UFO Hunting Trip with IR (50 years ago)

[lonesome_dave]

 In March & April of 1973 there was a "UFO flap" in Piedmont, Missouri, east of the Ozarks. I decided to take my cameras with IR film down there to see what I could capture. I had with me a Yashica rangefinder loaded with Ektachrome Infrared, an Agfa rangefinder with Kodak High Speed Infrared and another rangefinder with 2475 Recording Film (ASA 1600). I saw some strange lights but never caught them on film. I did however snap some sidelights from the journey. Here's a few of the IR photos.

 

Caught some ducks by the roadway and captured them from out the car window on Ektachome Infrared.

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Next, a Kodak High-Speed Infrared timelapse, about 10 minutes.

This pic shows a rising star and a couple of planes with blinking lights flying by. Nothing unidentified here.

 

Another pic on High Speed Infrared.

A rainy day showing the motel where the famous UFO icon J. Allen Hynek was staying. This was the only motel in town and it was full so I got some valuable experience sleeping in the car and listening to Pink Floyd's recent Dark Side Of The Moon album on 8-track.

My desktop back home on Ektachrome Infrared.

The 'UFO detector' I took with me-- the top half of a modified metal detector that I added a Geiger counter and RF field strength meter to. (Those old White's Electronics metal detectors had a lot of empty space inside). Other artifacts in this pic-- an old Press 25 flashbulb with opaque IR coating, a red apple, a black golfing glove and a 400V Heathkit power supply.

 

 

[colinbm]

Looks good for ghost hunting too.

[Christoph]

Very cool!

[Nate]

Nice toys you got there. I hooked a guitar pickup to a 9v mini audio amplifier and a little speaker picks up metal and electricity. I bet yours works much better.

[Andrea B.]

Thoroughly enjoyed the story!

 

Were the strange lights ever identified as the one usual suspects (weather balloons, satellites, etc) or do they remain a mystery to this day? I kinda like it that we don't know everything, and there are still some unsolved mysteries in the world. 

[dabateman]

I don't know but I do find the fire that broke out in Missouri latter in July of 1973 destroying millions of military records,  suspicious. 

 

The truth will not be known. 

[lonesome_dave]

2 hours ago, Andrea B. said:

Were the strange lights ever identified as the one usual suspects (weather balloons, satellites, etc) or do they remain a mystery to this day? I kinda like it that we don't know everything, and there are still some unsolved mysteries in the world.

 

Well, the famous Mr. Hynek wrote it off as nothing to see here after spending one day talking to a few people. The usual problem is lack of evidence. A couple of photos with lights that could be anything and no trace evidence, just stories from eye witnesses. Only thing I saw that was very strange was what looked like the afterburner of a jet with it's lights out. The angular velocity would seem to make it close enough to hear the engine but it was silent. So, who knows? Maybe the military was doing something or maybe aliens.

 

One thing I do know is when you dedicate the whole night to observing the skies out in the country you will probably see something you can't explain. The problem comes when people try to explain it anyway.

[Avalon]

I have seen in my life multiple UFO's that I explain as natural phenomena, too bad I didn't had camera ready to capture them. There was famous UFO incident in my city Vilnius 1996 spotted by two policemen, military was put on alert and it was mentioned in CIA files. Also UFO's were reported by officials disabling nuclear weapons in USA and soviet union, pilots also have encountered them.  Most likely Earth is not only place where life exists and there could be 42,777 intelligent alien civilizations in our galaxy alone according to astronomers. They might as well be stealthily observing humankind. There I lot we do do not understand.

 

UFO is outdated and overused term filled with assumptions, new one is UAP. People with infrared night vision do film UAP's what made me curious if anybody here were lucky to see anything unusual in UV/IR spectrum? Cloaking technology already exists and aliens are probably using it but it may not be perfectly tuned for invisible spectrum. Propulsion might also be producing radiation. Primitive electrostatic levitation/propulsion was also already invented. That's at least my speculation and their technology coul be more advanced within laws of physics.  Nowadays you can hardly even see stars in the cities due to LED light pollution so full spectrum camera's can help see better things better. 

 

 

[Andy Perrin]

If we are going to speculate we need to stay within the known laws of physics and not assume ridiculous end-runs around them (I.e. forget wormholes and other super-unlikely ideas).

All civilizations are still limited by the speed of light, so if anybody has visited from elsewhere, it would have taken many human lifetimes to arrive, unless they came from a star very nearby. So I would imagine they would travel in some kind of planetoid-sized ship that could maintain them for a few generations. And I think we would see something like that coming. Much more “Rendezvous With Rama”-style than Star Trek. There are unlikely ever to be any warp drives.