UFO 'Donut' Caught on ISS Live Video

[Hazzard]

A good percentage of UFO's are not from this world. That conclusion is unavoidable.A

That would depend on who you ask,... Someone credulous that already believes VS a scientifically minded person who demands extraordinary evidence to this extraordinary claim

[ChrLzs]

i haven't seen the video in the op yet... but seeing that references were made to the sts-75 case, i wanted to ask whether the bokehs always represent particles reflecting out-of-focus light close to the camera or could they also be from objects further away?

Simple answer:

Yes. But as the cameras are often (I'm guessing a bit here as I'm not an avid ISS feed video watcher) focused on earth, then I'd imagine being nearer is the more likely.. And of course, given the ice and other debris is near the ISS (being the source of 99.9% of it), then it will often be o-o-f.

Complex (but brief) answer:

I'll keep it short, but the appearance of bokeh varies depending on focus, zoom and aperture setting, and of course lens/aperture design. In other words, the bokeh appearance when an object is beyond the focus point is very likely different to the bokeh if it is closer than the focus point. But then it may be different again at even a slightly different zoom or aperture setting. Note that the aperture is constantly changing as the camera auto-adjusts to the lighting level, so the bokeh will change just from that... Trying to sensibly analyse it would be a nightmare - but if you look at a lot of examples of the output of a camera, you can normally get a reasonable idea of what the range of bokeh effects look like.

So in simple terms, bokeh is complex!

[zoser]

Zoser said (if I may paraphrase) that after you see a few UFO's you begin to recognize them because they don't look like anything else.

I assumed he was talking about UFO's he had seen on television.

It's you guys that are getting excited over lens aberrations. Please don't try and shift it on to me.

This is just another red herring thread and nothing to do with UFO's. JO did exactly the same thing a little while ago.

Period.

Edited November 9, 2013 by zoser

[Hazzard]

This is just another red herring thread and nothing to do with UFO's.

But Joe-sixpack telling a story about aliens landing their star ship behind the manure stack,... now THAT is the way to go when investigating the UFO enigma?

Edited November 9, 2013 by Hazzard

[sinewave]

wasn't the premise re ice particles a claim too?

p.s. mind you, i'm not claiming that the bokehs were alien spaceships

Yeah, that was the explanation. They were floating near the glass and highly illuminated.

[ChrLzs]

Missed this earlier - for the sake of completion..

..i notice the appearance and disappearance of the "donut" coincides with the brightness of the sunLIGHT in the view.

..and it never moves... it remains stationary in relation to the ISS.

The one I saw was moving, and I'm not going through that footage again.. If not, then it may be on the window glass, or even a filter in front of the lens. Try to consider *all* options.

Notice though .. that clouds pass OVER the donut... how does that happen if it's a lens or reflection thingy going on ??? .. ???

Stop right there. This is a flat 2d image. The bokeh 'blob' is TRANSPARENT. Therefore anything behind, in front, over, under, whatever will simply show AS WELL as the bokeh. You cannot possibly determine what is 'over' it as against 'under' it - as far as the sensor is concerned it merely sees Z amount of light, where Z=X(bokeh)+Y(cloud).. There is NO under/over information available.

I saw an energy donut in the 70's .. It's movements were unexplainable really

Ah yes, the 70's... Please take your sighting to its own thread along with all the details, as raising it here with no info whatever isn't all that helpful.

[psyche101]

A good percentage of UFO's are not from this world. That conclusion is unavoidable.A

When has one UFO ever been tracked by RADAR as entering or leaving the atmosphere? Has an artificial object ever been spotted as entering or leaving the solar system? RADAR catches UFO's all the time, and they always have terrestrial trajectories, if they were spaceships, why do they not go into space, why do they always go from one spot on earth to another?

How does the very fact that not one UFO has ever been shown to be leaving via space support that conclusion that UFO's are not from here? Not one, ever? We have many RADAR tracks which prove they exist, but none that say they are not from here. Why is that? Could it be because they are not from space at all?? Or is that too open minded to consider?

[Monkey1]

Isn't it amazing how an inexperienced amateur observer here on earth, with not a clue about photography, lenses, optics, imaging, space sciences, orbital mechanics, operational aspects of a spacecraft, etc, etc, can pore over video footage like this, and spot something that looks odd and they don't understand...

no, wait, it's not that amazing.

BTW, I note that TOM ROSE is responsible for an awful lot of these UFO videos, and he never seems to give a source (as in who spotted the anomaly). So I wonder if he is the person I described above?

I'm the one with too much time on my hands... not Tom Rose. I first posted a link to UFO Casebook of the ISS feed.You can also see the Donut at 00.06.00 of the ISS video.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/40481898

Edited November 21, 2013 by Monkey1

[ChrLzs]

I'm the one with too much time on my hands... not Tom Rose. I first posted a link to UFO Casebook of the ISS feed.You can also see the Donut at 00.06.00 of the ISS video.

...

Thanks for clarifying, Monkey1. What is your considered opinion about the object? Are you familiar with photographic analysis in general, the cameras being used and their bokeh appearance?

Are you also familiar with James Oberg's extensive work on ufos/debris around space craft? (Bear in mind James posts here quite frequently, and I might invite him over..)

[ChrLzs]

BTW, now that Monkey1 has turned up to provide more information - kudos for that! - I've taken a close look at the 'object'. Indeed, it is not moving, so it isn't the one I thought it was..

To be a little more precise, it can be seen beginning to appear at about 00:05:30, and then has gone by about 00:12:40 (?need to recheck that one..).

I noted a number of characteristics, all of which support this being a camera artefact, namely that it is most likely the camera optics showing an out of focus 'blob', the 'blob' being something *close* to the camera. As it is stationary relative to the camera, it is moving at exactly the same rate as the spacecraft/camera - ie it is likely either stuck on the window or the lens/filter of the camera. There's more, but I won't go into the other characteristics at this stage - I'd prefer to hear what Monkey1 thinks, and what s/he noticed...

As for me - I don't think it is worthy of further analysis and I'll elaborate on that later - but I'm happy to have my mind changed.

Over to you, Monkey1...

Edited November 21, 2013 by ChrLzs

[Monkey1]

I don't have an opinion about the object. I have no idea what it is. I'm not an expert on camera's etc.

I just noticed it and thought I would post it online to see what others thought it might be. Regards.

[ChrLzs]

Thanks for that. Thread may as well be closed unless there is anyone who wishes to argue against the theory that:

This is something most likely on the window, rendered out of focus and being illuminated for a few minutes by sunlight.

[Pericynthion]

Thanks for that. Thread may as well be closed unless there is anyone who wishes to argue against the theory that:

This is something most likely on the window, rendered out of focus and being illuminated for a few minutes by sunlight.

Yep, I completely agree. You've probably already noticed this, but there IS definitely something on or near the lens. You can see it most easily on daylight passes against a mostly featureless background like the ocean:

Looks to me like it might be some sort of fiber, close to the lens and out of focus. I checked several videos from this camera taken around the time period of OP video, and it's always there. It was also still there when I checked a recent video taken a couple days ago.

The bright 'donut' spot appears at the same place in the camera field of view at every sunset, at least in the 5-6 videos I checked. If you overlay an image of the bright spot on the image of the thing on the lens, you get this:

Seems pretty clear to me that, as you said earlier, this is just an out-of-focus object on or near the lens that happens to catch a bit of sunlight during every orbital sunset.

[ChrLzs]

Nice catch, Peri! No, I couldn't be bothered wading through more imagery to find matching stuff, as it looks just like a bokeh donut, and the other thing I hinted at earlier that supports it, is the way the donut appears and disappears - it starts out with one edge (lower left) 'truncated, it then gradually brightens and the 'cut' edge slowly shrinks. When it slowly fades away, the opposite edge is similarly truncated in reverse. It's the same effect you can see here in a low -res video I made showing that sort of effect on an o-o-f Venus - skip to about 0:45 if you're in a hurry, but it isn't very long (no sound, btw):

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..and as, you know, that's exactly what happens when something in the lens/aperture (or in the shape of the object itself) causes a 'shadow', first on one side then the other as the illumination (in the case of the op video, the sun) continues to move across the frame...

Case closed , imho.

Edited November 23, 2013 by ChrLzs

[toast]

Based on my astronomy photographer experience I can say that the "object" isn´t one. The donut shape is a result of a light reflex that´s out of focus. This same effect shows up viewing a star, or a planet, thru an optical lens system that´s out of focus. I cannot judge that the reflex is a direct sun reflex because there a lots of modules near the ISS Cupola module, those can result an indirect light reflex into the camera lens system. In addition, at the time of event, the ISS is near the earth terminator, so sunset/sunrise is involved in the event. An indirect reflex will also explain a difference in the objects motion compared to the ISS motion due to angle shifting effects.

So, from my point of view, nothing strange here.

Edited November 24, 2013 by toast

[Kahn]

Welcome toast, it's called a bokeh.