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Any theories on strange UFO vid?

The video at the top of the page clearly shows a blimp. The photographer's opinion that it can't be because it doesn't match his idea of classic blimp shape is, sadly, not preclusive.
 
The Wyoming video is an ordinary aircraft. It appears elongated along its direction of flight because the security camera shutter speed is too slow to capture it as a point light.

I don't have any hypotheses in the New York case that I'm confident about. The object is clearly moving in air currents, probably passively. The claim in the article that the cell phone camera's struggle to keep the object in focus means the object must be far away, and therefore huge, is ignorant of how automatic focus works. Automatic focus just looks to achieve hard edges, irrespective of distance. The camera's struggle is due to the background being entirely clouds, which have no hard edges even when they are in focus. The auto-focus occasionally latches onto the object, but doesn't seem to hold it for long.
 
I should add that the newspaper's desire to lump these three sightings together as if they had some sort of commonality is farfetched. There is no reason to suppose that the California blimp can bend like the New York "snake." And no reason to suppose that either of them will emit light at night as in the Wyoming sighting. The phenomenology across all three is markedly different. Typical tabloid reasoning.
 
I don't know yet, but it may be yet another fake video to promote a UFO documentary and magazine.

"Expert Says US Government is Tracking Snake-Like UFOs........Gary Heseltine takes this one big step further – he believes and he’s actively hunting down the truth."
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/09/expert-says-us-government-is-tracking-snake-like-ufos/

Gary Heseltine actually publishes UFO Monthly Magazine and needs content to talk about.:D

The producers of "Unidentified" about UFOs have also been pushing out press releases of old UFO videos, pretending they are new, to get attention for their show on UFOs. It's simply how publicity campaigns work.
 
Doghouse Reilly said:
Sorry I don't have much to contribute on the subject but there have been a lot of similar videos to this one lately and I'm curious as to whether or not there are any reasonable theories about what these UFOs could be.
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Without watching the videos, I can confidently declare that the object is something difficult to distinguish because of the nature of cameras and the lack of perspective regarding size or speed of an object against an unmeasurable sky.
 
JayUtah said:
The video at the top of the page clearly shows a blimp. The photographer's opinion that it can't be because it doesn't match his idea of classic blimp shape is, sadly, not preclusive.
Click to expand...


Dude ... it's totally a blimp.

No, it can't be a blimp! It's not big and fat and round(sic)! It's elongated and cigar shaped!

It's a blimp.


later ...

I wish I had a Super High Powered Zoom Lens!

Don't we all.
 
Elagabalus said:
Dude ... it's totally a blimp.

No, it can't be a blimp! It's not big and fat and round(sic)! It's elongated and cigar shaped!

It's a blimp.


later ...
I wish I had a Super High Powered Zoom Lens!
Don't we all.
Click to expand...
You can order one off the back page of Squid Fishing Monthly.
 
Doghouse Reilly said:
Sorry I don't have much to contribute on the subject but there have been a lot of similar videos to this one lately and I'm curious as to whether or not there are any reasonable theories about what these UFOs could be.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/snake-like-ufo-returns-california-20097741
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I think blimps are fatter.

A plane moving away from you will look like it is moving slowly. Add that to Jay Utah's very intelligent comments on camera distortions and you have the solution.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
I think blimps are fatter.
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Some are. I've seen blimps of all shapes and sizes. We even had a UFO in my city that was seen by hundreds including me. It was a 60-foot hobbyist's blimp -- long and skinny --- that had gone out of control. It eventually flew low enough that it could be easily identified and finally snagged in a tree.
 
JayUtah said:
Some are. I've seen blimps of all shapes and sizes. We even had a UFO in my city that was seen by hundreds including me. It was a 60-foot hobbyist's blimp -- long and skinny --- that had gone out of control. It eventually flew low enough that it could be easily identified and finally snagged in a tree.
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So what about my genius observation that a blimp or a plane moving away from you can look like it is moving slowly? :D
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
So what about my genius observation that a blimp or a plane moving away from you can look like it is moving slowly? :D
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I didn't address it, which usually means I agree. I've been around flying machines almost every day of my life since I was 16, and that particular set of circumstances still makes me do a double-take. The interstate that goes by my town's airport does so at right angles to all three runways. An airplane flying on a runway heading will often appear to hang motionless in the sky as seen through your car's windshield.

But blimps move slowly naturally, and helicopters can move slowly. So if we agree it's a blimp, we don't have to speculate about course and bearing, as we would if we hypothesize the object is an airplane. Some blimps change altitude via thrust-vectoring -- the engines are on swivels that let them apply up or down thrust without changing the pitch of the blimp gasbag. Other blimps have ordinary elevator control surfaces. They change altitude by pitching the whole structure up and down. This was the behavior noted by the photographer.

Another helpful feature of the video is that the object appears to go behind a mountain range. This gives us a very good datum for minimum distance, and therefore a basis for estimating minimum size.
 
JayUtah said:
Another helpful feature of the video is that the object appears to go behind a mountain range. This gives us a very good datum for minimum distance, and therefore a basis for estimating minimum size.
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The guy filming it already estimated the size. "It's humongous. It's really, really big." There were no nearby objects to provide scale, but I trust his judgement.
 
JayUtah said:
. . .

Another helpful feature of the video is that the object appears to go behind a mountain range. This gives us a very good datum for minimum distance, and therefore a basis for estimating minimum size.
Click to expand...


"Appears to go" is how the whole silly Flying Saucer business started. When Arnold saw the first ones, that's how he estimated their distance and size as the flew "behind" Mount Rainier. In actual fact the migrating pelicans flew into the mountain's shadow and ceased to be illuminated by the sun reflecting from the snow on the ground. Otherwise, his original description matches exactly what you would see when you see a flock of migrating pelicans.
 
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