UFO sightings via photoshop

[CACTUSJACKmankin]

I was wondering how easy or difficult it would be to make a believable UFO pic via photoshop or some equivilent program, I don't have photoshop so I was wondering if anybody could provide their own examples, provide original images as well if possible.

[CACTUSJACKmankin]

I have made my own but this was made using the built in paint program and isn't really that good.

UFO sighting:
http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/7508446f694db3f26.bmp

original images:
http://www.zoence.co.uk/illustrations/landscape_temple2.jpg

http://www.classycookware.com/en-us/frying_pan.jpg

[Lynx2174]

I don't really feel like busting out PS elements right now, but belive me, you can do just about anything with that program with some skill and a little patience. just putting in a convincing UFO flying saucer thing would be laughably simple.

[treble_head]

someone PM me later on this evening to remind me, and I'll whip up a few UFO pics.

[gfunkusarelius]

i was actually thinking about doing a few of these for fun. i work in 3d animation, so it wouldnt be too hard to make something pretty sweet. did you see the sci-fi channel bumper that was actually mistaken for a real ufo sighting by people online? i dunno if it was released as a stunt (like P&T bigfoot video) but i saw some pages talking about its authenticity, pretty funny

[JMA]

did you see the sci-fi channel bumper that was actually mistaken for a real ufo sighting by people online? i dunno if it was released as a stunt (like P&T bigfoot video) but i saw some pages talking about its authenticity, pretty funny

I saw it in some ufo french website too. It's even more believable when people don't understand english, because they cannot read informations about it... They just see the movie somewhere and say "wow, that's hard proof for the ufo phenomena" and put that on there own website in french, whitout disclaimer...

Welcome into the internet era :p

[gfunkusarelius]

I saw it in some ufo french website too. It's even more believable when people don't understand english, because they cannot read informations about it... They just see the movie somewhere and say "wow, that's hard proof for the ufo phenomena" and put that on there own website in french, whitout disclaimer...

Welcome into the internet era :p

ha, think about how is was in the "old days" when someone sail to another land to trade and came back with stories...i wonder how legends were born and why they can seem sorta similar from one civilization to the next...

[Meffy]

http://www.freewebtown.com/meffy/stuffs/little_saucer.jpg

[edit] Kitten photo found online and altered to suit. "Saucer" is actually some kind of dish antenna that was lying on the ground upside down. Sorry about the font being hard to read, it's the fault of those darned aliens and their robotic accent.

[Desktop Icon]

Starting with the sample photo that CACTUSJACKmankin used and piling on the traits that seem to be essential for UFO pictures, here's what I came up with:
http://peterman.net/images/jref_ufo.jpg


BTW: The aforementioned essential traits:
- Blurry.
- Tilted.
- Finger in the way.
- Excessive compression to introduce gobs of digital artifacts.
- Prominent arrow to point out what you would otherwise miss.

[Odin]

Not a UFO but...
http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/4278446f93e7e4a05.jpg

The tentacles are from a photograph of an octopus, the spray is from a whale photograph, both found through google.

[EHocking]

Absolutely no in camera tricks or photoshopping with this one.

http://uk.geocities.com/ehocking@btinternet.com/jref/DSCF0107.jpg

[steve s]

It's really easy to fake stuff, especially with all the 3D software that's out there. I made the pic below a while back. It was a rough draft just to test an idea, so the planes are missing some parts. I took a photo of the sky and clouds. I modeled the B-17 using Rhino3D and scale drawings. Textures for the plane were done in Corel Photopaint. The plane and contrails were rendered separately in Bryce 3D. All layers were composited in Photopaint.

To make it look like the planes are behind the clouds, I duplicated the sky/cloud image, converted it to grayscale and increased the contrast. I used that as a mask. It's just a quick and dirty job of compositing. If you look close, the plane at left has some fringing near the wingtip. This needs to be redone at a higher resolution and then downsized to eliminate that.

To CactusJack: To make the frying pan blend into the pic better, decrease the opacity (increase the transparency) of the frying pan layer. This allows some of the background to show through and gives the appearance of haze in front of the UFO.

http://www.photochimps.com/gallery/data/604/B-17.jpg

Steve S

[Odin]

http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/4278446f9dc04c221.jpg

http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/4278446fa098ec9f5.jpg

Made from Ikea lights.

[tube]

A bit too small to be impressive, but if you can catch an airplane banking such that the wings are along the same line as the line of sight to the plane, they you can get decent "cigar shaped" UFO photos. I believe one airliner does not paint large sections of their planes, and if the sun is in the right position, you can get impressive "glints" off the plane. I had this happen to me while driving, and was impressed enough to start taking pictures.

Good "old school" misidentified UFO, no need for Photoshop.

[treble_head]

It's a little too clear to be believable, but the water effects look decent. http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/4421446fd9f09d291.jpg

[Starthinker]

It's really easy to fake stuff, especially with all the 3D software that's out there. I made the pic below a while back. It was a rough draft just to test an idea, so the planes are missing some parts. I took a photo of the sky and clouds. I modeled the B-17 using Rhino3D and scale drawings. Textures for the plane were done in Corel Photopaint. The plane and contrails were rendered separately in Bryce 3D. All layers were composited in Photopaint.

To make it look like the planes are behind the clouds, I duplicated the sky/cloud image, converted it to grayscale and increased the contrast. I used that as a mask. It's just a quick and dirty job of compositing. If you look close, the plane at left has some fringing near the wingtip. This needs to be redone at a higher resolution and then downsized to eliminate that.

To CactusJack: To make the frying pan blend into the pic better, decrease the opacity (increase the transparency) of the frying pan layer. This allows some of the background to show through and gives the appearance of haze in front of the UFO.

http://www.photochimps.com/gallery/data/604/B-17.jpg

Steve S

I don't know if it was intentional or not but were you aware that the two planes in the upper right, which appear to be further away, are in front of the conrails of the plane on the left which appears to be closer?

I still wish mine turned out as well! I prefer good old fashion trickery with mirrors and smoke. Oh, and orbs.

[The_Fire]

"Ufos invade Denmark"

Curtesy of a tablelamp, CS2 and the view from my window......

[LW]

I made the pic below a while back. It was a rough draft just to test an idea, so the planes are missing some parts. I took a photo of the sky and clouds.

The respective sizes of clouds and planes gives it away immediately. The clouds look like low altitude clouds that are seen from ground at distance of several km or so (and that is what they are), but the planes look like they are only a couple of hundreds meters away, at most.

The idea is neat. Perhaps you could take your camera with you the next time when you take a plane trip and take a photo out of the window just after the plane exits the clouds during the takeoff or immediately before entering them during landing.

[Odin]

http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/42784470916bdfae8.jpg

[Correa Neto]

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d150/AVCN/myUFOsmall.jpg

An UFOrb. Surely it was going to perform some cattle mutilation.

No photoshop, no lens flare, no electronic flash. Cannon Rebel XT camera, Location Cacapava do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil.

edited to resize image

[kedo1981]

8mins
Carrara 3
Paintshop pro 7
A downloaded Jupiter 2 3d model

[Azrael 5]

Ehocking where is the UFO in your pic? Is it that sunburst on the hill..?

[Odin]

http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/42784470f4d20c720.jpg

The invasion has begun.

[Meffy]

Okay, this one's pretty silly too, but not as silly as the kitten pic. An online friend posted a photo of dawn or dusk on a snowy day in Germany. I couldn't identify an object on the hill ridge, so naturally I assumed it was an walking alien invasion robot, then added a couple more closer to the camera, plus a vast, mysterious mothership. Okay, maybe half-vast would be closer to the truth.

http://www.freewebtown.com/meffy/stuffs/snow1a_sm.jpg

Explosions cribbed from Google image search, alien walkers and mothership drawn using simple shapes and effects in Photoshop CS.

[edit] Oh, yes -- that little alien walker is actually a wind turbine.

[Raphael]

Ehocking where is the UFO in your pic? Is it that sunburst on the hill..?

I think it's the bird that looks remarkably like the Loch Ness Monster.

[ImOne]

Clear evidence of cow abductions:

Enjoy :yikes: (http://www.cowabduction.com/)

[treble_head]

A more serious attempt than the last one. On the last one I was mostly looking to see If I coud recreate water reflections by hand without copying and pasting the other reflections (see above).

I rather like this one only because it imitates the crappy quality you get from the most "compelling" UFO photos. I took a picture of some clouds from a land developer in Arizona
http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/442144713cb329c31.jpg

zoomed in on the portion of the sky I wanted, added the UFO and interlaced it (my own secret recipe) to make it look like video. Then added some monocrhomatic noise, adjusted the colors and levels to look like amateur video. A bit of colorized noise, some VHS tracking "errors" (again, my own techique) and then added a zoomed in photo, (like the believers do, not sure why, but they tend to like that) and re-added the date/time sig from the bottom of the original pic. Then I resized it a few times so even an expert couldn't discern jpg artifacts from what the original had, and voila!
http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/442144713cb2d6a13.jpg

[arthwollipot]

Nice!

[The_Fire]

I can't help but wonder how long it will take untill one of these little excersises in deceit turns up at a woo-site as "evidence".......

[arthwollipot]

Depends on how many we send them...

[treble_head]

Nice!

thank you. Do you think it's good enough to send to a woo site? I was thinking that while I was making it, but the public is the best critic... Should I try to pass this off as a UFO sighting?

[arthwollipot]

I would. But that's the kind of guy I am.

[The_Fire]

Try it. You could always just ask: "What do you think of this?". That way you won't lie and can have a blast while they praise it......

[JMA]

Well, is it really ethical?

I mean, we know some of them will believe it. So what's the point? :p

[rjh01]

We do not say any of these ARE UFO photos. But if they post them as UFO photos it does show the site's lack of standards.

We can then expose the photos later as fakes by showing the originals.

I strongly believe that everything must be tested and questioned. This is not unethical. When is unethical is to allow something to be excepted as fact WITHOUT question.

[Operaider]

Well, is it really ethical?

I mean, we know some of them will believe it. So what's the point? :pIts ethical in the same way that it was ethical when Randi gave a class room full of people the same "personalized" horoscope prediction, and then asked then if it was an acurate description of them.

He tricked them into thinking there was something to horoscopes, only to show them how easily they can be tricked.

Maybe the UFOligists, or whatever they like to be called, will see that they need to be a little more skeptical about their pictures once they find out how easy they are to fake

[JMA]

This photo was put on a french ufo forum:

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/8161/ovni3uq9rw.th.jpg (http://img151.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ovni3uq9rw.jpg)

Some people on the forum believed it to be a genuine ufo picture. They were discussions about the red orb beneath the ufo!!! Someone even said it was "correlated" to foofighters. I found the real explanation without too much difficulties (well, right away, just have to look at the picture in order to see what it is really :p) and then the guy who posted it confessed it to be a fake.

No photoshop, just a cellphone camera :p

Well, if ufo-believers (those in the New Age kind of stuff anyway, not all of the ufo-believers) "buys" that kind of photo to be genuine, I think they will believe any photo to be genuine...

[rjh01]

Just to be sure that you have a decent photo test it out on a few people, like maybe James Randi??? If they cannot show it is an obvious fake then use that photo.

If the photo fools no-one then it is a waste of time.

[Raphael]

Treble_Head- the interlacing seems to distort the red circle- doesn't that create problems? It will have to be presented as TV news footage with the enlargement already included.

[Alphaba]

http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/thum_48294471a8e4665b6.jpg

[EHocking]

Ehocking where is the UFO in your pic? Is it that sunburst on the hill..?Damn - Nessie is blocking the view. Otherwise. . . . .

[CACTUSJACKmankin]

Isn't it the great skeptical dream to pull of the ultimate hoax and have the believers follow you only to debunk them later?
There are two ways to go about this depending on your motives, Make a really bad fake or make a really good fake.
The purpose of a bad fake is to show how low quality the evidence needs to be to convince believers thus showing how silly they are. This was penn and teller's method in their recent cryptozoology episode.
The purpose of a good fake is to show how easy it actually is to pull off something that looks impossible to fake. I gotta give it up to crop circle makers on this one, they make some impressive stuff

The thing that is crutial is if you are going to do this you have to have evidence of fakery otherwise nobody will buy the reveal. So you have to be able to show each, or at least most of the, step(s) in the process of how you made the photo.

[fabian_lidman]

Sometimes, simple is better. Watch these mysterious lights spotted above the Göteborg harbour last winter. There's even reflection in the water...
2068

[feyd rautha]

@CACTUSJACKmankin

and then you jerk off about it, you sad git? sadly for you i am sure you do not have the skill to hoax anybody. as goes for the rest of you, your attempts are laughable get some skills and come again in a year or two.


it is late but in the near future i will post some vids(sts-80 formation anyone???) and pics and i want the oh´so clever experts on this board to explain them to me. i am aware that 99% of ufosightings are hoaxed or explainable in a way, but i have a nice collection of stuff that until now nobody could explain or debunk. and i am a skeptic, to believe is obsolete for me, but i really want to know!

dead to all hoaxers.

feyd rautha out.

[Azrael 5]

I got one helluva orb on photo a few days ago,nothing to do with torrential rain and light relecting though.I may upload it. ;)

[Azrael 5]

Here we go.Its not a UFO,but I hope its "paranormal" enough for this thread..

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/Paparazzi/cdeea83c.jpg

[CACTUSJACKmankin]

@CACTUSJACKmankin

and then you jerk off about it, you sad git? sadly for you i am sure you do not have the skill to hoax anybody. as goes for the rest of you, your attempts are laughable get some skills and come again in a year or two.

Come on, grow up, personal attacks are unnecessary. If you are going to join a discussion, let's act like adults.


it is late but in the near future i will post some vids(sts-80 formation anyone???) and pics and i want the oh´so clever experts on this board to explain them to me. i am aware that 99% of ufosightings are hoaxed or explainable in a way, but i have a nice collection of stuff that until now nobody could explain or debunk. and i am a skeptic, to believe is obsolete for me, but i really want to know!

If you believe this UFO stuff, I doubt you are all that much of a skeptic. There is absolutely nothing conclusive that comes out of these sightings. Blurry photos don't do it. There has to be something much more concrete. UFO sightings are no better than those of the loch ness monster or big foot or El Chupacabra. BTW, I forget is animal mutilation the result of the chupacabra or aliens? oh yeah that's right the chupacabra is an alien.


dead to all hoaxers.

feyd rautha out.

dead to all hoaxers? don't you mean death to all hoaxers? That's going a little far isn't it? You may disagree with hoaxers but they don't deserve death. Hoaxing for the sake of debunking is a good thing, it's educational. James Randi went to Australia some years ago, essentially pulled a guy off the street and taught him how to be a channeller. He gave the guy the name the Great Carlos, and let him loose and the Austrailian media ate it up without any skepticism. After a while he dropped the bomb. He totally pulled the wool over their eyes and showed how poor a job the Austrailian media did in regards to the supernatural.
See hoaxing for debunking purposes is a good thing.

[Raphael]

Here we go.Its not a UFO,but I hope its "paranormal" enough for this thread..

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/Paparazzi/cdeea83c.jpg


I want to hang out with you.

[treble_head]

Here we go.Its not a UFO,but I hope its "paranormal" enough for this thread..

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/Paparazzi/cdeea83c.jpg definately supernatural. No way are those real. :p

[falzer]

Here we go.Its not a UFO,but I hope its "paranormal" enough for this thread..


Orbs!!

[Meffy]

as goes for the rest of you, your attempts are laughable get some skills and come again in a year or two.
Funny, for years that's what I've been saying to the people with faked UFO photos they claim to be real. Know what? They've not got much better. *tsk*

Oh, and in case you mistook my kitten picture for a real flying saucer: (Pssst... I faked it! it was supposed to be a joke.)

[Azrael 5]

Orbs!!

Exactly,but whats that thing over the frame! :p

[Meffy]

it is late but in the near future i will post some vids(sts-80 formation anyone???)
Googled sts-80 ufo debunk -- clicked first link, in which Oberg (ahem) explains and debunks the supposed sighting -- done. Is that what you call "stuff that until now nobody could explain or debunk"? Ohhhh... kay.

[edit] P.S.: Meesa cannot resist... not a UFO but an alien...

http://www.freewebtown.com/meffy/stuffs/charo_charo_binks.jpg

[Starthinker]

Isn't it the great skeptical dream to pull of the ultimate hoax and have the believers follow you only to debunk them later?

This is something I've toyed with for years. Got some good ones in the mix, stay tuned. One of the main reasons I joined this site was to see how skeptics respond to hoaxes so I can limit my mistakes and avoid the pitfalls of past hoaxes.

and then you jerk off about it, you sad git? sadly for you i am sure you do not have the skill to hoax anybody. as goes for the rest of you, your attempts are laughable get some skills and come again in a year or two.


it is late but in the near future i will post some vids(sts-80 formation anyone???) and pics and i want the oh´so clever experts on this board to explain them to me. i am aware that 99% of ufosightings are hoaxed or explainable in a way, but i have a nice collection of stuff that until now nobody could explain or debunk. and i am a skeptic, to believe is obsolete for me, but i really want to know!

dead to all hoaxers.

feyd rautha out.

Are you saying you have a video that is so good it can't be debunked? Or that you debunked an undebunkable video because you're so good? Not clear there.

In either case that attitude will get you nowhere. You can have the best case in the world but if you come across as a jerk no one will listen to you.

Oh, and yes, I hoax for no other reason than it's fun. Not that I do, uh, what you suggested, but there is a satisfaction in just pulling one off. Pulling off a good hoax, that is.

[Correa Neto]

That, ladies and gentlemen, was a standard woo rant. Unsupported and already debunked claims included.

I think we all remember the thread on the "best UFO pictures" as well as a very similar rant when a poster (bagtaggar) showed some very nice hoaxed pics.

[feyd rautha]

I m not a woo!

it is possible that we are beeing visited by beeings from other starsystems, even if it is not possible to break the barrier of speed of light.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7927561230860630740&q=ufo

you tell me these are icecrystals or spacedebris? The second part of the ufos being attracted to thunderstorms is bull, but the first part of the video is pretty interesting, at least. I do not say it is evidence and i stated before that to "believe" in something is nothing that fits in my mindset, but interesting it is.

[rjh01]

Only bothered to watch the first part. Only saw tiny dots which could be several things
1. Light in the lens
2. Small objects.

In short the video is worthless.

[treble_head]

I thought they looked like water vapor. meh.

[feyd rautha]

what i am reffering to are the 8 dots moving into a circular formation and the central dot lighttening up as last one, so how big is the chance that icecrystal or debris behaves in that way?

by the way the movie has audio(guy trying to explain what happens) so turn up speakers!

here is a link to a better quality pic:

http://deny.ignorance.perso.cegetel.net/images/sts80formation.jpg

i have a better and bigger(29mb)version of the video if someone is interested i can upload it.

[treble_head]

what i am reffering to are the 8 dots moving into a circular formation and the central dot lighttening up as last one, so how big is the chance that icecrystal or debris behaves in that way?

by the way the movie has audio(guy trying to explain what happens) so turn up speakers!

here is a link to a better quality pic:

http://deny.ignorance.perso.cegetel.net/images/sts80formation.jpg

i have a better and bigger(29mb)version of the video if someone is interested i can upload it.

awesome a better pic of an indetermined phenomena. any explanation for what you think it is?

[The_Fire]

Lens distortions.
Dust.
A camera trying to focus on infinity makes it "pump/pulse" and "move" as it tries focuses on something in it's near vicinity. That's why I HATE the autofocus function (Hint to NASA: Give your astronauts a 101 course in camerawork so they can avoid it). The "lights" tends to move in tandem with the direction of the sun which means lens flares caused by the errors which are inevitable in even the best lenses.
These only occurs as a visible phenomenon when light is reflected in specific ways in the lens, which explains the sudden appearances and disapperances of the "ufos".
The sun's steep angle (It's to the left and at an approximate 45 degree angle on the lenz, as far as I am capable of determining without knowing the exact position of the shuttle in space at the time) causes this phenomenon as it sends lights bouncing of the surface of the multiple layers of glass lenses which makes up a camera optic (which, BTW, is the correct term for the optical input part of a camera). This causes the flares even in a perfect optic, but it also magnifies already existing refraction errors. No lens is perfect.

Dust also tends to reflect strong sunshine as does icecrystals on the outside of the windows (there is a fascinating "Orb" experiment with flour elsewhere on this forum). This also depends on the angle in which the light (here the sun), and in this situation also the camera, is placed. Dust isn't matted in most cases. Dustparticles can contain anything from flour to quartz. And quarts isn't exactly low on reflection.
And despite NASA's best attempts, not even the spaceshuttle is dust-free.

The "Thunderstorm" harvesters are also either solarflares (the "hovering" UFO are actually two almost overlapping), meteors, balled lightning (allthough that is a guess on my part) or, you guessed it: Dust.

ETA:
http://www.clavius.org/lensflare.html
http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/optics/lensdefects.php

[The_Fire]

what i am reffering to are the 8 dots moving into a circular formation and the central dot lighttening up as last one, so how big is the chance that icecrystal or debris behaves in that way?

by the way the movie has audio(guy trying to explain what happens) so turn up speakers!

here is a link to a better quality pic:

http://deny.ignorance.perso.cegetel.net/images/sts80formation.jpg

i have a better and bigger(29mb)version of the video if someone is interested i can upload it.

That is a classic lensdistortion.

[feyd rautha]

So if this is "classic" can you or anybody guide me to a picture where a similar effect is observable? i know those laughable orbpics(dust,waterdrops, snowflakes) and i ve seen one or two lensflares i my life.

does not have to be in space, and needs not to be the same formation and number of dots, just something to make me know(you already know i do not care about believe) that you are right.

but do not try to photoshop-hoax me! :-)


after this (sts-80) is done i will start my own thread, with in my opinion unexplained aerial phänomenas.

but i am in no way sorry to have highjacked this one because it is an offence to anybody with an scientific interest to promote hoaxing(hiding behind the naive question if it is easy or not, ofcourse it is easy if you got the right skills, as is anything). as if there were not enough already.

[The_Fire]

Here are a couple of examples on the phenomenon. The two first are dust. The second one, the one in thecar, is a real lens flare. You may want to adjust your monitor contrast as they are somewhat hard to see at the multicolor background.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y164/zia99/IMG_2686.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y164/zia99/IMG_2701.jpg
http://static.flickr.com/37/84419160_c1890e6c1a.jpg?v=0

Here are a webpage dedicated to the not-so-unusual phenomenon lens flare:

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=34974

A woo-page, where I don't really agree with the....ahem...conclusions of planet X, but which have several good samples of weird lens flares.
http://www.zetatalk.com/teams/tteam34s.htm

[feyd rautha]

ok here is a the better version of the film(28MB) i hope you people have a sufficient connection:

http://deny.ignorance.perso.cegetel.net/videos/sts80formation.zip

can you explain to me why the objects look like little rings(black center) at first and then light up fully?

the first "orb" at 00:04 is clearly a lensflare, i agree.

at 00:21 things start to get a bit more interesting: 2 of the little buggers that later become part of the "formation" apear at this time and one third one clearly moving from right to left in the distance later getting out of view, could that be a satelite?

at 01:11 on the lower right side an blinking object apears, another satelitte maybe?

at 01:16 another lensflarelike object moves in descending slowly into the center of the "formation" and having reached its final position, lighting up all of a sudden, why does it do that?

spaceghosts? an array of antennas calling home to send an invasionfleet? a secret nasaexperiment trying to open up a wormhole? god? a glitch in the matrix? or really only dust and lensflares? i wanna know!

[Meffy]

can you explain to me why the objects look like little rings(black center) at first and then light up fully?
Ever heard of, or performed, a Foucault test of optics? Therein lies your answer, I think.

[edit]
an array of antennas calling home to send an invasionfleet?

WHO TOLD YOU THAT???? You were NOT authorized to hear that!

[Shrinker]

I did this one about 10 years ago. It never caught on though... :)

http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/361744778dffbeacd.jpg

[Stellafane]

...can you explain to me why the objects look like little rings(black center) at first and then light up fully?

Wait! Wait! I think I know this!! After two months of basically playing the village idiot in this forum, this may be a question I actually know a little something about!

The ring effects are artifacts of a catadioptric telephoto system, one that uses both mirrors and lenses. The most common forms of these are Cassegrainian or Maksutov systems (I'm guessing the latter in this case). Basically, these consist of a large front lens, a large primary mirror, and a smaller secondary mirror usually attached to the front lens. When a telephoto system of this type is out of focus, objects appear as rings, because the secondary mirror (which obstructs the central part of the light path) appears as a black area in the center. This can also happen when stray light enters the system off axis, or is produced by internal reflections, as sometimes happens when a bright light source is just outside the viewing area. (You also get the same effect in a simple Newtonian reflector telescope, but I doubt they would take one into space because they're way too cumbersome.)

The Foucault test (which I've performed many times, as recently as last night) produces a somewhat similar, but different effect. However, it requires very specific conditions (pinhead light source at the primary mirror's center of curvature, a knife edge cutting the focal plane) that I don't think this is what's happening here.

Don't know what the other lights are, the ones that look like twinkling stars. Since they're not moving, nor to they change orientation or formation, I'm guessing they were produced within the optical system that shot this video (or at a minimum, they were moving along with it).

Cool soundtrack though.

[Meffy]

The catadioptric system could well be it. I'll spare the world's bandwidth the indignity of serving the video up to me.

[edit] Got a Celestron and a little Meade, so I've seen that dark center. Sounds eminently plausible.

[Stellafane]

The catadioptric system could well be it. I'll spare the world's bandwidth the indignity of serving the video up to me.

[edit] Got a Celestron and a little Meade, so I've seen that dark center. Sounds eminently plausible.

I own a Meade ETX, I see this effect all the time.

[Meffy]

*nod* It's so easy to explain a lot of the stuff the True Believers tout as "inexplicable." All it takes is a lack of naivete and the intellectual guts to explore a little without wearing blinkers. I'm not terribly smart and not nearly as rigorous a thinker as I'd like to be, but even so I can manage to struggle to the truth in a lot of cases. With help from friends who know their stuff it's easier still.