- Last month I reported that I had acquired
a video copy of a mid-air UFO explosion over the Israeli city of Rosh Haayin.
I wrote that my impression was the video captured a profoundly important
moment: the first mid-air UFO collision ever recorded. I requested that
experts analyze the film scientifically. Within a day, Dwight Connelly
of MUFON committed himself to having the video analyzed. The video is a
compilation of two UFO events recorded by Spasso Maximovitch in 1995 and
1996. I sent Dwight both clips and he passed them on to MUFON's video expert
Jeff Sanio for computer analysis. The following is his report. I will not
comment on his conclusions. Jeff has no need of my analysis of his analysis.
Let's just sum matters up like this: It's The Real Thing. Added to Israel's
list of UFO firsts, is the first mid-air explosion between two unexplained
aerial craft ever captured on videotape or any other media. Several film
and TV producers asked me to release the clip for their programs but I
had to turn them down. I am prevented by a copyright problem from reproducing
the film, though I am permitted to display my copy. I am seeking a conference
to premiere this remarkable event. In the meantime, I will publish MUFON's
full report on http://members.tripod.com/~ufoisrael.
-
- TEXT OF THE MUFON REPORT:
-
- Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 23:39:44 -0800
- From: Jeff Sainio <jsainio@execpc.com
- Reply-To: jsainio@qgraph.com
- To: chamish@netvision.net.il
- Subject: my report
-
- I left out the stills from the video,
as you've already seen them.
- The paper copy has already been sent.
-
- Dwight Connelly
- 14026 Ridgelawn
- Martinsville IL
- 62442
-
- 1-16-99
- 217-382-4502,4014
- Videoanalysis
- 6/24/96
- Rosh Haayin, central Israel
- Spasso Maximovitch
-
-
- Events as reported to me from Barry Chamish
(chamish@netvision.net.il): `On 28/9/95, Spasso Maximovitch noticed an
unexplainable object in the skies over Rosh Haayin in central Israel. He
grabbed his video camera and captured a silvery, glowing object become,
two, three and then four fiery orbs, in a near square formation, over a
wide expanse of the northwestern sky. After this incident, Mr. Maximovitch
became a constant skywatcher. His dilgence was rewarded on 24/6/96 when
a similar silvery orb appeared in the lower western sky. He trained his
video camera on the orb... And then a glowing white oval-shaped object
appeared some 20 degrees west of the object and streaked toward it at high
speed. Within three seconds it struck the stationary orb, causing a huge
explosion in the sky which must have destroyed both objects. Stunned, Maximovitch
stopped filming immediately after capturing the explosion.`
-
- The submitted video, which was in PAL
format, was converted to NTSC format. It shows several events; a group
of lights, one apparently dropped from another (the dropping is seen in
the stills marked 28/9/1995 and 3:27:33); a stationary light which is apparently
struck by a moving light, and a triangle of lights. The group of lights
is interesting, but I could find no basis for investigating any form of
anomalousness. The triangle of lights has no reference objects to indicate
what or where it is.
-
- The stationary light was much more interesting.
Various lights, probably streetlights, in the video were used as reference
objects, and showed that the light was stationary over some 30 seconds.
An approaching airplane's landing lights will appear stationary, although
motionlessness over this length of time seems unusual.
-
- A vertical tower structure, apparently
made of girders, is near the light. Some horizontal structure is atop
the structure. It was not sufficiently defined for continuous measurements
to be made from it.
-
- Another bright object appears to the
left and slightly below the stationary object. In 2.9 seconds, it moves
toward the stationary object, apparently hitting and exploding. In 1/4
second, the explosion disappears with no trace of either object. The 5-frame
sequence to the right illustrates the sequence.
-
- The bright object can be seen to move
between the girders of the vertical structure. This is useful in determining
the relative size of the moving light. (The size of the light as seen
on the video, is misleading; it is presumably much smaller than what is
seen, due to extreme overexposure and glare.) The light disappears or
reappears completely 6 times; in 3, the change is abrupt; completely bright-to-dark
or vice versa. In the other 3, the change is gradual, with a frame showing
partial brightness. What can be learned from this? One must remember
that the video is a sequence of 1/50 second time exposures. Assume the
light is small, and that the moving object has only one light. If by chance,
the disappearance coincides with the period between exposures, an abrupt
disappearance will be seen. A large light, or several lights horizontally
separated, will never disappear abruptly while moving slowly. Since 6
occurrences form a useful population of samples, the moving light can reliably
be said to be quite small. This probably eliminates the flame from a missile
as a source.
-
- Although the vertical structure was not
a reliable reference object, the two lights' relative position could be
measured. Over 500 measurements of the two lights' position were made.
The graph at right shows the distance between the 2 lights. Breaks in
the data line are due to unreliable data from camera motion or the moving
light going behind the girders. Reference straight lines show constant
speed. The slopes of the lines show that the moving light spent about
a second at some speed, then sped up about 16% before the collision.
The 16% is not due to a zoom change; the tower is sufficiently visible
to verify that its size does not appreciably change. Although the graph
shows noise and missing data, the acceleration certainly occurred in under
a second. No reasonable object I know of is capable of a 16% acceleration
in a second.
-
- When the 2 objects apparently collide
and explode, the apparent size of the light expands by a factor of roughly
2.5; this does not appear to be due to overexposure, but is the real size
of the object. The last 2 frames of the video are NOT overexposed, but
diffuse; since overexposure is not involved, this indicates the actual
size of the explosion is shown. The real increase in size of the bright
area is certainly much larger than 2.5. In the video the explosion moves
downward; this is probably due to camera motion of the startled videographer;
the reference tower is too smeared to verify this conclusion.
-
- The explosion is not due to any conventional
method I am familiar with; conventional, large explosions require much
more than 1/4 second to disappear, and usually generate flaming debris
that falls from the explosion. Neither characteristic is seen here.
-
- The acceleration, light size, and explosion
are not explainable in any convention way that I know of, and this case
remains unidentified.
-
-
-
- Jeff Sainio
- MUFON Staff Photoanalyst
- 7206 W. Wabash
- Milwaukee WI 53223-2609
- jsainio@qgraph.com
|
