 To the naked eye, Tommy Woodard's
digital photograph appears to be nothing more than a pretty picture of
trees in Provo Canyon.
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- But zoom in, he says, and the purple glow of a saucer
hovering at an angle above the tree line starts to take shape.
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- Woodard, 22, a photo librarian with the Utah Film Commission,
took the photo that he believes represents an unidentified flying object.
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- He was in the canyon Tuesday shooting still pictures
for a possible film location, and began taking pictures for himself on
his way out.
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- At the time, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary
in his photograph. But later, after noticing a black speck in the frame,
he zoomed in and "the closer I got, the more impressed I got by it,"
he said Thursday.
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- "I was kind of skeptical but it's pretty obvious
when you zoom in," said the self-described "sci-fi" fan,
whose friends and colleagues are similarly impressed.
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- Woodard said he's a "believer" because the
recent photograph is not his first encounter with mysterious flying objects.
Once, playing baseball at the age of 10, he saw three blurry gray spheres
rotating in the sky. Within a moment, they were gone.
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- Woodard contacted officials at Hill Air Force Base to
ask if any planes were flying in the canyon area Tuesday but hasn't heard
back yet. "They kind of laughed, you know," he said.
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- Hill Air Force Base spokeswoman Lt. Caroline Wellman
told The Associated Press on Thursday she is awaiting response from the
388th Fighter Wing whether any of their F-16 jets were above Provo Canyon
Tuesday.
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- Another skeptical reaction to the digital photograph
came from a representative of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle
-- he said thought the sphere looked like a bird.
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- God is making some pretty peculiar birds nowdays!
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- "A bird?" asked Woodard in disbelief. "Come
on -- I don't know how he could think it's a bird!"
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- Woodard discounted the theory that the image could be
nothing more than a speck of dust on his film. Of the hundred photos he
shot Tuesday, none contained a similar mark, he said.
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- The Provo Canyon photograph is not the first reported
UFO sighting this year to immediately get debunkers.
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- In March, the Mexican air force captured images of bright
blurs in the sky using infrared equipment. The videotape aired on television
for the first time last week, with one scientist saying the objects could
have been caused by gases in the atmosphere.
http://www.4utah.com/local_news/local_headlines/story.aspx?content
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