ok what is it

[DingoLingo]

ok this is taken from one of the storm chasing groups over here in Oz and was posted up on their facebook page

"So what is it???

Experienced photographer Netti Schimke captured this "unknown" tonight from Toogoolawah in SEQLD looking towards Esk @ around 8:15pm. Her camera was very much skywards with no lights or reflections in the area. It seems we can rule out suspicions such as a meteor and plane ect (moving objects) due to the fact the camera was exposed or open for 30 seconds. Another exposure was taken straight after with no similar features.

Very interesting! ~ Jeff ~"

rather interesting.. I thought it might have been a sprite..

[freetoroam]

Its dark, and any experienced photographer will know that in the dark it could be anything.

It is impossible to say what it is as we do not really know the distance or exact height.

And those little white dots on the screen are not stars, you can actually see the faint boxes round them where they have been added for effect, while she was signing her name on it.

Sorry, but fake stars and signature does not convince me this is anything special.

[_Only]

What makes you think the stars are fake?

edit: Oh, I cherry picked what I wanted to read.

I don't see the faint boxes.

Edited November 30, 2013 by _Only

[freetoroam]

What makes you think the stars are fake?

edit: Oh, I cherry picked what I wanted to read.

I don't see the faint boxes.

If you look at the white "dots" closely, there is a faint box round them and some are exactly the same, slightly elongated shape.

[Bendy Demon]

If the stars are supposedly fake then there doesn't seem to be any reason to think the "photo" is real either.

Also..what sort of "experienced" photographer is going to take a photo of something "unusual" then plaster their name in huge letters in the image?

P.S: I can see the faint boxes too but assuming for the moment the image is real (which I am not sure it is) could the boxes be a result of the image being taken by a digital camera?

[taniwha]

?

[DingoLingo]

actually she is a storm chaser photographer from over here in qld.. this is what makes me think it could be a photo of sprites then anything else.. we have had some rather interesting storms roll through here the past few days..

they have been ruling out sats.. meteors that kind of deal.. due to it being a 30 second exposure..

[Kahn]

Unfortunately having the name overlayed upon the photo doesn't help as there can no doubt it has been manipulated, if only to overlay the text. I would be interested in how the camera was stabilized as it appears the "stars" wobbled a bit, leaving ghost "halos" to the lower right of each. Interestingly, the object in question does not exhibit the same ghosting. This leaves one of two possibilities, either the object was overlayed on the photo, or the object emitted light for a short period of time (as lightning would).

[sinewave]

If you look at the white "dots" closely, there is a faint box round them and some are exactly the same, slightly elongated shape.

Good catch!

[sinewave]

I was going to say perhaps a sprite but they are damn difficult to photograph. The stars do have those consistent outlines that suggest a copy paste operation.

[ChrLzs]

Dingo, there's several things not right with that image, and I want to see:

- the original, without any processing (a crop including several stars would do, but it needs to have the exif intact..)

- the other exposure taken the same way..

Those 'stars' do not look at all like real stars - from a 30 second exposure there should be many many more of varying brightnesses, plus they should show slight trails, not weird haloes that look more like compression artefacts (of which there are many - it's a very poor quality image and I think those faint boxes come from that excessive compression). The spots might even be hot pixels from a low-quality or worn out sensor..

Let us know if anything more useful surfaces..

[sinewave]

Dingo, there's several things not right with that image, and I want to see:

- the original, without any processing (a crop including several stars would do, but it needs to have the exif intact..)

- the other exposure taken the same way..

Those 'stars' do not look at all like real stars - from a 30 second exposure there should be many many more of varying brightnesses, plus they should show slight trails, not weird haloes that look more like compression artefacts (of which there are many - it's a very poor quality image and I think those faint boxes come from that excessive compression). The spots might even be hot pixels from a low-quality or worn out sensor..

Let us know if anything more useful surfaces..

Yeah, they could be artifacts. That would explain the repeating geometric pattern.

[coolguy]

Great picture could be a ufo

[jules99]

The stars do appear elongated which is in line with the exposure time. Few stars could be due to longer summer days and dark occurring later.

Ive read reports of a possible QLD meteor sighting, heading south to north on the local au astronomy site, Ice in Space..

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=114803

[seeder]

Ive just enlarged and enhanced it for you

[Sir Smoke aLot]

Ive just enlarged and enhanced it for you

So thats where he gone I missed this duckey so much

[toast]

Ive just enlarged and enhanced it for you

Hahahahaha !!!!

[JesseCuster]

I get a bit tired of explaining this, but the 'boxes' around the stars are not evidence of being photoshopped into the picture. They are clear evidence of JPEG compression. JPEG compression involves breaking the image up into 8x8 blocks of pixels (which these blocks all are, exactly) and then altering the blocks to allow the image to be compressed into a smaller size. The more compression you use the more the image is altered. In a high quality JPEG the blockiness should not be readily noticeable as the image alteration is subtle and tries to avoid changes obvious to the human eye, but in more compressed images, it's very obvious. This is why it's called 'lossy' compression as information and quality is lost when the image is compressed using methods like this.

Objects against a plain background like birds against a blue sky or stars against a black sky don't fare well when the image is heavily compressed, hence the obvious 'blocks' around them as is obviously the case here.

Please don't accuse others of dishonestly Photoshopping an image unless you actually know how to spot signs of an edited image.

edit: That's not to say the image hasn't been edited, but the boxes are not evidence of it being faked, just common artefacts of JPEG compression.

Edited November 30, 2013 by JesseCuster

[ChrLzs]

And here's a genuwhine image taken at 30 seconds exposure, about an hour ago. Note the stars appearance... (the bright one is Venus..). Without knowing what type of camera she has, the appearance might vary a little, but if it's a 30 second exposure and they are stars, then THIS is what they should look like unless they are very, very close to the South Celestial Pole, in which case the motion tracks will be a bit shorter and more curved...

For the technically obsessive - Sony α57, 50mm lens (75mm equivalent), 30 seconds, f4*, 100ISO, tripod. This is a crop from the original and is shown at about 1/8 original size, but other than the crop and reduction, is exactly as taken.

For the even more obsessive and observant - you'll see my image has 'posterised'.. That's due to UM's over-aggressive compression.. The original that I uploaded is not like that..

* - aperture is not recorded in image's exif as this is a legacy Cosina lens that does not communicate with camera.

Also.. what Jesse said!!

Edited November 30, 2013 by ChrLzs

[zoser]

ok this is taken from one of the storm chasing groups over here in Oz and was posted up on their facebook page

"So what is it???

Experienced photographer Netti Schimke captured this "unknown" tonight from Toogoolawah in SEQLD looking towards Esk @ around 8:15pm. Her camera was very much skywards with no lights or reflections in the area. It seems we can rule out suspicions such as a meteor and plane ect (moving objects) due to the fact the camera was exposed or open for 30 seconds. Another exposure was taken straight after with no similar features.

Very interesting! ~ Jeff ~"

rather interesting.. I thought it might have been a sprite..

The approximate symmetry of the object does indicate that some alteration has been done; I can't see anything there that would classify it as a genuine UFO.

[_Only]

I get a bit tired of explaining this, but the 'boxes' around the stars are not evidence of being photoshopped into the picture. They are clear evidence of JPEG compression. JPEG compression involves breaking the image up into 8x8 blocks of pixels (which these blocks all are, exactly) and then altering the blocks to allow the image to be compressed into a smaller size. The more compression you use the more the image is altered. In a high quality JPEG the blockiness should not be readily noticeable as the image alteration is subtle and tries to avoid changes obvious to the human eye, but in more compressed images, it's very obvious. This is why it's called 'lossy' compression as information and quality is lost when the image is compressed using methods like this.

Objects against a plain background like birds against a blue sky or stars against a black sky don't fare well when the image is heavily compressed, hence the obvious 'blocks' around them as is obviously the case here.

Please don't accuse others of dishonestly Photoshopping an image unless you actually know how to spot signs of an edited image.

edit: That's not to say the image hasn't been edited, but the boxes are not evidence of it being faked, just common artefacts of JPEG compression.

Yes, and someone who might know how to go through the process of adding in stars to their photo one by one would likely know that there is a button to completely remove unwanted things in the photo while preserving the background, with one click, if they were using the one most popular photo editing program.

And here's a [/color]genuwhine image taken at 30 seconds exposure, about an hour ago. Note the stars appearance... (the bright one is Venus..). Without knowing what type of camera she has, the appearance might vary a little, but if it's a 30 second exposure and they are stars, then THIS is what they should look like unless they are very, very close to the South Celestial Pole, in which case the motion tracks will be a bit shorter and more curved...

For the technically obsessive - Sony α57, 50mm lens (75mm equivalent), 30 seconds, f4*, 100ISO, tripod. This is a crop from the original and is shown at about 1/8 original size, but other than the crop and reduction, is exactly as taken.

For the even more obsessive and observant - you'll see my image has 'posterised'.. That's due to UM's over-aggressive compression.. The original that I uploaded is not like that..

* - aperture is not recorded in image's exif as this is a legacy Cosina lens that does not communicate with camera.

I'm curious why the streaks in yours are so dramatic, when I also have taken 30 second exposures, and they look like this (you can see the exposure length on the exif in "..." button at right under photo name):

http://www.flickr.co...N07/9161928813/

This one also 30+ seconds (shown in accompanying exif under "..." menu):

:http://www.flickr.co...N07/9054609243/

Edited November 30, 2013 by _Only

[freetoroam]

I get a bit tired of explaining this, but the 'boxes' around the stars are not evidence of being photoshopped into the picture. They are clear evidence of JPEG compression. JPEG compression involves breaking the image up into 8x8 blocks of pixels (which these blocks all are, exactly) and then altering the blocks to allow the image to be compressed into a smaller size. The more compression you use the more the image is altered. In a high quality JPEG the blockiness should not be readily noticeable as the image alteration is subtle and tries to avoid changes obvious to the human eye, but in more compressed images, it's very obvious. This is why it's called 'lossy' compression as information and quality is lost when the image is compressed using methods like this.

Objects against a plain background like birds against a blue sky or stars against a black sky don't fare well when the image is heavily compressed, hence the obvious 'blocks' around them as is obviously the case here.

Please don't accuse others of dishonestly Photoshopping an image unless you actually know how to spot signs of an edited image.

edit: That's not to say the image hasn't been edited, but the boxes are not evidence of it being faked, just common artefacts of JPEG compression.

I am no expert, so its good to hear from those who do know. I understand what you are saying, but too many in that photo seem to be exactly the same shape and angle at which they elongate.

If you look at the last photo _only has posted, there are so many different shapes and sizes, so to manage to take a photo where the "stars" are exactly the same is a pretty good achievement in itself and that is actually far more interesting than the daffy duck light......if the stars were real.

[toast]

I'm curious why the streaks in yours are so dramatic, when I also have taken 30 second exposures, and they look like this (you can see the exposure length on the exif in "..." button at right under photo name):

It´s quite simple, the focal length is doing the trick. With a focal length of 18mm, exposure times by approx 30 seconds are possible and the stars keep point-shaped with an unguided mount in use (tripod). ChrLzs picture was taken with a local lenght of 50/75mm for 30 sec., that explains then stripe stars. Here are some examples for the max. exposure time/focal lenght to keep stars point shaped : 15s/28mm, 6/50, 2,5/100,1,25/200,1/300, 0,5/500, 0,3/600,0,25/1000,0,1/1000. All values are for non-guided mounts.

Edited November 30, 2013 by toast

[Kahn]

Guys, I think several folks missed the point that I made previously about the exposure.

Now I'm making the assumption that this was taken with a digital camera. If you note the image artifacts to the lower right of each "star", I believe these were caused by the camera not being secured on a tripod. Similar to the effect you see when someone is doing light painting except the camera was moving instead of the source.

However, when zoomed by the same amount (500%), we do not see the same effect with the object photographed.

So the stars "moved", but the object did not. As I mentioned before, this could only happen in one of two ways, either the object was illuminated for a shorter period of time than the exposure, or the object was overlaid on the original photo of a star field. I suppose you could do it the other way round, but that would involve more work.

[jules99]

Guys, I think several folks missed the point that I made previously about the exposure.

Now I'm making the assumption that this was taken with a digital camera. If you note the image artifacts to the lower right of each "star", I believe these were caused by the camera not being secured on a tripod. Similar to the effect you see when someone is doing light painting except the camera was moving instead of the source.

However, when zoomed by the same amount (500%), we do not see the same effect with the object photographed.

So the stars "moved", but the object did not. As I mentioned before, this could only happen in one of two ways, either the object was illuminated for a shorter period of time than the exposure, or the object was overlaid on the original photo of a star field. I suppose you could do it the other way round, but that would involve more work.

Hi;

A youtube clip of a geosynchronous satellite flare...

[media=]

[/media]

Which could explain the stars movement and the object remaining stationary.

Edited November 30, 2013 by jules99