GA

Three U.F.O.s Over Georgia

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Our friend J.H. lives with her husband and children in north-central Georgia, USA. She is a professional livestock breeder, and a good amateur photographer.

On the evening of Monday 18 July 2005, our friend was out in her yard taking photos of some clouds being painted pink by the Sun, which had set sometime before. We don't have an exact time for the photo, but we can extrapolate some. Judging from what we can see in the picture, it appears to be sereral minutes since the Sun dipped below the horizon, since the only colors in the clouds are pink, and varying shades of grey. JH tells us that the Sun actually set that day just around 8:15, and full darkness descends by 9:00. Thus, we can peg the time as, most likely, between 8:30 and 8:45 PM EDT.

There had been isolated thunder storms in the area, and indeed, there is a thunderhead in the photo. What caught JH's attention was the three "lights" in the photograph which she didn't see with her eyes at the time. These lights didn't make sense to our friend, and she characterized them as "holes" in the picture. In addition, there is a "cigar" shaped light in the frame too, and she asked if it might be a camera glitch, "that didn't fill in". We will take a closer look at these possibilities. Let's move forward and do so, shall we?

Courtesy J.H. of Georgia

This is the photo as sent to me originally. It was received as an e-mail attachment on the morning of 20 July 2005. Notice the huge thunderhead in the distance? The Sun has recently set to the left. We are looking to the Northwest. There are three enigmatic lights left, above, and right in the immediate vicinity of the cloud.

Courtesy J.H. of Georgia

Here we have a 250% enlargement of the original picture. The area of the three lights has been cropped from the rest of the photo. We can see a very bright light to the left, a dimmer one above, and what looks like a "cigar" shape to the right. Now the bright "orb" to the left looks like it is shining THROUGH the haze of the cloud, since it has a pinkish caste to it. There is a smaller light above the cloud as well. Finally, we can see that there is bright dash, or cigar shape, to the right. This seems to be suspended in FRONT of the cloud.

Courtesy J.H. of Georgia

The three lights are circled in yellow for you now. The possibility that the two rounded lights above and left could be planets was considered, and discarded. This is because the camera was facing northwest, and there are no planets in that direction on the date in question. Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter are prominent in the west-southwest, and south-west, respectively. But they are NOT in the northwest.

Could these be aircraft, or balloons, reflecting the Sun from shiny surfaces? Not likely, as we can see that the Sun is below the horizon, so there is no source of light for reflection.

Are they lights attached to aircraft? If we think about this possibility critically, this too seems quite unlikely. Running lights are not very bright, and would not be so attention grabbing. JH would surely have noticed aircraft lights moving across the sky as well. The landing lights on airplanes can be very bright if seen head on, such as when the plane is coming in to a landing field, or just taking off. But there is no airport in this area, and planes don't use landing lights at any other time.

( Heavens Above )

A sky chart for the date and time shows the positions of the planets at the time of the photo. These would have been very far to the left of JH's field of view. So we can safely rule them out as a factor in causing the unusual lights in JH's photograph.

Courtesy J.H. of Georgia

We have established that the two orblike lights are not planets. The sky at this point is too bright to consider stars as the culprits. In addition, there are no bright stars in the northwestern part of the sky in July. Refer to the sky chart above to confirm this. It appears almost certain that the objects are not aircraft or balloons, but unknowns. Therefore, we can't really take the analysis of the "orbs" any further at this point. So, we will now concentrate on the "cigar" shape to the right. JH asked if this might be a camera glitch, or digital artifact. Let's look at that idea next.

We have here a still frame taken from a VHS tape, of a recorded night pass of STS-110 over California at night, on 13 April 2002. The source of this recording is NASA Select TV, and is from the viewpoint of the Space Shuttle itself. Landmarks on the surface of Earth are labeled. A camera glitch caused by a malfunction in one of the payload bay cameras aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis is circled. This glitch was persistent throughout the flight. Notice that it is a regularly shaped rectangle. So it provides us with a known digital artifact with which to compare the "cigar" shape from JH's photo of 18 July 2005.

This frame is an 1100% blow-up ( using Imaging Preview™ ) of the previously mentioned camera glitch. Notice that the light which makes it up is distributed evenly throughout. The individual pixels are bright in the center, and dim at an even rate toward the edge.

Same frame with the colors reversed to aid in sorting out its structure.

Courtesy J.H. of Georgia

This is now a 1250% blow-up ( using Imaging Preview™ ) of the "cigar" shaped object in JHs photo. Note that the light distribution is not even like in the known digital artifact. In fact, it's "all over the place". This indicates that the object is probably not a camera glitch, or digital artifact, since those are uniform in structure. Some pixels are bright, others less so. This is indicative of a luminous solid object at distance from the camera.

Courtesy J.H. of Georgia

Same frame with colors reversed to enhance the pixel structures.

Courtesy J.H. of Georgia

In this case, we have enlarged 1000% ( using Microsoft Paint™ ) the image to just before pixilation. Now we can see that the edges are somewhat rounded, rather than having sharp corners like a digital arifact does.

Courtesy J.H. of Georgia

Finally, here is a 1200% blow-up ( using Microsoft Paint™ ) in reverse color with two exactly parallel lines added for reference. As can be seen, the object is slightly tilted toward the lower left. This is definately NOT a characteristic of a digital arifact. Were this one of those, it would be perfectly aligned with the added parallel lines. Since it is not, we can safely conclude that this is NOT a camera glitch, but a brightly illuminated anomaly suspended in front of the clouds that evening in Georgia.

We'd like to thank JH once again for sharing this interesting photograph with the rest of us.

At the end of the day, it's up to YOU to draw your own conclusions.