3,500 m; 2) the objects' proximity to the plane, that according to crew member Magdaleno Castañón, was as close as 2 miles at one point; 3) The objects' sudden "acceleration", reported change in speed from 60 knots to 300 knots in a matter of seconds.


Which I also have questioned ealier in this thread.

[wipeout]

Thanks for taking the time to find out more information about FLIR, Thomas. :D

Originally posted by Thomas Now, for a short summary of the answers I have been given by Andrew Griffin of FLIR Systems Inc.

So, you can detect an oiltanker in the range of 50 km. However, the flare of oil/gas-platforms and facilities, is nowhere near the size of an oiltanker.

Now, remember this image:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/abovehorizon.jpg

Here the objects is above the horizon marker, so let's do a little math on that.

The distance to the horizon is aproximately: 230 km

The altitude of the airplane is aproximately: 3.5 km

This gives us these calculations:

http://www.pixcells.dk/pics/horizon.jpg

Ok, so if you look at these calculations, and asume that the objects was 50 km away, and the size of an oiltanker. The chimneys would either have to be more than 2.739 km tall, or airborne.

While oil-flares would obviously not be the size of an oil-tanker, they are much hotter. I think only the chimneys of an oil-tanker would give out most of the tanker's infrared, and are nowhere near as hot as oil-flares, so I feel this information is actually supportive of the oil-flare idea if it can spot a larger but much cooler objects like oil-tanker chimneys at 50 km.

As to the camera elevation problem, I'd add that the curvature of the Earth might also begin to have an effect as well, so the oil-chimneys may need to be even taller than 2.739 km to make sense if the camera elevation is precise and it is either relative to the aircraft and it is flying perfectly level or it is relative to the Earth.

However, if the camera elevation is relative to the aircraft, the aircraft may not necessarily be flying perfectly level, so this would still allow for the oil-chimney flare theory.

The oil-flare theory only runs into a real problem is the camera elevation is relative to the Earth and not to the aircraft and if it is a precise reading.

Then, I'd agree, the oil-flare theory would make no sense but it still works if the plane has a very slight tilt of maybe a couple of degrees and the oil-flares are very close to (or on) the horizon.

...and then there still is Patricio's questions to answer.

I already answered those. The aircrew say that the 11 infrared objects grouped together in the footage were never on radar, therefore we can conclude that the aircrew only guessed their distance, altitude, speed and movement.

The only UFO's in the sense of unidentified and definitely airborne were 3 wildly erratic and bizarre objects on radar but these were never filmed as far as I can tell.

The 11 objects on the infrared footage were never detected by radar and thus could well be oil-chimney flares.

It's the other 3 objects on radar which are the complete unknowns, possible just false readings but maybe not.

[Thomas]

Now I have done some further calculations, for this to be a oil platform:

The tallest oilrig in the world is 579m tall (quite impressive), so if we say the FLIR detected oilrigs of that magnitude, they would still have to be, aproximately 193 km away to be able to appear above the horizon.

37xTAN 0.871825 = 0.563043

230 - 37 = 193

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
The oil-flare theory only runs into a real problem is the camera elevation is relative to the Earth and not to the aircraft and if it is a precise reading.
It has nothing to do with the cameras elevation, the cross you see on the above image is the horizon marker, it has nothing to do with the elevation of the airplane or the camera, except that it is relative of course. But it will always be where the horizon is.

The calculations stand, either:

1) 193 km away and 579m tall (assuming the FLIR can detect heat at the distance of 193 km, which Griffin said it couldn't)

or,

2) Above 2.7km tall or airborne.

Let's say the first choice to keep the oilflare theory, how big do you think an oilflare is at the distance of 193km?

An secondly, Griffin said 50 km, not 193 km.

[wipeout]

The cross appears to be the center of camera-view marker as the 19 megabyte footage shows the cross pointed at clear ground features like rivers at the time 16:43 (at 18 seconds into the clip) and a forest, a forest clearing, a small town with roads and what may be cars and what even may be a runway at 17:16 (at 12 seconds into the clip).

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
The cross appears to be the center of camera-view marker as the 19 megabyte footage shows the cross pointed at clear ground features like rivers at the time 16:43 (at 18 seconds into the clip) and a forest, a forest clearing, a small town with roads and what may be cars and what even may be a runway at 17:16 (at 12 seconds into the clip).
The cross jumps around like crazy when they point at the ground, which is rather akward, it also seems to try and mark the objects on shift in the video clip.

But in the same video clip, they are actually looking at the objects slightly above the clouds. Meanwhile they, themselves, are slightly above the clouds:

Here (http://www.ufocasebook.com/mexico-03-05-04.mpg)

The objects certainly appear to be above horizon level in the beginning of this clip. Take a look.

[Thomas]

I find absolutely no reason to assume the objects are grounded, everybody involved says the opposite. Both the scientists and SEDENA.
All the information we have says that the objects are airborne. Especially the questions Patricio pointed at.

The video also suggests that the objects are airborne, the angle of the clouds in the beginning of the posted video talks 100% against that these objects should be grounded. They are looking straight over the clouds.

[Thomas]

Patricio,

Since you're the one that speaks Spanish here, could you write SEDENA (http://www.sedena.gob.mx/) and ask them how they can be sure those object were not grounded? I can't find heads and tails in that site, and I'm too lazy to translate the entire site to english or danish :)

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Thomas
It has nothing to do with the cameras elevation, the cross you see on the above image is the horizon marker, it has nothing to do with the elevation of the airplane or the camera, except that it is relative of course. But it will always be where the horizon is.
http://www.ibrox.freeserve.co.uk/images/horizon.jpg

[Thomas]

Originally posted by mummymonkey

http://www.ibrox.freeserve.co.uk/images/horizon.jpg
Atleast I know how to correct my errors:


The cross jumps around like crazy when they point at the ground, which is rather akward, it also seems to try and mark the objects on shift in the video clip.


Wizkid..

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Thomas
But in the same video clip, they are actually looking at the objects slightly above the clouds. Meanwhile they, themselves, are slightly above the clouds:

The objects certainly appear to be above horizon level in the beginning of this clip. Take a look.

It looks at first as if that's a blank sky, or even a blank ground or sea the objects have as a background in that footage. But it can't be as the camera elevation and the plane's direction of flight show that both the camera and the plane are fairly level.

So where's the horizon? It should go righty across the middle of the footage.

I believe the answer is that it's invisible.

The infrared cameras seem to be blind to features like the sky, the clouds and the ground if they are more than maybe, at a guess, 10 km.

You can see an example of this at 18 seconds in the 19 megabyte footage. The ground just disappears into blackness beyond what I'd guess are ground features maybe 10km distant.

Only really hot objects show up at long distance, like the oil-tanker at 50km that you mention.

I'd expect the tanker to appear as a bright spot on a blank background, and the sea to be invisible that far away.

I believe the horizon is at the same place or even slightly above for example, the "headlight" objects we see in the footage.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
So where's the horizon? It should go righty across the middle of the footage.
If they look straight ahead in that altitude, the horizon will be below the middle of the footage. How much below I'm not sure about.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Thomas
Patricio,

Since you're the one that speaks Spanish here, could you write SEDENA (http://www.sedena.gob.mx/) and ask them how they can be sure those object were not grounded? I can't find heads and tails in that site, and I'm too lazy to translate the entire site to english or danish :)

Ah... I'd prefer if Patricio didn't involve the Mexican government! :p

Okay, I'll tell you now that James Randi forwarded my theory to James Oberg...

http://www.jamesoberg.com/resumejournalism.html

Given the guy worked at NASA for 22 years and was involved in the space shuttle and the ISS, I think he'll have the contacts to find out more than we ever will.

He's a great guy for Mr. Randi to have involved, given his interest in investigating UFOs or the notorious and quite similar STS-48 footage that confused a lot of people:

http://www.jamesoberg.com/ufo.html

I'd like to wait and see what Mr. Oberg says first before e-mailing any governments.

If he says anything at all, that is... ;)

[Dragon3]

Well….If it had of happened in England or America we would probably all be told that it was from a car headlight that was moving up-hill and the light bounced off low-level clouds and on to a large cabbage patch 50 miles away which happened to have a large amount of dew on it, which then reflected the light upwards so the plane could see it!! ^_^

And I jest not…..believe me….they actually used that excuse once! LOL


Ta at for now
Mary

[wipeout]

LOL! @ Dragon3 :D

I think I'd rate alien-piloted flying saucers as more plausible than that theory! :D

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Thomas

If they look straight ahead in that altitude, the horizon will be below the middle of the footage. How much below I'm not sure about.

Me neither. This military infrared footage can mislead as has happened to me a couple of times already when looking at it. It takes some getting used to.

I originally thought that the whole background was the ground or the sea. I was wrong about that for sure. :D

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout
Ah... I'd prefer if Patricio didn't involve the Mexican government! :p
Heh, what do you think will happen? Are they gonna come for you because you're exposing a major conpiracy or a deliberate distorsion of the facts? Or do you think they will lie to us because they want this to be UFO's? :)

I don't see any problems with asking SEDENA for the raw facts, I don't understand your concern at all, the more facts we collect from the involved parties, the more will we be able to get a clear picture of this episode. It would be a good thing to hear their un-Maussan'ed version. And maybe even get the unedited version of the video.

The question for them is simple: How can you be sure those objects were not grounded?

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Dragon3
Well….If it had of happened in England or America we would probably all be told that it was from a car headlight that was moving up-hill and the light bounced off low-level clouds and on to a large cabbage patch 50 miles away which happened to have a large amount of dew on it, which then reflected the light upwards so the plane could see it!! ^_^

And I jest not…..believe me….they actually used that excuse once! LOL


Ta at for now
Mary
Hah, yea, the theories runs out of order concerning these damn UFO's.

I also try to keep this theory at a low level without too many modifications of the facts. Julio Herrera's theory of gas in disequlibrum which explain this specific phenomena meets no objections at all, simple and plain, yet explains everything. A rawmodel for good science.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout


Me neither. This military infrared footage can mislead as has happened to me a couple of times already when looking at it. It takes some getting used to.

I originally thought that the whole background was the ground or the sea. I was wrong about that for sure. :D
Well, I have experience of looking at clouds from high altitudes from commercial flights to Africa, and way too many hours of playing several flight sims. I have never had any reason to belive that these objects are grounded at all. I think they appear airborne judging by the cloud angles and their speed in relation to the clouds hold together with the altitude. But hey, never say never ;)

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Thomas
The cross jumps around like crazy when they point at the ground, which is rather akward, it also seems to try and mark the objects on shift in the video clip.
Sorry Thomas I don't understand what you mean here. Are we talking about the same cross?

[Thomas]

Originally posted by mummymonkey

Sorry Thomas I don't understand what you mean here. Are we talking about the same cross?
Yep, I made the classic flaw of using a too small sample size for the conclusion. Silly me.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Thomas
It would be a good thing to hear their un-Maussan'ed version. And maybe even get the unedited version of the video.

The question for them is simple: How can you be sure those objects were not grounded?

Exactly.

[mummymonkey]

Originally posted by Thomas
Yep, I made the classic flaw of using a too small sample size for the conclusion. Silly me.
Not at all. I must have viewed the whole video a dozen times before I noticed the elevation scale on the left was fixed.

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Thomas

Heh, what do you think will happen? Are they gonna come for you because you're exposing a major conpiracy or a deliberate distorsion of the facts? Or do you think they will lie to us because they want this to be UFO's? :)

I think I've explained my theory enough times already to not want to explain it anymore, particularly to governments. :p

I've gone as far as I'm going with this... :D

[Joe_Black]

I think the lights are more likely ET in origin.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by wipeout


I think I've explained my theory enough times already to not want to explain it anymore, particularly to governments. :p

I've gone as far as I'm going with this... :D
So when it comes down to gather the facts from the sources, you don't wanna play anymore?

I have just talked to the man with the cigarette from X-files, he said something about having you picked up as soon as possible! :)

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Joe_Black
I think the lights are more likely ET in origin.
Yep, I think so too, if you listen carefully to the audio in the video where the pilots are talking, you can actually hear a hoarse voice saying: 'E.T. phone home..'.

[Patricio Elicer]

Originally posted by Thomas
Patricio,

Since you're the one that speaks Spanish here, could you write SEDENA (http://www.sedena.gob.mx/) and ask them how they can be sure those object were not grounded? I can't find heads and tails in that site, and I'm too lazy to translate the entire site to english or danish :) yes, of course. Just give me some time to think of a comprehensive letter. I'll keep you posted :)

[Thomas]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
yes, of course. Just give me some time to think of a comprehensive letter. I'll keep you posted :)
Excellent :)

[JimTheBrit]

Originally posted by Joe_Black
I think the lights are more likely ET in origin. Your post is missing key parts ..... namely reasons and evidence.

[Explorer]

Wipeout said:

"Ball lightning exists all right. I know because I've seen it."

So you say, but that is just anecdotal!

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Explorer
Wipeout said:

"Ball lightning exists all right. I know because I've seen it."

So you say, but that is just anecdotal!

And if I tell anyone you said that, then you are anecdotal too! :p

I believe both you and ball-lightning exist, however. ;)

Actually, there was good thread about it some months back...

http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20202&highlight=lightning

What I saw matches that photo I found exactly.