UFO sighting - how best to analyse?

[baron]

I am certain that if I was still in touch with the friend to whom I refer, and he 'recalled' the event as accurately as I remember it, we would have exactly the same story to tell.

How does that negate the possibility of flawed memory? Have you called this friend? Did he corroborate all the details without prompting? If not, then we're back to square one; a flawed memory.

After 29 years the liklihood of recalling the exact manoevers of three tiny points of light are very slim. Furthermore, unless you wrote down your experiences within a reasonable timeframe of days or weeks then I'd say it's very possible the event was imagined. You, and everyone else, have numerous memories of events that simply did not happen. Such is the nature of memory.

I have a crystal clear memory of when I was about five years old. I was standing in the back garden watching a giant, multicoloured object hover a dozen yards away, over the field behind the back fence. This thing was five times the size of a house and I remember watching blue lights flash around its perimeter and thinking they reminded me of miniature ambulances racing around on tiny roadways. Trouble is, it never happened. Had it have occurred I expect my parents or neighbours would have mentioned it. They didn't. Either I dreamed it or the memory was fabricated at some later date.

 

[Thabiguy]

So far all I've read are generic explanations that fail to fit the facts and suggestions of memory failure as a probability.

Indeed, you should not use the word "facts". You should use terms such as "recollection", "report", "account", "testimony", "anecdote", etc. Your description of the event is in no way a fact; specifically, your opinion of its accuracy plays no role whatsoever in it being a fact or not.

Not wishing to pick up on detail, but to cite 'swamp gas reflecting Venus' as potentially giving rise to 'sightings like this' only serves, in my mind, to discredit the sincerity of your response...

'Swamp gas reflecting Venus' is obviously a joking reference to the motion picture Men in Black (where an agent, after erasing people's memories of an actual alien encounter, offers a ludicrous alternate explanation that[SIZE=-1] "swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus".)[/SIZE]

I know that neither fixed-wing aircraft nor helicopters could account for the sighting, unless a deliberate hoax was perpetrated, and even then I doubt very much that it could be done convincingly. If so, shame that only two teenagers seem to have witnessed it and been taken in by it. Hell of an expensive and ineffective hoax, that one!

This is an argument from incredulity. Some human action not seeming to make sense is not evidence that it didn't happen. (Or worse, can't happen.)

Furthermore, you admit that deliberate maneuvering of aircraft could produce such an effect, yet you offer no argument to support the assertion that such maneuvering could only be done in order to "perpetrate a hoax", and not for some other, more mundane reason.

Having said this, I would find these to be the most plausible explanations for your eyewitness report, in no particular order of likelihood:
- You have seen several high altitude aircraft performing some unusual rendezvous maneuvers. Details seemingly inconsistent with that ("sudden stops" etc.) are attributable to inaccurate observation (optical illusions, blinking, losing track, mistaking for a nearby star, aircraft switching lights on/off, ...) and/or inaccurate recollection of actual events.
- You have seen a satellite move across the sky. Major parts of your report inconsistent with that (stops, rotation, etc.) are a product of observation gaps filled with inaccurate reconstructions, suggestion, severe visual artifacts, hallucination, and/or distorted memory. (I have no objective information about your observational skills and reliability of your memory. In general population, this happens frequently enough to qualify as a plausible explanation.)
- You were lucky and have witnessed some very rare phenomenon (or a rare combination of some more common phenomena, creating a convincing show together) that doesn't normally occur. Not being familiar with this particular phenomenon (or combination), people won't generally be able to correctly guess what it actually was.
- You have made up some parts of or the whole story. (Again, in general population, this happens frequently enough to qualify as a plausible explanation.)

Of course, all these could be wrong and the actual explanation could be entirely different. After all, it could always have been extra-terrestrials performing a deliberate hoax.

 

[Gravy]

That said, yes, there is the possibility that man-made craft affords an explanation, but not of a type that I'm familiar with.

Thanks for clearing up that you agree that no aliens need apply. I wish it hadn't taken so many words.

 

[Southwind17]

Location? No problem, the way I see it. My "sighting" was at a farm in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. Note that NOSS started well before 1978.

It was about 4 am or so; the sky had some clouds. I, and other people, saw a configuration of three lights on what seemed to be an equilateral triangle formation with a fourth light in the centre. Each individual light looked quite like a small satellite. While the formation moved across the sky, it rotated slowly. The path was not unlike those of other satellites I've seen that night. I could see stars between the lights, so it seemed that there was nothing solid linking them. Sometimes the formation was covered by the clouds. At a vertain point, one of the triangle lights separated from the formation, performed a wide ellipsis across the sky and returned to it. The formation kept moving untill I lost sight of it due to cloud cover.

Since I never wrote a note describing the sighting immediately (or a few days) after it happened, and since it happened almost 30 years ago, I honestly can not be sure if it happened exactly as I am writing now. The devils lies in the details, but the details may have been created by my mind attempting to fill the memmory gaps. Can I be sure there was a fourth light in the centre of the formation? Coudn't it be a "detail" later added by my mind? Can I be sure if one of the lights detached from the formation? Couldn't it be an impression created by (moving) cloud cover and "improved" later by my mind?

Even if it all happened exactly as I told, and even if NOSS satellites could not perform such a maneuver, I would still think it most likely was not an alien craft. UFO? Yes. ET? No.

Thanks for this Correa Neto - helpful - especially your last statement, couldn't agree more. Maybe I'm just stubborn and don't like to admit defeat!

 

[Southwind17]

Thanks for clearing up that you agree that no aliens need apply. I wish it hadn't taken so many words.

Me too - but if you'd read my early posts carefully we could probably have plugged the verbal diarrhea earlier, as I effectively admitted from the start that I essentially discounted extra-terrestrial craft, and certainly aliens! Nonetheless, thanks for your contribution.

 

[Southwind17]

How does that negate the possibility of flawed memory? Have you called this friend? Did he corroborate all the details without prompting? If not, then we're back to square one; a flawed memory.

If two people recall an incident identically or essentially the same then surely that reduces considerably the possibility that either person's memory is flawed. I lost contact with the friend many years ago, indeed not very long after the sighting. Ironically, he went on to join the RAF. Maybe he has more sightings to disclose, or could now offer an informed explanation! Maybe we are back to square one, but to assume a flawed memory as the only, or indeed probable, expalantion, is itself equally flawed. I appreciate where you're coming from though, and it's understandable.

After 29 years the liklihood of recalling the exact manoevers of three tiny points of light are very slim. Furthermore, unless you wrote down your experiences within a reasonable timeframe of days or weeks then I'd say it's very possible the event was imagined. You, and everyone else, have numerous memories of events that simply did not happen. Such is the nature of memory.

Again, you make a big assumption here. Strange, isn't it, how I can recall accurately (we can test this if you like) many aspects of, say, mathematics taught around the same time at school, which I've not had the need to use or apply since, aspects which, on balance, are far more complex and, therefore, prone to memory distortion, than the very simplistic sighting I described. I'm sorry to be contrary, but I don't believe I have memories of events that I believe happened but did not (I think that's what you're saying). We all have all kinds of memories, some of true events, others of images, smells, sounds, etc, that could be loosely described as 'imagination'. I certainly can't think of anything though in my memory banks that constitutes a memory of an 'event' that I know didn't happen.

I have a crystal clear memory of when I was about five years old. I was standing in the back garden watching a giant, multicoloured object hover a dozen yards away, over the field behind the back fence. This thing was five times the size of a house and I remember watching blue lights flash around its perimeter and thinking they reminded me of miniature ambulances racing around on tiny roadways. Trouble is, it never happened. Had it have occurred I expect my parents or neighbours would have mentioned it. They didn't. Either I dreamed it or the memory was fabricated at some later date.

You see, I wouldn't call what you describe as a memory. You KNOW it didn't happen, by your own admission. You imagined something, and you can recall that imagination. I think there's a subtle, but important, difference between what you 'saw' and what I 'saw'. That said, we'll probably never be able to reconcile such difference as you could easily argue that my recollection could just as well fall into the same category as yours, and that I imagined the whole thing. The key difference here though is that you KNOW you imagined (or dreamed) your sighting, but I don't KNOW that I did, and firmly believe that I didn't.

 

[Southwind17]

First, start with the view that the alien visitation explanation suffers from a great number of flaws at the outset, most fatally that there is no evidence for life on other planets, let alone intelligent life that is visiting us, and that the requirements of evidence for this to be the explanation are much, much higher than that of more mundane explanations, including your memory not being entirely accurate. Basically, unexplained lights in the sky should not be sufficient to convince you of alien visitations even if you can't find another explanation for them.

Couldn't agree more.

Second, start examining the other explanations offered for how they could explain what you saw instead of trying to find details that don't fit with what you remember (ETA: with the understanding that none of us saw what you did and can only go by your description).

OK - I'm cool with this.

Understand that the movements you saw, even if your memory of them is correct, may not be what actually happened. For instance, the perception of a point of light moving left to right, stopping, and then moving right to left are adequately explained by a plane making a 180 degree turn if part of the turn is within your plane of view (ie, moving directly away from or towards you). At great distances, like the altitudes commercial airliners are typically found, the change in distance isn't nearly as perceptible as the change in position from left to right. You can rank the likelihood of these explanations by how well they fit with what you remember seeing, but don't automatically discount it because it doesn't fit every little detail. Remember that a mundane explanation that only explains 90% of what you saw is far more likely to be the right one than alien visitation.

OK - let's work with this for a minute. The first light source moved in a straight line at constant speed; no sound. Yes - could have been an aircraft, in the broadest sense of the word. It then 'stops' dead. Yes - maybe it didn't really stop, but changed direction, moving in our plane of view either directly towards or away from us - I can appreciate that. Given that it was almost directly overhead though, it must have been travelling essentially vertically, either towards the ground or away from the ground. That still seems plausible, but unusual, especially for civilian aircraft. The light point also remained of constant brightness and colour throughout the entire event, which seems odd if we're talking about significant changes in direction of travel. Surely the lights would be obscured by the bodies of the crafts at times(?). So be it, let's still entertain the idea of conventional aircraft. The 180 degree rotation involving now a seemingly identical light point. Yes, I can see how two aircraft could cause this effect. But for both to commence the 'manouvre' at exactly the same time, scribe exactly the same circumference across the sky (which just 'happened' to be a seemingly perfect circle from our viewing position), 'stop dead' (or alternatively change direction to the vertical, either up or down, remaining in our plane of view throughout), now that's starting to stretch the imagination. Nevertheless, let's continue. The same effect now occurs as just described, involving a third light point, IDENTICAL IN ALL RESPECTS to the first. Probability of civil or military aircraft creating this REGULAR GEOMETRIC effect by chance, meaning that it would probably have looked completely different and far less remarkable from any other viewing position - very remote. What we seem to be left with, then, is a planned, coordinated and extremely well orchestrated manouvre by three separate aircraft, or satellites, at night. OK - I can buy that, but it just seems so unlikely, I'd be more inclined to question my ability to rationalise than my memory. Maybe that's the answer!

Third, be prepared for the possibility that there just isn't enough information to explain what you saw. "I don't know" is not an unacceptable result. While the desire to know is a good thing, don't let it drive you to a conclusion that isn't supported.

Again, couldn't agree more, which is why I'm still a way off drawing a conclusion. I guess you're right though, we'll simply never know for sure what it was we saw. Case closed!

 

[Thabiguy]

Southwind, if one carefully reads your description of the event as you remember it, it becomes apparent that several aspects of what you describe cannot possibly have been observed and are just your interpretation. This highlights the point that eyewitness account - let alone after nearly 30 years - is simply not reliable and subject to inaccuracies, particularly in details.

You need to realize that much of what we observe, especially what we see, we do not actually perceive. Our perception system is inherently limited and lossy and our brain constantly reworks it and fills in major parts of our experience with what you might call, educated guesswork. This is not bad and in most situations it works very well; it saves processing power, and if details are important, we are often around to recheck and update our memory 'on the fly', without us ever becoming aware of any inconsistencies. This is demonstrated in this popular clip.

But you seem to be under the impression that what you saw - or think you saw - is an accurate reflection of reality. Let us review some of your reported observations.

The light point also remained of constant brightness and colour throughout the entire event...

An untrained human observer can't even remotely make this claim based upon naked eye observation. Human eyes is notoriously bad at perceiving subtle and slow changes in brightness, and especially in color, under poor lighting conditions. Not only that, but your brain constantly messes with the raw input, trying to compensate for perspective, parallax, iris dilation (which happens all the time without you being aware of it), and what not.

In fact, any object remaining at constant absolute magnitude and height will, just by moving from overhead (90 degress) to 45 degrees over horizon, increase its distance by over 41%, diminishing correspondingly. That the object would remain of constant brightness throughout the entire event, is extremely unlikely, as it would imply an object either moving on the surface of a sphere centered on you, or compensating its absolute magnitude depending on its distance from you, both very implausible assumptions.

That you claim with confidence that the object remained of constant brightness, even though we can be virtually certain that it did not, regardless of the nature of the object, is an example of unreliability of eyewitness account and impression replacing actual events in your memory.

But for both to commence the 'manouvre' at exactly the same time, scribe exactly the same circumference across the sky (which just 'happened' to be a seemingly perfect circle from our viewing position)...

Here is another obvious example of a claim which can't be based on actual reality of observation.

With two light points moving slowly over a mostly dark background with many similar dots, and leaving no traces at all, it would be practically impossible for you to accurately assess their trajectory and the quality of its shape. In the absence of a background grid, you would have: 1) no means of perceiving the actual position of the dots (distances from surrounding stars, especially for a moving object, would give no useful information); 2) no means of comparing actual position to past positions. Using words such as "exactly the same circumference" or "seemingly perfect circle" is entirely baseless; you were without any means of determining that even remotely.

And it is worse. You have said before that the distance between the points was 6 cm at an arm's length. This corresponds to about 6 degrees. However, the width of your foveal vision (sharp central vision, essential for perceiving visual details) is only 3 degrees. Do you know what this means? This means that - without you ever realizing it - your eyes would alternately look between the two points. They would be moving back and forth, with your brain masking it and filling in the gaps so that it would seem like a continuous observation to you. But (unless you intentionally stared between the two points and tried to perceive them with your weaker macular vision, which I'm fairly certain didn't happen) you would only be able to observe one point at a time. Your actual visual input, for either point, would be an interrupted chain of short arcs, shifted rapidly over your visual field a few times per second. Without detailed background, this would more or less completely negate your ability to assess the actual quality of the circular path. Your brain would substitute its guess for this missing information and pass that to you as actual observation.

I know what you mean to say; you saw a perfect circle. What you don't realize however, is this is not what you saw - this is what your impression was. The dots' trajectory could have been a fairly distorted bumpy potato, only roughly circular, and you would still have seen a perfect circle, because you would have no means of perceiving the irregularities. Here you do not recall the actual reality, but your brain's intepretation of it. And that is, for aforementioned reasons, flawed and subject to inaccuracy.

Another thought comes to mind: how do you know that the distance was 6 cm at an arm's length? Did you immediately reach up your arm to measure it while the points were rotating? Unless you did this (as a trained astronomer possibly would, but an untrained teenager would be very unlikely to do), then you again would have no means of accurately determining this afterwards. Trying to later recall how distant the points were and fitting your hand against this memory could easily yield an error of several hundred percent. In fact, it would be very unusual if you got that right.

What we seem to be left with, then, is a planned, coordinated and extremely well orchestrated manouvre...

For reasons mentioned above, the claim of "extremely well orchestrated manouvre" is baseless. Relying on your naked eye observation, with the points of light leaving no traces, it was impossible for you to assess this.

 

[Cuddles]

All I was seeking was possible plausible explanations for what we saw...

So far all I've read are generic explanations that fail to fit the facts and suggestions of memory failure as a probability.

I ask again, what else do you expect of us? You were seeking possible explanations. We have given you possible explanations. Since all we have is a single 30 year old memory, what more do you think you're going to get?

Interesting, actually, thinking about it. Let's assume for a second the memory theory is right. I suppose the effect of that is that the sighting, as described, could be virtually fabricated, the memory converting a completely unrelated event to an alleged UFO sighting. Alternatively, maybe the sighting was genuine but the recollection has been only slightly altered over time, possibly embelishing the facts for dramatical effect. You state that a 'faulty' memory is 'the most likely' alternative. What, exactly, are you asserting in the context of my musings above, and what scientific evidence do you base your probabilistic assessment on?

I thought it was fairly obvious what I'm asserting. What you say happened isn't actually what happened. This is based on the scientific evidence that memory is in no way reliable, especially after 30 years, and that even at the time, what you think you see is very often not what is actually happening. Again, what more do you want? Obviously I can't tell you what really did happen because I wasn't there and you have no evidence for anyone to work with. Thabigguy's last post sums up pretty well the sort of thing that you are likely to have wrong.

Not wishing to pick up on detail, but to cite 'swamp gas reflecting Venus' as potentially giving rise to 'sightings like this' only serves, in my mind, to discredit the sincerity of your response, and demonstrates my earlier inference that many forum members who are all too keen to participate in these threads and have their say are, in contrast, all too single-minded not to consider the facts, views, opinions, assertions, etc.

There's this amazing thing called a sense of humour. I suggest you try one out at some point. Swamp gas reflecting Venus is a long running joke about UFO sightings. As Thabigguy pointed out, it appears in Men in Black, but I believe it was around well before that. It's amazing how you have managed to deduce my entire personality and reasons for posting from a simple throwaway joke.

If one cannot contribute positively to a debate with fresh or novel ideas then maybe one should simply sit back, observe and take solace from those who can.

Feel free to do so at any time.

 

[Zep]

I would almost bet it is two or more aircraft on a similar approach pattern to an airport. You need to note the following points:

1) Aircraft approach patterns to airports are often tens of miles from the airport proper. Commercial aircraft start descent from altitude often 100 miles from touchdown. So you may not have been near an airport yourself, but they were, relatively speaking.

2) Aircraft lights at night always look about the same brightness at any visible distance, except for very close up. You can check this yourself by standing at the end of a busy airport runway at night and looking out into the night sky and seeing anything up to a dozen aircraft lights on approach. The nearest may be only a few miles away, the furthest might be 50 miles away on a clear night.

3) Most busy airports use set circuits and approach paths for aircraft to lose height and line up to land. Safety thing, naturally.

4) So get a few aircraft following each other on an approach path, they cross the sky at a good distance from you, turn towards you one after the other, then turn to land. Thus you have your nice, simple, parsimonious explanation for your "UFO's".

But this was explained to you above, no?

 

[baron]

If two people recall an incident identically or essentially the same then surely that reduces considerably the possibility that either person's memory is flawed. I lost contact with the friend many years ago, indeed not very long after the sighting. Ironically, he went on to join the RAF. Maybe he has more sightings to disclose, or could now offer an informed explanation! Maybe we are back to square one, but to assume a flawed memory as the only, or indeed probable, expalantion, is itself equally flawed.

It may be wrong, but the reasoning is not logically flawed. My solution is workable and perfectly possible. Indeed, given your account it is the only reasonable conclusion.

Again, you make a big assumption here. Strange, isn't it, how I can recall accurately (we can test this if you like) many aspects of, say, mathematics taught around the same time at school, which I've not had the need to use or apply since, aspects which, on balance, are far more complex and, therefore, prone to memory distortion, than the very simplistic sighting I described.

Sorry, but this shows you don't understand the basics of how memories are laid down and processed in the brain. You need to gain this understanding first. There is a big difference between memory and knowledge.

I certainly can't think of anything though in my memory banks that constitutes a memory of an 'event' that I know didn't happen.

Obviously not, but if there was a way of proving it I'd bet good money that you actually do harbour false memories.

You see, I wouldn't call what you describe as a memory. You KNOW it didn't happen, by your own admission.

No, you didn't read my post. I only know it was imagined because it could not have happened. There is zero difference between this recollection and my other memories. I know it didn't happen because given the choice between false memory and amazing alien craft, I go for the proven and common phenomenon of false memory.

 

[Southwind17]

Southwind, if one carefully reads your description of the event as you remember it, it becomes apparent that several aspects of what you describe cannot possibly have been observed and are just your interpretation. This highlights the point that eyewitness account - let alone after nearly 30 years - is simply not reliable and subject to inaccuracies, particularly in details.

Thanks for a most informative critique of my description of the sighting. You're obviously pretty well versed in whatever theories, principles, laws, etc. govern observations, sight, perception and the like, and I respect that. Could you please clarify though, which are the 'several aspects' to which you allude, but omit to refer, that 'cannot possibly have been observed'? Which parts of the observation do you render IMPOSSIBLE?

You need to realize that much of what we observe, especially what we see, we do not actually perceive. Our perception system is inherently limited and lossy and our brain constantly reworks it and fills in major parts of our experience with what you might call, educated guesswork. This is not bad and in most situations it works very well; it saves processing power, and if details are important, we are often around to recheck and update our memory 'on the fly', without us ever becoming aware of any inconsistencies. This is demonstrated in this popular clip.

As interesting as this demonstration is, I fail to see the link. All it seems to demonstrate to me is that, as humans, we’re inherently unobservant when it comes to things that don’t seemingly matter. I doubt that anybody watching the clip will have failed to notice that the card chosen was the three of diamonds, which, at that point in time, was the only relevant detail. The fact that many other aspects of the set changed as the trick progressed, whilst probably surprising to some, and certainly interesting to most, simply shows that we care little for what seems irrelevant. Ironically, you couldn’t have chosen a more apt example to demonstrate, in my view, an unrelated visual/observational concept, but which unwittingly adds credence to my recollection. The three diamonds on the chosen playing card effectively represent the three light points, i.e. the main point of interest, and the card itself represents the location of the light points at any point in time, an equally key point of interest. Observing the card trick, we know, all along, that there are definitely three diamonds at play and where they (the playing card) are. This is closely analogous to observing the light points described. Their appearance and movement were so critical to the observation that they were the details that were remembered with accuracy. The remainder of the event (exact part of the sky observed, what we were wearing, what day it was, etc.) were not relevant to the sighting. They’re the parts that I will willingly confess to not remembering.

But you seem to be under the impression that what you saw - or think you saw - is an accurate reflection of reality. Let us review some of your reported observations.

An untrained human observer can't even remotely make this claim based upon naked eye observation. Human eyes is notoriously bad at perceiving subtle and slow changes in brightness, and especially in color, under poor lighting conditions. Not only that, but your brain constantly messes with the raw input, trying to compensate for perspective, parallax, iris dilation (which happens all the time without you being aware of it), and what not.

In fact, any object remaining at constant absolute magnitude and height will, just by moving from overhead (90 degress) to 45 degrees over horizon, increase its distance by over 41%, diminishing correspondingly. That the object would remain of constant brightness throughout the entire event, is extremely unlikely, as it would imply an object either moving on the surface of a sphere centered on you, or compensating its absolute magnitude depending on its distance from you, both very implausible assumptions.

That you claim with confidence that the object remained of constant brightness, even though we can be virtually certain that it did not, regardless of the nature of the object, is an example of unreliability of eyewitness account and impression replacing actual events in your memory.

In referring to the light points remaining of constant brightness throughout the sighting I omitted to reiterate what I described in my initial account, that the finally observed light point did, indeed, fade out as at passed farther to our right, and I apologize for any confusion caused. That does, however, seem consistent with your explanation, and supports the notion of a physical object traveling away from us. The remainder of the sighting occurred in a relatively narrow band of observable sky, the first light point becoming noticeable approaching from the left at no lower than 30 degrees to the meridian, and the two ‘circular’ manouvres occurring within roughly a 30-degree ‘band’ straddling the meridian. Otherwise, the light points remained of equivalent colour and brightness to the ambient stars, which I am using as my point of reference. Indeed, had the light points not moved I am sure we would, had we had other cause to observe them, have passed them off as stars, which tends to explain why the first two light points, after becoming stationary following the circular manouvres, effectively merged with the surrounding stars.

Here is another obvious example of a claim which can't be based on actual reality of observation.

With two light points moving slowly over a mostly dark background with many similar dots, and leaving no traces at all, it would be practically impossible for you to accurately assess their trajectory and the quality of its shape. In the absence of a background grid, you would have: 1) no means of perceiving the actual position of the dots (distances from surrounding stars, especially for a moving object, would give no useful information); 2) no means of comparing actual position to past positions. Using words such as "exactly the same circumference" or "seemingly perfect circle" is entirely baseless; you were without any means of determining that even remotely.

I disagree. I know you would like to believe this, but I doubt you have tested it. I am pretty confident that were you to mimic the sighting by projecting two laser lights of equivalent brightness onto a star-studded darkened background at equivalent distance to the observed lights it would not be difficult to differentiate from slow, deliberate movement scribing a circle and anything distinctly different, especially a ‘fairly distorted bumpy potato’.

And it is worse. You have said before that the distance between the points was 6 cm at an arm's length. This corresponds to about 6 degrees. However, the width of your foveal vision (sharp central vision, essential for perceiving visual details) is only 3 degrees. Do you know what this means? This means that - without you ever realizing it - your eyes would alternately look between the two points. They would be moving back and forth, with your brain masking it and filling in the gaps so that it would seem like a continuous observation to you. But (unless you intentionally stared between the two points and tried to perceive them with your weaker macular vision, which I'm fairly certain didn't happen) you would only be able to observe one point at a time. Your actual visual input, for either point, would be an interrupted chain of short arcs, shifted rapidly over your visual field a few times per second. Without detailed background, this would more or less completely negate your ability to assess the actual quality of the circular path. Your brain would substitute its guess for this missing information and pass that to you as actual observation.

I know what you mean to say; you saw a perfect circle. What you don't realize however, is this is not what you saw - this is what your impression was. The dots' trajectory could have been a fairly distorted bumpy potato, only roughly circular, and you would still have seen a perfect circle, because you would have no means of perceiving the irregularities. Here you do not recall the actual reality, but your brain's intepretation of it. And that is, for aforementioned reasons, flawed and subject to inaccuracy.

Another thought comes to mind: how do you know that the distance was 6 cm at an arm's length? Did you immediately reach up your arm to measure it while the points were rotating? Unless you did this (as a trained astronomer possibly would, but an untrained teenager would be very unlikely to do), then you again would have no means of accurately determining this afterwards. Trying to later recall how distant the points were and fitting your hand against this memory could easily yield an error of several hundred percent. In fact, it would be very unusual if you got that right.

I don’t know the exact distance. I have assessed it based on my recollection. It could have been slightly more or less than 6cm, but I refute your ‘several hundred percent’ inaccuracy suggestion. 100% would equate to 12cm, and I recall for sure that it was certainly less than that. Either way, I doubt you have a bouquet of ideas that can be selectively applied to the possible circumference range of the circles scribed! The fact that you are paying so much attention to challenging the absolute accuracy of my description could well be detracting from your ability to assimilate the incident in the round, which is tantamount to what I think you’re actually accusing me of!

For reasons mentioned above, the claim of "extremely well orchestrated manouvre" is baseless. Relying on your naked eye observation, with the points of light leaving no traces, it was impossible for you to assess this.

Actually, there was no ‘assessment’, simply an observation of an unsophisticated, albeit it geometric, movement of point lights across a clear night sky. It seemed rather easy and uncomplicated at the time, which probably accounts for why the details of the incident have stuck with me for so long.

 

[Southwind17]

I ask again, what else do you expect of us? You were seeking possible explanations. We have given you possible explanations. Since all we have is a single 30 year old memory, what more do you think you're going to get?

I didn't know what I might get. No harm in asking though was there? I'm not exactly holding a gun to anybody's head insisting that they proffer an explanation that I'm satisfied with. If you feel you can add nothing further to this thread then I thank you for your contribution and respectfully suggest that you divert your attention to an obviously more worthwhile cause.

There's this amazing thing called a sense of humour. I suggest you try one out at some point. Swamp gas reflecting Venus is a long running joke about UFO sightings. As Thabigguy pointed out, it appears in Men in Black, but I believe it was around well before that. It's amazing how you have managed to deduce my entire personality and reasons for posting from a simple throwaway joke.

I'm sorry - your simple throw-away joke was lost on me - I wasn't expecting trivialisation and failed to spot the signs. Interesting, though, if not amazing, that I still managed to characterize you accurately! There's a quality I didn't realize I had. Maybe it compensates for my apparent lack of sense of humour, and congratulations on deducing my personality too - seems we're both gifted with the same talent - something in common, at least. Tell you what, I'll see if I can go out and acquire a sense of humuor if you promise to have your charisma by-pass reversed - deal?!?

 

[Southwind17]

I would almost bet it is two or more aircraft on a similar approach pattern to an airport. You need to note the following points:

I appreciate your thoughts, but can you direct me to a demonstration of where a pattern of approach lights even remotely resembles what we observed, and where it isn't blatantly obvious that they are indeed civil aircraft. I assume you've witnessed such an event, or are you purely postulating?

2) Aircraft lights at night always look about the same brightness at any visible distance, except for very close up. You can check this yourself by standing at the end of a busy airport runway at night and looking out into the night sky and seeing anything up to a dozen aircraft lights on approach. The nearest may be only a few miles away, the furthest might be 50 miles away on a clear night.

This is interesting. Seems to contradict what Thabiguy has said though ... and what happened to the Inverse Square Law?

4) So get a few aircraft following each other on an approach path, they cross the sky at a good distance from you, turn towards you one after the other, then turn to land. Thus you have your nice, simple, parsimonious explanation for your "UFO's".

Of course - but maybe just a little too 'parsimonious' and convenient, methinks. I wonder why similar sightings are not reported, and indeed filmed, on a regular basis - people must surely be falling for this one all the time!

 

[Southwind17]

Sorry, but this shows you don't understand the basics of how memories are laid down and processed in the brain. You need to gain this understanding first. There is a big difference between memory and knowledge.

Oh, I see, my mistake, sorry. So, recalling a mathematical formula or principle, for example, is necessarily knowledge and not memory, just like 'learning' the times tables is? Mmmm ... I don't quite get that one. I certainly don't know that E=mc2 through knowledge (I never studied it, and can't explain it!), or that six sixes are thirty six, so it must be through memory, surely?

No, you didn't read my post. I only know it was imagined because it could not have happened. There is zero difference between this recollection and my other memories. I know it didn't happen because given the choice between false memory and amazing alien craft, I go for the proven and common phenomenon of false memory.

... and here's the underlying flaw in your entire reasoning - thank you for revealing it so openly. Allow me to quote, for dramatic effect (emphasis added):

"I only KNOW it was imagined because it COULD NOT have happened. I KNOW it didn't happen because given the CHOICE between false memory and amazing alien craft, I go for the proven and common phenomenon of false memory."

There we go, now we're seeing it. You witness something - you recall it later - it doesn't seem to make sense - so you immediately put it down to 'the proven and common phenomenon of false memory' - the only possible alternative being something that can't possibly be explained otherwise. You must have a very sad and narrow outlook on life and it's remaining mysteries. I take it you're not a scientist. Is there an icon round here somewhere to nominate a JREF most skeptical skeptic?!?

 

[Zep]

I appreciate your thoughts, but can you direct me to a demonstration of where a pattern of approach lights even remotely resembles what we observed, and where it isn't blatantly obvious that they are indeed civil aircraft. I assume you've witnessed such an event, or are you purely postulating?

Please don't be obtuse. There could be many such patterns! How about you think of various tracks in the sky, then consider what the lights travelling along them might look like from various viewpoints. I certainly have witnessed this myself!

This is interesting. Seems to contradict what Thabiguy has said though ... and what happened to the Inverse Square Law?

No it doesn't at all. It's just that the perception of brightness is not perfect in human eyes. Lights at night can easily fool human eyesight.

Of course - but maybe just a little too 'parsimonious' and convenient, methinks. I wonder why similar sightings are not reported, and indeed filmed, on a regular basis - people must surely be falling for this one all the time!

Errmmm... They do... All the time. It is probably THE most common misconception for UFO's in existence.

 

[Southwind17]

Errmmm... They do... All the time. It is probably THE most common misconception for UFO's in existence.

So plenty such sightings documented then, presumably. Perhaps you'd be so kind as to direct me to some, for comparison with my sighting. Thanks, in anticipation.

 

[Correa Neto]

Southwind17, I have the impression that you are being a bit biased with some ideas presented by some posters. It seems you find explanations involving faulty recollections specially problematic.

However, as some already pointed out, with the availble information, such speculations can not be quickly dismissed, even if you do belive or feel the sighting happened the exactly the way you remember it.

Check, for example,
http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/eyewitnessmemory.html
http://forensic-evidence.com/site/Behv_Evid/BhvE_Paige.html
Performing a search for eyewitnesses reliability and false memory right here will also provide you some very usefull links that will help you to understand the many problems with eyewitness' reports. Its not dismissing it out of hand, is acknoweledging that there may be an issue with it.

This put, there are a few more points I would like to comment.

1. People pointed out the possibility that the stop may have been an illusion; the object merely turned towards you. You said not, since it was right above you. Well, this was not clear from your previous posts... How could anyone have guessed? Aniway, consider the fact that satellites usually follow equatorial or polar orbits. If the objects' tajectory was N-S or E-W, this increases the odds of being an NOSS-like satellite group...

2. Satellites quite often "pass almost right over our heads", another match.

3. Satellites are only visible untill a certain time after sunset or before dawn; in the meantime, Earth's shadow cone allows no sunlight to illuminate them. If the sighting was not within the propper timeframe, satellites can be ruled out.
You might want to check these sites for more info (and predictions) on satellite observation.
http://www.heavens-above.com/main.aspx
http://www.satobs.org/satintro.html

4. You can not also completely dismiss the possibility that you experienced some sort of illusion that created the apparent movment.

 

[Thabiguy]

Thanks for a most informative critique of my description of the sighting. You're obviously pretty well versed in whatever theories, principles, laws, etc. govern observations, sight, perception and the like, and I respect that. Could you please clarify though, which are the 'several aspects' to which you allude, but omit to refer, that 'cannot possibly have been observed'? Which parts of the observation do you render IMPOSSIBLE?

Those that I mentioned. For example, determining with the implied level of accuracy the regularity of the path of slowly moving points leaving no traces; determining presence or absence of subtle changes in an object's brightness over time; determining with the implied level of accuracy the angular distance between points, or how much it changes when the points move around each other.

Otherwise, the light points remained of equivalent colour and brightness to the ambient stars, which I am using as my point of reference.

On a clear night, you can see stars ranging all the way from, say, 0 to +4 magnitude, and with a wide range of colors (that are difficult for humans to see becose the light is so dim, but become very apparent on magnified color photographs). "Equivalent brightness to the ambient stars" could mean +1 magnitude just as well as +3 magnitude, which is over 6 times the difference in brightness. Under these circumstances, it is unclear to me what your "point of reference" is.

I disagree. I know you would like to believe this, but I doubt you have tested it. I am pretty confident that were you to mimic the sighting by projecting two laser lights of equivalent brightness onto a star-studded darkened background at equivalent distance to the observed lights it would not be difficult to differentiate from slow, deliberate movement scribing a circle and anything distinctly different, especially a ‘fairly distorted bumpy potato’.

I have actually tested this. I have written a simple program rotating two light points on a star background and shown this twice to a volunteer, with what I'd call fairly distorted paths. Upon questioning them, they used the term 'circle' and didn't report any distortion at all. Even after I've told them that the trajectories are distorted, and even when allowing them to replay the animation at their will, they found it extraordinarily difficult to draw the shape of the trajectory. After being shown the actual trajectory, they expressed surprise at how much it differed from what they imagined. You can have the program if you can arrange for transfer of binary data.

After the experiments I've done, I say with certainty that if you think you would be able to detect and recall irregularities in the path of two slowly moving points leaving no traces, thirty years ago, without having been previously alerted to the possibility that the paths may not be perfectly circular, you are simply deluding yourself.

I don’t know the exact distance. I have assessed it based on my recollection. It could have been slightly more or less than 6cm, but I refute your ‘several hundred percent’ inaccuracy suggestion. 100% would equate to 12cm, and I recall for sure that it was certainly less than that.

Oh, okay. You can try an experiment for yourself. If you are into watching the night sky, I suppose you have seen the constellations of Orion and Cassiopeia, many many times. Using just your memory, without checking the actual night sky or looking it up, try to assess the angular size of the Orion's belt and the angular width of the Cassiopeia's W, "at arm's length". After you have written down your assessment, feel free to measure the actual angular sizes, look them up, or ask here for the correct answer, and evaluate your error. Of course there is nothing preventing you from cheating, but this is an experiment for yourself, not for me.

The fact that you are paying so much attention to challenging the absolute accuracy of my description could well be detracting from your ability to assimilate the incident in the round, which is tantamount to what I think you’re actually accusing me of!

It is you who implies the absolute accuracy of your description after nearly 30 years. I have tried to show you that several aspects of what you claim you "clearly remember" would in fact be very difficult for you to assess, and appear to be a product of your interpretation. I have tried to explain to you that it makes no sense to discount an explanation for your observation if it doesn't fit some particular details that you think you've observed.

I'm not trying to say that unless your report is 100% accurate, it is worthless. What I'm trying to say is that while you can use little details to rule out explanations when you've got, for example, a recording of the event on camera, you cannot do the same when all you've got is a 30-year old eyewitness account, even if the witness swears by Zeus that it's all true and accurate. This means that one of the explanations that you've ruled out as inconsistent with your observation may be correct after all.

Actually, there was no ‘assessment’, simply an observation of an unsophisticated, albeit it geometric, movement of point lights across a clear night sky.

No. What you have described and the reported accuracy thereof exceeds the ability of human naked eye observation. With hardly any background and the point lights leaving no traces, and the event happening only once, without you expecting it, I assert that it would be impossible for you to determine the geometric qualities of the lights' trajectory with the accuracy that is implied by words such as "exactly the same circumference", "perfect circle" or "extremely well orchestrated manouvre".

In short, you should take your own recollections with a grain of salt, and not ascribe to them the accuracy of a videotape, even if the observed event is very simple.

 

[baron]

Oh, I see, my mistake, sorry. So, recalling a mathematical formula or principle, for example, is necessarily knowledge and not memory, just like 'learning' the times tables is? Mmmm ... I don't quite get that one. I certainly don't know that E=mc2 through knowledge (I never studied it, and can't explain it!), or that six sixes are thirty six, so it must be through memory, surely?

E=MC2 is an example of semantic memory, sometimes referred to as knowledge, and your UFO sighting is an example of visual and episodic memory. These memories are laid down differently and are treated differently in the brain. Why do you hold forth on subjects of which you are clearly ignorant?

There we go, now we're seeing it. You witness something - you recall it later - it doesn't seem to make sense - so you immediately put it down to 'the proven and common phenomenon of false memory' - the only possible alternative being something that can't possibly be explained otherwise. You must have a very sad and narrow outlook on life and it's remaining mysteries.

If thinking that makes you feel better then go ahead. The truth is, if I see a bird on a tree branch and the next time I look it's not there, I assume it has flown away. I do not assume it has been kidnapped by aliens, or eaten by unicorns, or succombed to spontaneous avian combustion as a result of proximity to plasma-based Martian tree fairies. It's in this way that I can appreciate the true wonders of the world without resorting to brainless woo-woo theories and infantile fantasy conjecture.

I take it you're not a scientist.

Sure, because if you asked a scientist, "What's more likely; false childhood memory or a giant flashing alien spacecraft?" he'd reply, "The spacecraft, of course!"

Is there an icon round here somewhere to nominate a JREF most skeptical skeptic?!?

Yep, it's the "nominate" button under my post. Feel free to click away.