Black triangle (UFO)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about UFOs. For other uses, see black triangle (disambiguation).
Reports generally describe this class of UFOs as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities and highways. Sightings usually take place at night. These objects are often described as having pulsing colored lights that appear at each corner of the triangle.[2]
Black triangle UFOs have been reported to be visible to radar, as was the case with the famous Belgian UFO wave. During these incidents, two Belgian F-16s attempted to intercept the objects (getting a successful missile lock at two occasions) only to be outmaneuvered; a key conclusion of the Project Condign report was that no attempt should be made on the part of civilian or RAF Air Defence aircraft to outmaneuver these objects except to place them astern to mitigate the risk of collision.[3]
Contents
UK Ministry of Defence Report Findings
The report states: "Occasionally and perhaps exceptionally, it seems that a field with, as yet, undetermined characteristics, can exist between certain charged buoyant objects in loose formation, such that, depending on the viewing aspect, the intervening space between them forms an area (viewed as a shape, often triangular) from which the reflection of light does not occur. This is a key finding in the attribution of what have frequently been reported as black 'craft,' often triangular and even up to hundreds of feet in length." These plasma formations also have the effect through "magnetic, electric or electromagnetic (or even unknown field), appears to emanate from some of the buoyant charged masses. Local fields of this type have been medically proven to cause responses in the temporal lobes of the human brain. These result in the observer sustaining his or her own vivid, but mainly incorrect, description of what is experienced. This is suggested to be a key factor in influencing the more extreme reports found in the media and are clearly believed by the 'victims.'[7]
Recently un-redacted sections of the report state that Russian, Former Soviet Republics, and Chinese authorities have made a co-ordinated effort to understand the UAP topic and that Russian investigators have measured (or at least detected) 'fields' which are reported to have caused human effects when they are located close to the phenomena. According to the Ministry of Defence researchers, Russian scientists have connected their UAP work with plasmas and the wider potential use of plasmas and may have done "considerably more work (than is evident from open sources)" on military applications, for example using UAP-type radiated fields to affect humans, and the possibility of producing and launching plasmas as decoys.[8]
On March 30, 1993 multiple witnesses across south-west and west England saw a large black triangle at low speeds. Analysis of the sightings by Nick Pope concluded that the object moved in a north-easterly course from Cornwall to Shropshire over a period of approximately 6 hours.
The sightings report clearly visible objects over densely populated areas and highways, mostly in the United States and Britain, but other parts of the world as well. A geographic distribution of U.S. sightings has been correlated by a currently inactive American-based investigative organization, the National Institute for Discovery Science, which led to a July 2002 report which suggested that the craft may belong to the U.S. Air Force;[9] however, a subsequent report in August 2004 by the same organization (NIDS) found that the rash of sightings did not conform to previous deployment of black project aircraft and that the objects' origins and agendas were unknown.[10]
Other Sightings
2014 Kansas & Texas sightings
In February and March 2014, an aircraft matching the black triangle description was photographed multiple times over Kansas and Texas in daylight. In February 2014, an amateur photographer Jeff Templin snapped pictures of a triangular aircraft while photographing wildlife in Kansas.[11] On Mar 10, 2014 Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett photographed a triangular shaped aircraft giving off a long contrail over Amarillo, Texas during daylight. Bill Sweetman, Graham Warwick, and Guy Norris of Aviation Week all agree that "the photos show something real." [12]Rendlesham Forest incident
Main article: Rendlesham Forest incident
A pyramid-shaped craft was reported to have landed near an American air base at Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk,
England on December 27, 1980. Military personnel reported having
approached at least one landed craft in the forest and observed it in
great detail before it once again took flight. Another craft was
observed landing in an open field near the base and then taking off at
incredible speed. Between 2002 and 2005, reporter Bryant Gumbel hosted a series of exclusive SciFi Channel documentaries, one of which, entitled UFO Invasion at Rendlesham,
focused on this incident. Gumbel interviewed some of the men involved
with the sighting, and the documentary toured some of the scenes,
attempting to gather evidence that something landed in the forest. The History Channel also aired an episode of UFO Files on the incident, calling it "Britain's Roswell".Four US military personnel went to investigate what they believed to be a possible downed aircraft in the forest when they saw unexplained lights; they then saw a series of lights whilst in the forest. Only one of four personnel who went to investigate the lights claimed to have actually seen an actual craft, but this account emerged some time after in the initial incident, causing issues with its veracity and reliability. In particular, the craft was not witnessed by the three others who went with him that night. Natural phemomena such as a nearby lighthouse and barking Muntjac deer have been offered as explanations for what was seen and heard. MoD papers on the subject say nothing occurred that night which was of concern to British airspace security.
Belgian Air Force report
Main article: Belgian UFO wave
On March 30, 1990, citizens of the city of Eupen
spotted what appeared to be a large black triangular craft hovering
silently over the city for several minutes. Local police officials
arrived on the scene and reported observing the object as it appeared to
hover over apartment buildings. One officer reported that the object
released a red glowing disk of light from its center which flew down to
the ground and darted around several buildings before disappearing.[citation needed]Phoenix Lights incident
Main article: Phoenix Lights
One of the more famous appearances of these craft was during the
event known as the "Phoenix Lights", where multiple unidentified
objects, many of them black triangles, were spotted by the residents of Phoenix, Arizona
and videotaped by both the local media and residents with camcorders
across multiple evenings beginning on Thursday, March 13, 1997. Some
lights drifted as low as 1000 feet and moved far too slowly for
conventional aircraft and too silently for helicopters. Some of the
lights appeared to group up in a giant "V" formation that lingered above
the city for several minutes. Many residents reported one triangle to
be over a mile wide that drifted slowly over their houses blocking out
the stars of the night sky. Other reports indicated the craft were
spotted flying away from Phoenix as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada and Los Angeles, California.An official report made by the Air Force about the incident concluded that the military had been testing flares launched from conventional aircraft during that time. Eyewitnesses confirmed military jets were scrambled from nearby Luke Air Force Base, but instead of launching flares, they were seen chasing after some of the objects.
The next few nights, in an attempt to recreate the incident, local pilots flew prop-planes over the city in a "V" formation, but the sounds of their engines were easily heard. The original lights made no sound. Flares were also deployed above Phoenix.
Southern Illinois incident
The "St. Clair Triangle", "UFO Over Illinois", "Southern Illinois UFO", or "Highland, Illinois UFO" sighting occurred on January 5, 2000 over the towns of Highland, Dupo, Lebanon, Summerfield, Millstadt, and O'Fallon, Illinois, beginning shortly after 4:00 am. Five on-duty police officers around these locales, along with various other eyewitnesses, sighted and reported a massive, silent, triangular craft operating at an unusual treetop level altitude and speeds. The incident was examined in various television shows including the ABC special Seeing is Believing with Peter Jennings, an hour-long Discovery Channel special UFOs Over Illinois, an episode of the Syfy series Proof Positive and a half-hour-long independent documentary titled The Edge of Reality: Illinois UFO, January 5, 2000 by Darryl Barker Productions.Phoenix Lights
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Phoenix Lights (also identified as "Lights over Phoenix") was a UFO sighting which occurred in Phoenix, Arizona, and Sonora, Mexico on Thursday, March 13, 1997.
Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 MST, in a space of about 300 miles (480 km), from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson.
There were allegedly two distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area. The United States Air Force identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft that were on training exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range in southwest Arizona.
Witnesses claim to have observed a huge carpenter's square-shaped UFO, containing five spherical lights or possibly light-emitting engines. Fife Symington,[2] the governor at the time, was one witness to this incident; he later called the object "otherworldly."[3]
The lights were reported to have reappeared in 2007 and 2008, but these events were quickly attributed to (respectively) military flares dropped by fighter aircraft at Luke Air Force Base[4][5] and flares attached to helium balloons released by a civilian.[6]
Contents
Timeline
Initial reports
At about 18:55 PST (19:55 MST), a man reported seeing a V-shaped object above Henderson, Nevada. He said it was about the "size of a (Boeing) 747", sounded like "rushing wind",[2] and had six lights on its leading edge. The lights reportedly traversed northwest to the southeast.An unidentified former police officer from Paulden, Arizona is claimed to have been the next person to report a sighting after leaving his house at about 20:15 MST. As he was driving north, he allegedly saw a cluster of reddish or orange lights in the sky, comprising four lights together and a fifth light trailing them. Each of the individual lights in the formation appeared to the witness to consist of two separate point sources of orange light. He returned home and through binoculars watched the lights until they disappeared south over the horizon.[2]
Prescott and Prescott Valley
Lights were also reportedly seen in the areas of Prescott and Prescott Valley. At approximately 20:17 MST, callers began reporting the object was definitely solid, because it blocked out much of the starry sky as it passed over.[7]John Kaiser was standing outside with his wife and sons in Prescott Valley when they noticed a cluster of lights to the west-northwest of their position. The lights formed a triangular pattern, but all of them appeared to be red, except the light at the nose of the object, which was distinctly white. The object, or objects, which had been observed for approximately 2 to 3 minutes with binoculars, then passed directly overhead the observers, they were seen to "Bank to the right", and they then disappeared in the night sky to the southeast of Prescott Valley. The altitude could not be determined, however it was fairly low and made no sound whatsoever.[8]
The National UFO Reporting Center received the following report from the Prescott area:
| “ | While doing astrophotography I observed five yellow-white lights in a "V" formation moving slowly from the northwest, across the sky to the northeast, then turn almost due south and continue until out of sight. The point of the "V" was in the direction of movement. The first three lights were in a fairly tight "V" while two of the lights were further back along the lines of the "V"'s legs. During the NW-NE transit one of the trailing lights moved up and joined the three and then dropped back to the trailing position. I estimated the three light "V" to cover about 0.5 degrees of sky and the whole group of five lights to cover about 1 degree of sky.[9] | ” |
Dewey
At the town of Dewey, 10 miles (16 km) east of Prescott, Arizona, six people saw a large cluster of lights while driving northbound on Highway 69.[citation needed]First sighting from Phoenix
Tim Ley and his wife Bobbi, his son Hal and his grandson Damien Turnidge first saw the lights when they were above Prescott Valley about 65 miles (100 km) away from them. At first they appeared to them as five separate and distinct lights in an arc-shape like they were on top of a balloon, but they soon realized the lights appeared to be moving towards them. Over the next ten or so minutes they appeared to be coming closer and the distance between the lights increased and they took on the shape of an upside down V. Eventually when the lights appeared to be a couple of miles away the witnesses could make out a shape that looked like a 60-degree carpenter's square with the five lights set into it, with one at the front and two on each side. Soon the object with the embedded lights appeared to be coming right down the street where they lived about 100 to 150 feet (30 to 45 meters) above them, traveling so slowly it appeared to hover and was silent. The object then seemed to pass over their heads and went through a V opening in the peaks of the mountain range towards Squaw Peak Mountain and toward the direction of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.[citation needed] Witnesses in Glendale, a suburb northwest of Phoenix, saw the object pass overhead at an altitude high enough to become obscured by the thin clouds; this was at approximately between 20:30 and 20:45 MST.Arriving in Phoenix
When the triangular formation entered the Phoenix area, Bill Greiner, a cement driver hauling a load down a mountain north of Phoenix, described the second group of lights: "I'll never be the same. Before this, if anybody had told me they saw a UFO, I would've said, 'Yeah and I believe in the Tooth Fairy.' Now I've got a whole new view and I may be just a dumb truck driver, but I've seen something that don't belong here."[10] Greiner stated that the lights hovered over the area for more than two hours.[11]After Phoenix
A report came from a young man in the Kingman area who stopped his car at a public phone to report the incident. "[The] young man, en route to Los Angeles, called from a phone booth to report having seen a large and bizarre cluster of stars moving slowly in the northern sky".[10]Reappearance in 2007
A repeat of the lights occurred February 6, 2007, and was recorded by the local Fox News television station.[4][5] According to military officials and the Federal Aviation Administration, these were flares dropped by F-16 aircraft training at Luke Air Force Base.[12]Reappearance in 2008
On April 21, 2008, lights were again reported over North Phoenix by local residents.[13] According to witnesses, the lights formed a vertical line, then spread apart and made a diamond shape. The lights also formed a U-shape at one time. Tony Toporek video taped the lights. He was talking to neighbors at 8 p.m. when the lights appeared. He went and grabbed his camera to get the lights on video. A valley resident reported that shortly after the lights appeared, three jets were seen heading west in the direction of the lights. An official from Luke Air Force Base denied any United States Air Force activity in the area.[13] On April 22, 2008, a resident of Phoenix told a newspaper that the lights were nothing more than his neighbor releasing helium balloons with flares attached.[14] The following day a Phoenix resident who declined to be identified in news reports stated he had attached flares to helium balloons and released them from his back yard.[6] However, no name or pictures of the reported hoaxter were ever released, nor was anyone cited, ticketed or charged[citation needed] from the supposed releasing of flares over a residential area that at the time was enduring a record drought.Photographic documentation
Imagery of the Phoenix Lights falls into two categories: images of the triangular formation seen prior to 22:00 MST in Prescott and Dewey, and images of the 22:00 MST Phoenix event. Almost all known images are of the second event. All known images were produced using a variety of commercially available camcorders and cameras.[citation needed]First event
There are few known images of the Prescott/Dewey lights. Television station KSAZ reported that an individual named Richard Curtis recorded a detailed video that purportedly showed the outline of a spacecraft, but that the video had been lost.[citation needed] The only other known video is of poor quality and shows a group of lights with no craft visible.[citation needed]Second event
During the Phoenix event, numerous still photographs and videotapes were made, distinctly showing a series of lights appearing at a regular interval, remaining illuminated for several moments and then going out. These images have been repeatedly aired by documentary television channels such as the Discovery Channel and the History Channel as part of their UFO documentary programming.The most frequently seen sequence shows what appears to be an arc of lights appearing one by one, then going out one by one. UFO advocates claim that these images show that the lights were some form of "running light" or other aircraft illumination along the leading edge of a large craft — estimated to be as large as a mile (1.6 km) in diameter — hovering over the city of Phoenix. Other similar sequences reportedly taken over a half hour period show differing numbers of lights in a V or arrowhead array. Thousands of witnesses throughout Arizona also reported a silent, mile wide V or boomerang shaped craft with varying numbers of huge orbs. A significant number of witnesses reported that the craft was silently gliding directly overhead at low altitude. The first-hand witnesses consistently reported that the lights appeared as "canisters of swimming light", while the underbelly of the craft was undulating "like looking through water".[15] However, skeptics claim that the video is evidence that mountains not visible at night partially obstructed views from certain angles, thereby bolstering the claim that the lights were more distant than UFO advocates claim.[16]
UFO advocate Jim Dilettoso claimed to have performed "spectral analysis" of photographs and video imagery that proved the lights could not have been produced by a man-made source. Dilettoso claimed to have used software called "Image Pro Plus" (exact version unknown) to determine the amount of red, green and blue in the various photographic and video images and construct histograms of the data, which were then compared to several photographs known to be of flares. Several sources have pointed out, however, that it is impossible to determine the spectral signature of a light source based solely on photographic or video imagery, as film and electronics inherently alter the spectral signature of a light source by shifting hue in the visible spectrum, and experts in spectroscopy have dismissed his claims as being scientifically invalid.[16][17] Normal photographic equipment also eliminates light outside the visible spectrum — e.g., infrared and ultraviolet — that would be necessary for a complete spectral analysis. The maker of "Image Pro Plus", Media Cybernetic, has stated that its software is incapable of performing spectroscopic analysis.[16]
Cognitech, an independent video laboratory, superimposed video imagery taken of the Phoenix Lights onto video imagery it shot during daytime from the same location. In the composite image, the lights are seen to extinguish at the moment they reach the Estrella mountain range, which is visible in the daytime, but invisible in the footage shot at night. A broadcast by local Fox Broadcasting Company affiliate KSAZ-TV claimed to have performed a similar test that showed the lights were in front of the mountain range and suggested that the Cognitech data might have been altered. Dr. Paul Scowen, visiting professor of Astronomy at Arizona State University, performed a third analysis using daytime imagery overlaid with video shot of the lights and his findings were consistent with Cognitech. The Phoenix New Times subsequently reported the television station had simply overlaid two video tracks on a video editing machine without using a computer to match the zoom and scale of the two images.[16]
Explanations
There is some controversy as to how best to classify the reports on the night in question. Some are of the opinion that the differing nature of the eyewitness reports indicates that several unidentified objects were in the area, each of which was its own separate "event". This is largely dismissed by skeptics as an over-extrapolation from the kind of deviation common in necessarily subjective eyewitness accounts. The media and most skeptical investigators have largely preferred to split the sightings into two distinct classes, a first and second event, for which two separate explanations are offered:First event
The first event — the "V", which appeared over northern Arizona and gradually traveled south over nearly the entire length of the state, eventually passing south of Tucson — was the apparently "wedge-shaped" object reported by then-Governor Symington and many others. This event started at about 20:15 MST over the Prescott area, and was seen south of Tucson by about 20:45 MST.Proponents of two separate events propose that the first event still has no provable explanation, but that some evidence exists that the lights were in fact airplanes. According to an article by reporter Janet Gonzales that appeared in the Phoenix New Times, videotape of the v shape shows the lights moving as separate entities, not as a single object; a phenomenon known as illusory contours can cause the human eye to see unconnected lines or dots as forming a single shape.
Mitch Stanley, an amateur astronomer, observed high altitude lights flying in formation using a Dobsonian telescope giving 43× magnification. After observing the lights, he told his mother, who was present at the time, that the lights were aircraft.[18] According to Stanley, the lights were quite clearly individual airplanes; a companion who was with him recalled asking Stanley at the time what the lights were, and he said, "Planes". When Stanley first gave an account of his observation at the Discovery Channel Town Hall Meeting with all the witnesses there he was shouted down in his assertion that what he saw was what other witnesses saw. Some have claimed that Stanley was seeing the Maryland National Guard jets flying in formation during a routine training mission at the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range south of Phoenix. It is possible that the Phoenix Lights Vee is actually a group of planes based on the explanation of a similar sighting in South California.[19]
Second event
The second event was the set of nine lights appearing to "hover" over the city of Phoenix at around 10 pm. The second event has been more thoroughly covered by the media, due in part to the numerous video images taken of the lights. This was also observed by numerous people who may have thought they were seeing the same lights as those reported earlier.The U.S. Air Force explained the second event as slow-falling, long-burning LUU-2B/B illumination flares dropped by a flight of four A-10 Warthog aircraft on a training exercise at the Barry Goldwater Range at Luke Air Force Base. According to this explanation, the flares would have been visible in Phoenix and appeared to hover due to rising heat from the burning flares creating a "balloon" effect on their parachutes, which slowed the descent.[20] The lights then appeared to wink out as they fell behind the Sierra Estrella, a mountain range to the southwest of Phoenix.
A Maryland Air National Guard pilot, Lt. Col. Ed Jones, responding to a March 2007 media query, confirmed that he had flown one of the aircraft in the formation that dropped flares on the night in question.[20] The squadron to which he belonged was in fact at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona on a training exercise at the time and flew training sorties to the Barry Goldwater Range on the night in question, according to the Maryland Air National Guard. A history of the Maryland Air National Guard published in 2000 asserted that the squadron, the 104th Fighter Squadron, was responsible for the incident.[21] The first reports that members of the Maryland Air National Guard were responsible for the incident were published in The Arizona Republic newspaper in July 1997.[22]
Military flares[23][24] such as these can be seen from hundreds of miles given ideal environmental conditions. Later comparisons with known military flare drops were reported on local television stations, showing similarities between the known military flare drops and the Phoenix Lights.[4][5] An analysis of the luminosity of LUU-2B/B illumination flares, the type which would have been in use by A-10 aircraft at the time, determined that the luminosity of such flares at a range of approximately 50–70 miles would fall well within the range of the lights viewed from Phoenix.[17]
Dr. Bruce Maccabee did an extensive triangulation of the four videotapes, determining that the objects were near or over the Goldwater Proving Grounds.[25] Page 5 of Dr. Maccabee's analysis refers to Bill Hamilton and Tom King's sighting position at Steve Blonder's home. Blonder has worked with Dr. Maccabee to fully include his sighting position in the triangulation report. Maccabee has also refined three other sighting positions and lines of sight in 2012.[26]
Public response
News media
There was minimal news coverage at the time of the incident. In Phoenix, a small number of local news outlets noted the event, but it received little attention beyond that. But on June 18, 1997, USA Today ran a front-page story that brought national attention to the case. This was followed by news coverage on the ABC and NBC television networks. The case quickly caught the popular imagination and has since become a staple of UFO-related documentary television, including specials produced by the History Channel and the Discovery Channel.Governor
 |
Wikinews has related news: Former Arizona Governor says he saw a UFO during the 1997 Phoenix Lights |
Symington also noted that he requested information from the commander of Luke Air Force Base, the general of the National Guard, and the head of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. But none of the officials he contacted had an answer for what had happened, and were also perplexed.[32] Later, he responded to an Air Force explanation that the lights were flares: "As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man made object I'd ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation".[2] In an episode of the television show UFO Hunters called "The Arizona Lights", Symington said that he contacted the military asking what the lights were. The response was "no comment". He pointed out that he was the governor of Arizona at the time, not just some ordinary civilian.[33]
Frances Barwood, the 1997 Phoenix city councilwoman who launched an investigation into the event, said that of the over 700 witnesses she interviewed, "The government never interviewed even one".[32]
Related films
- The Phoenix Lights...We Are Not Alone Documentary, Lynne D. Kitei, M.D., Executive Producer, in collaboration with Steve Lantz Productions. Based on the book, The Phoenix Lights...A Skeptic's Discovery That We Are Not Alone and featuring Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, former Governor Fife Symington, former Vice Mayor, investigators, military, pilots and witnesses.[34]
- The Appearance of a Man, directed by Daniel Pace.[35]
- Night Skies, a horror movie starring Jason Connery, A.J. Cook, and Ashley Peldon, features the lights. It premiered direct-to-DVD in the US on January 23, 2007.[36]
- They Came from Outer Space (previous title: Phoenix Lights The Movie), a science fiction thriller starring Ossie Beck, Mackenzie Firgens, Yvette Rachelle, Matt Mercer, Terin Alba, Courtney Gains, Mark Arnold, Michael LeMelle, Aaron Mills, and Luke Amsden.[37]
- Out of the Blue is a documentary on UFOs including an investigation of the Phoenix Lights.
No comments:
Post a Comment