The New Zealand Film Analysis Part II. International UFO Reporter, v. 4, n. 2.

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——— N, | COMPLETE DETAILS ON THAT MICHIGAN “AUG. AZ MES. 4 NO.2 A MONTHLY REVIEW OF THE UFO PHENOMENON REPORTS. INVESTIGATIONS & ANALYSES ere 15 NO hope v! advance in scrence without a paradox "—N THE NEW ZEALAND FILM ANALYSIS — Partll RECENT GOVERNMENT OVERTURES TOWARD UFO INVESTIGATION HYNEK IN JAPAN AND THE HONDURAS FIVE UFOS SELECTED FROM 93 U.S. CASES: June 15-July 14 COAST GUARD CASE E Editor-in-Chief: J Atlen Hynek Managing Editor: Allan Hendry INTERNA HIONAL UFO REPORTER USPS 424890 1609 Sherman Ave. Suite 207, Evanston, Inc. ab nights reserved. No part of this 1 electronic process or otharwise lisher. All notices of change and new addresses. J. Allen ra! UFO Reporter. Inc nternational UFO Reporte chan:cal, photographic out wntien permission from the p * advance and accompanied by oo othty by Internat ist be sent sx wes Mynek Charman of the Board Setond class postage paid at Evanston Post Oftice. Peace Ta =) AU] RAR PEC Hynek Cd Coe TR Uia Co CR UT AR ER och va whimsy in an editorial, and this:iS'an ELA Suppose you were given the job of selling an idea—not a product, but an idea, an idea quite foreign to * popular thinking, and onewhich runs against common sense, agalrist seis entílio and: military! opinion; and against the learned. opinions of the intelligentsia: You must sell this idea mot tó just a selected group but to the ENTAO PLA po Le SS EL a E United States: Lo IR aj ASR RE ea ei a EURO Espeto ado Mae Danda “pensive Madison Avenue advertising PE Et te RE TT) Folia A RE e o Te RR La DA o SE To RE a Bountry, This would be actompanid e E RE o Tags RR RD To e NT LE LL Re Tua TR UR Tolo SEIO sl olá PRE and you might ERRA RR EC Roi RR j [ALA much as in a political icam- Roo) ETA alo Ret MU pe LoL fe GAS AM Tel ( E RO ORA Tr OR [ER CUL) o AL Rio LARA o ot ton, would be, Vou:ll agree, ebatlioa acoomplishment, and a: very: exe à CLONE Rd ER Ro lo: Tool Tie without the Spending of one cent.. Fand against a barrage of ridicule, E active opposition from science; the à military, and the press! Of course; it DOk some thirty years to do it: RAR Cr ado LR TO TI SS SETE indicated that 57% of the American popuiation feels that UFOS are “for O a ARE CLS AS SETE SE To o RA ER Dto Tue TERRE To PUTA To Ee "was forelgn to; our thinking. iand would" have. been: regarded as: pre- o Ge CA e "E vertising campaign! [ERP o R ESPE RD ER NR STR intelilgences? Our “own “coliective unconscious” as the psy: (cont. on back page)

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ferias Part ll WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THOSE FILMS? At first glance, the footage re- sulting from a hand-heid camera in a moving plane of lights both focused and detocused seems to yield little useful information. Certainly the average news viewer watching the TV broadcast of these films last January must have felt unimpressed with their lack of drama or detail. Yet in “the hands of an optical physicist like Dr. Maccabee, a surprising amount of data can be obtained which turther supports the anomalous nature of the sources. BARIGHINESS Maccabee desired to determine the brightness of the light sources cap- tured on film, yet his microden- sitometer scans of the small, focused images showed them to be highly overexposed, with the film ing a transmission that ap- proaches that of the clear fim leader Such overexposed images render the task of estimating the illuminance on the fim plane difficult. Quite iron- icatly, the solution to this problem laid m the use of the ot annoyi Streaked images c the car nan's hand-helo r By.spreading the image's light over a à Of the film frame (in the exposure time), the image 18 verexposed, allowing a more ate measurement The single film frame seen below was shot during the sighting of the radar-contirmed light seen at the the Argosy's trip north- rage density of the light measured at different * loop-shaped streak rela- tiy the film density of the dark background Using classical formu- tatger ar same le ao begin san! tae tor image illuminance, film density vs. exposure curves pub- lished by Fuji and (conservatively) r est distance noted by the radar to the light source, Maccabee calculates a lower limit of 260.000 candelas. This is ten times the light intensity radiated by a t0.000-watt incandescent bulb, the largest commercially-available. If tis type of bulb had its output fo- cussed into a 70º beam, however, it «would achieve the 300,000 candelas = Caiculated. The full moon, low on the é horizon, would also be comparable. SIZE Using the focal length of the lens, the width of the streaked image and the shortest radar-determined dis- tance to the source, Maccabee deter- mined the lower limit for the size of the source. Assuming a stationary object with streaks due only to camera motion, the angular width of the horizontal streaks is about .00065 radians, and .001 for the vertical streaks. This would be consistent with a non-circular object which, at 18 km, would be 12 meters by 18 meters in actual size Finally, recall this particular source was seen for over 12 minutes, and the prospect of “freak weather phenomena” (e.g., reflections, ball lightning) becomes rather improb- able o * E ER RE | PASS ypraje——= | THE NEW ZEALAND FILM ANALYSIS WHAT ELSE DOES THE FILM FOOTAGE REVEAL? THE TRIP SOUTH: Amongst the 263 feet of film shot on the trip to Christ- church are shots of the plane on the ground at Blenheim, the takeoff, cockpit interior shots, anomalous tights of the Kaikoura coast, the town lights of Kaikoura itself, and the landing at Christchurch. There are about 230 frames showing a bluish-white light that is basically eltiptical, but which may have a triangular protrusion. Even the known light sources (e.g., the city and runway lights) are useful here, because they help to calibrate the film, the camera and the plane's win- dows for light sensitivity, color and distortion. For example, a flashing red light on top of the Argosy, filmed Cato ATENA DU LR ad A AR

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by Crockett before the plane left Blenheim, so saturated the red sensitive layer of the film when he zoomed in on it that it took on a bright yellow center on the film. This was important for the analysis of a flashing red light at the end of the film. Another example the runway lights retain their round shape while through shot the plane window. Experiments with the camera also show that a round light remains round even when the focus is changed. Yet in the southbound trip, a large, defocused light has a tri angular comer to it, Maccabee feels, then, that the “corner” is charac- teristic of the light's shape, and not the lens or window behaviors THE TRIP NORTH: Crockett shot 148 feet of film on the return leg of the flight, but at a much siower speed — 10 frames/sec. This resulted in a longer exposure time per frame, as evidenced by the interior cockpit shots. Seen in this footage is the takeoff from Christchurch, anoma- lous lights near Christchurch and Cape Campbell, and the landing at Bienheim The first light filmed here was lhe one that resulted in the loop-shaped image analyzed earlier. One useful took at this light occurred when Crockett filmed the object at full zoom (100 mm) and pulled back to wide-angle (16 mm) showing both the tight and a dimly-giowing meter on the console below the window sill at same time. In one shot of the church” light, the camera is y held steady while the light otf to the plane's right, as described On film, the image started out as a thin ellipse surroun by a reddish fuzz with the left end of the shape tilted up at a 45º angle. Forty of film later, the images have changed into fat ellipses devoid of the red fuzz, even into triangular shapes. Maccabee's transmis- someter measurements of these small images show that the images are so bright that the film's color dyes e been saturated and the exact colors can't be determined Then Crockett switched lenses to the faulty 240-mm lens and shot the sequence of this light usually broad- cast on American TV, wherein the large (2 mm on the film) dim extra- focal image “shrinks” down to a smal! (0.2-0.3 mm) and bright light, followed by enlargement to about 1 mm in. This last image is a sym- metry inversion of the first large image, apparently, further sup- porting the conclusion that Crockett simply passed through the real focus point of the lens for infinity at “15 feet” and kept on going out of focus again without knowing that his Sun zoom lens was faulty. On some of the focused images of this light, however, the light as- sumes a beli-shaped form which is visibly brighter dn the bottom than on the top; this matches an earlier description Crockett provided when using the 100 mm lens. Even when the image is streaked by hand-held motion, the bottom part of the streak is brighter fx. 193, p.2]5 TECHNICAL DETAILS ON THE FRAME [ANALYSIS The determined with this equation: intensity (l) of the source can be = EJA Ra (3.981) TAL where 1 is in lumensisteradian (i.e., cán- delas - cd.), E; is the film piane illuminance in Imim , Ajis the image area, R is the distance to the source. T is the tens fraraminçao (as- sumed to be 80%), and AL = mDºI4 is the area ot the lans aperture. For 1/1.8, O = 10 cm/1.9 = 5.26 cm, Tho visibility, V, estimates trom the ground level data, was about 70 km of the film transmission) as measured by Maccabee range from 0.4 to 0.2, while the clear teader is about 0.12. The densities for the three colors (red, green, blue) in the portions ofthe film which have not been exposed (e.g the black background) lie in the range of 2.4 - 23. Fujis published characteristics for this high-speed color film indicate that the normal density range is from about 0.10 to 2.3-2.7 for the three colors, and that the “speed point density” for the film (the value for a “good” exposure) is 0.90. Actualiy, the value may be more like 0.80, since the upper density range of the film stock used wes a bit lower than norma! According to the ANSI standards, ASA 400 fiim reaches its speed point density when exposed by a flux ol about 0.025 Im secim? Forthe camera's 0.044 second exposure (at 10 frames! second), this becomes 0.57 Imim2, The measured loop image densities difter from the eed point density by 0.40. 6 units, cating the image illuminance was 1004 2.5 to 100. 4 times the speed point illumi- nance. Using à conservative three times Ina speed point illuminance, E; = 1.7 Im/m2, The total image area tor which the density is 0.4 or less (3X the speed point or greater) = 0.003 cm? Assuming the smallest measured radar distance to the light source, the equation yields a value of 260,000 cd. If the distance was 35 km, the value would greatly increase to 2.5 x 108cg One alternative explanation for the 4.1 mm length of the straak and its brighiness Is that the camera shutter momentarily stopped rotating. This effect does occur at the and of some scenes throughout the film footage. In this frame. however, thera was no increase in the exposure of the dark background, which would have resulted in a visible or measurable reddening ot the frame overall (as in the others). Moreover, the neighboring frames reveal that this was not tha end o! a scene, and the looped shape was consonant with lhe hand-heid motion in the previous and suc- ceeding frames Neutral densíties of the film (density = logs peer rena meme imersa be rs reta tuo mr e car mr o «e

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, WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS? While the general features of the case (including brightness and motion) already suggest reasons that rule out natural or man-made sources for the lights, here are some specific reasons that help rule out some pro- posed prosaic explanations The Visual Sightings: 1) JUPITER (and Saturn) Jupiter was proposed to the press by Mt. Stromto scientists and Sydney amateur astronomer, Robert Lanigan- O'Keeffe, among others, especially after an early examination of a video tape of the bright “Christchurch” light seemed to show it was sur- rounded by four moons. Both planets were located high in the northeast, however, which is totally inappro- priate. The “moons” do not show up on the original film stock examined by Maccabee. 2)VENUS— the “preliminary conclu- sion" of UFO skeptic Philip Klass on the basis of the films alone, and many others including British UFO journalist Norman Oliver and the head of New Zealand's Mt. John Observatory. It's a “better” choice, since the direction and elevation favor the “northbound” UFOs better (though not the “southbound” ... they were in the west), but there's still one damning fact: Venus didn't rise until 3 AM, local daylight savings time, even at the plane's altitude. Remember, the co-pilot pointed it out to the rest of the crew at the very end of the flight 3) AIRCRAFT— ranging from the “unscheduled aircraft” of British amateur astronomer Patrick Moore, to the “top secret U.S. military remote control drone vehicte” pro- posed by a former R.A.F. research specialist to “helicopters operating iliegally at night”. Both the Welling- ton and Christchurch facilities and the RNZAF affirmed that there were no civilian or military aircraft around the Argosy. 4) METEORS — proposed, incredibly, by British radio astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell (in the Brisbane COURIER-MAIL, January 3). When did meteors begin holding still for cameras for 12 minutes? Yet even Professor Ronald Brown of Mel- bourne's Monash University sup- ported this in the Australian press. Adrian Berry, science correspondent of the DAILY TELEGRAPH specu- lated that the Argosy crew simply failed to appreciate the speed of the “meteorites”... so did the radar and the Bolex. 5) CifY LIGHTS AND BEACONS— Certainly not to the east over the sea, the scene of the most anomalous action 6) JAPANESE FLEET LIGHTS — used for squid fishing that night. The brightness could work here, as would the angle below the plane's horizon (for the northbound flight only). The fleet was located, however, at an estimated 260 km southeast of Christchurch; a scanning satellite picked it up at 1:00 AM. In fact, the pilot and co-pilot pointed out the dis- tant squid fieet to the passengers! Similarly scuttled, then, is New Zealand ornithologist J. Harrow's suggestion that mutton birds re- flected the light from these ships. 7) BALL LIGHTNING (also “Plasma,” “Natural Phenomena”, “Meteoro- logical Phenomena")--so said Duncan Lunan (British astro- nautical writer) and Norwegian aero- space expert Erik Tandberg. It's usuaily associated with thunder- storms, though; 3 hours of indi- vidual events, lasting as long as 12 minutes each, coupled with the In- tense brightness of the lights, renders this hypothesis unseemly. 8; BALLOONS WITH LIGHTS — light intensity too strong, speeds too fast; none officially acknowledged by the weather offices. 9) HOAX—-Britain's Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rylg, deemed it all ahoax... by an Australian TV news department, with five people who didn't know each other, plus the cooperation of radar controllers at two air towers? The Radar Sightings: Explanations for the radar targets were accompanied, of necessity, by a disclaimer for the concurrent visual sightings (similar to the above): 1) EQUIPMENT MALFUNCTION — The Wellington MTi-processed radar display should reveal only moving »targets; some of the anomalous tar- gets were indeed seen to move on radar, as fast as 60 knots or more. Yet other targets did not leave trails on the scope, implying that they were statlonary. According to Mac- cabee, a stationary target could defeat the MTI filtering if its surface was vibrating, or if it moved back and torth. A change In the phase or fre- quency of the returned signal could also be accomplished by a plasma. Bryan Chalmers determined that the anomalous targets were ap- pearing only on the MTI display; turn it off and the targets disappeared Since MTI processing makes the radar receiver more sensitive, this 5 PARKS ps would be normal if the anomalous targets were actual weak reflectors of the 50 cm radar. Even planes can de weak targets like these if their orien- tations pose a small cross-section to the radar antenna. 2) “DIELECTRIC DISCONTINUITIES” CAUSED BY CLEAR AIR TUR- BULENCE— According to the flight crew, the air was quite calm, and the plane could be operated on auto- matic height control. This device cor- responds decreasing air pressure with increasing altitude. When the air is turbulent, the pressure fluctuates and the device is ineffective. Be- sides, regions of clear air turbulence pose cross-sections that are very smail for long radar wavelengths like 50 cm (one millionth the Argosy's “size” or less). 3) ATMOSPHERIC BENDING OF THE RADAR BEAM SO THAT IT REALLY “SAW” SURFACE FEATURES LIKE SHIPS —It's true that the Wellington controller had no height-finding capability. When the atmosphere is sufficiently refractive to bend the radar beam downwards, however, an unusual amount of land and sea clutter (even waves) appears on the non-MTI display. Chalmers checked this and found there were no condi- tions indicative of “anomalous prop- agation" on this display. This was consistent with balloon readings of the atmosphere taken at 11 PM, December 30. Only for a small region around 3400 meters was there a region with sufficient curvature to bend rays down toward the earth at a rate equa! to the earth's curvature. The effect of this was small, how- ever; a ray that travels 10 km through a medium that bends it downward from a starting angle of 5º upward would be only 30 meters lower in alti- tude with a bending rate of 2 minutes/km. Consider the incident where the plane was apparently paced by a blip on radar for as long as 36 seconds. For a radar “angel” to accomplish this, it would have to have had the same azimuth as the plane (though not the same altitude), the same radar path length and the same change in path length for three radar sweeps. A plane could do this, but there were none. Neither a boat nor a wave could move at the plane's speed, and certainly no “natural” radar reflector could pace the plane for so long. But what if the rays first travelied upward from the antenna and were reflected downward to a stationary target (like a ship) while the reflecting region moved upward? That would increase the range of the target artificially, To increase the length of the curved path by the two

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* miles traveled by the plane in tho 36 seconds, the bending reg would have to rise eight nautical miles at the same time that is, the volume of air in question would have had to travel four times faster than the plane, which is faster than Mach 1! 4) THE RADAR HIT THE ARGOSY, BOUNCED OFF A STATIONARY TARGET, (LIKE A SHiP) AND POSED A SECOND (MULTIPATH) IMAGE TO THE RADAR ANTENNA. — The plane was flying at an altitude of over 2 nautical miles, so the extra distance traveiled by the twice-reflected ray would show up on the scope 5) A BENDING LAYER MAKES A FEW RAYS HIT THE OCEAN SUR- FACE ATA PATH DISTANCE EQUAL TO 84 NM. THEN THE CURVATURE LESSENS, AND THE RAYS STRAIGHTEN OUT TO FORM AN 86 NM PATH. —Granted, it wouldn't take much of a change in the curva- ture now to accomplish this, but the average curvature would have to ex- ceed the curvature of the earth, since the radar horizon (without bending) is at 47 NM The big problem with all of these “bending” exercises is that they usually result in several false targets, not just one, and ali over the scope. Moreover, these random targets would appear on the non-MTI scope as well these didn't and no sign of anomalous propagation appeared. Besides, if the other stationary tar- gets were anomalous propagation only, the MTI would have filtered them out. EPILOGUE: THE JANUARY 3RD GROUND FILM “H Channel O can go out and film a UFO on the first try," Australia's TV Qne must have reasoned, “why can't we?”. Thus, cameraman Frank Kazu- kaitis, sound recorder Lloyd McFad- den and reporter Terry Olsen found themselves sitting by a riverbed with a 16-mm movie camera, a normal lens and a 600-mm telephoto lens Terry Olsen on “Good Morning, America” show TECHNICAL DATA Retractivity profile tor Christchurch, New Zea- tand from the 11 PM, Dec, 30 balloon launch. (equivalent to a 24X telescope in this format)-and waiting—-and watch- ing. At3:15 AM, the sound operator, who was “on watch” while the neraman snoqred, watched a “red glow” emerge from the sea, As it rose and became a chalky yellow color, casting its light over the sea's horizon, the crew captured it on film. ABC-TV's David Hartman hosted a satellite video linkup with witness Terry Olsen and physicist Michael Coliins in New Zealand and Dr. J Allen Hynek in Chicago to explore the details of the sighting. Some anomalous-sounding effects were described, but the information pro- vided (both on- and off-scree sufficient to reveal that this second film was quite definitely of Venus: e The light, though huge-looking on the TV screen, was described as appearing three times the apparent size of a star to the naked eye. e Itrose up from the eastern horizon (a fact learned off-camera by Hynek) at 3:15 AM just right for Venus. “it was seen for three-and-a-half hours until it faded out in the bright- ening dawn sky. e lts rising motion was not apparent to the naked eye, but was seen through the telephoto lens. Hynek asked which direction it moved through the fixed tens; the answer was up and to the left. This is the way Venus would rise in the South- ern Hemisphere, just opposite of the 6 Northern (up and to the right). * Terry Olsen, when asked if he could seen Venus in the clear, starry sky at the same time as the “UFO”, replied “| wouldn't know Venus if | saw it.” º The huge image on film? Besides the “cropping” employed by tele- viston stations and newspapers when portraying the film image, it should also be noted that the cameraman had never used the extreme telephoto lens before (according to Olsen) and it's difficult to tell whether or not the image is really focused. The that “second UFO" film re- ceived as much airplay as it did was regrettable, as it gave UFO skeptics an easy chance to demean the New Zealand films on the strength of this latter identification. That the skep- tics have avoided the first film however, is an indication of its worthiness as a photographic record of a truly mysterious event.