The 1998 Somerset, England UFO Footage: Revisited, Enhanced

First up is a 3 and a half minute excerpt from the SciFi (SyFy) network’s coverage of the event, recently posted by Easynow at the notorious YouTube. I have seen this footage of Rod Dickinson’s through the years and I feel it is authentic… footage of what is the obvious question.  Bill George, an Academy Award-winning visual effects master at Industrial Light and Magic is consulted within and he can’t, of course answer that question – however he also feels that it is genuine and unaltered.

And finally we have an excellent video response of 4 and a quarter minutes to Easynow’s excerpt from our friend LunaCognita – wherein the film is stabilized on the discordantly discoidal nodule and enhanced, lending we the curious a very nice view of it indeed. Props, Luna!

Happy viewing to all…

eeasynow | July 08, 2010

no description available

LunaCognita | July 08, 2010

This particular segment (or segments, rather) of footage we will be looking at in this presentation involves a UFO sighting that occurred on July 4th, 1998 just outside of the town of Somerset in southwest England, filmed by a man named Rod Dickinson.

As always, the enhancements shown here were built from the highest quality copy of the source footage that I was able to obtain. Unfortunately in this case, I was not able to acquire a complete unedited copy of the raw Somerset footage to work with, and it is my understanding that Mr. Dickinson is no longer in possession of the original raw tape. This forced me to use a segmented copy taken from a UFO documentary in which the raw footage had already been broken apart and edited into several short highlight clips. This fact has most definitely negatively influenced the quality and quantity of visual data available for enhancement.

As you will see, the raw footage of this UFO encounter clearly suffers from significant camera shake/instability issues. In fact, I have to say that this is the shakiest, most unstable UFO video footage I have ever personally analyzed. These already brutal instability issues are further magnified by the fact that the raw copy of the footage I was forced to use as the Alpha source file appears to have been subjected to some level of video compression, which, thanks to the brutal amount of shake, creates significant interpolation blurring and frame “ghosting” being introduced/amplified. This effect is blatantly apparent in every copy of this Dickinson/Somerset UFO footage I have ever seen, and the copy I used as the Alpha source file for this presentation is no exception, with a high number of raw frames showing both the actual UFO as well as a second “ghost” of the UFO visible in the same frame, offset 180 degrees opposite of the direction of shake travel.

Just to give you a better idea of how detrimental this ghosting effect was to the stabilization process here, in the segments of footage I show labeled as “Sequence#1” and “Sequence#4”, roughly 50% of the frames had to be eliminated from the stabilization process due to being ruined by blurring and/or ghosting effects. “Sequence#3” was even worse, with close to 70% of the raw frames being garbage and unusable for the same reasons. Still, even with those significant negative factors working against the stabilizing process, I still considered this footage interesting enough to warrant the effort involved in trying to improve the viewability of the scene.

Also, please keep in mind that the term “UFO” does not mean “a spaceship flown by aliens”. It means “Unidentified Flying Object” – an object that is visible in the sky that cannot be positively identified as a known object of terrestrial origin. There is simply no way for us to tell from this footage just what this object is, where it came from, how it got there, or where it went afterwards. By definition, that makes it a “UFO”.

Cheers everyone, and I hope you enjoy this presentation!
LunaCognita
lunacognita@gmail.com

LunaCognita Gets Forensic On Apollo

Ah, great, here’s the new vid from LunaCognita that looks into more of the footage shot during the Apollo missions. I posted a bit about the trailer for it a little while ago on this blog.

Actually, I’m holding out hope that this is only a part of a bigger picture… there’s some cool anomaly shots in it to be sure… including a truly inexplicable boomerang shaped thing… you’ll see… but my thirst for more and more weirdness is strong; and the second half presents a visual representation of the results of frame stacking, as explained more below.

Frame stacking is an old technique that can produce some seriously spectacular results unachievable by any other method… it is very commonly used by the astronomical community and professional photographers and photographic printers alike in a process called HDR, or High Dynamic Range photography. That’s printers as in people, not machines, by the way.

A very handy link was found at NASA’s History site in a section on Apollo 12’s approach and landing by Easynow over at ATS… it goes into some detail, with pics, about the DAC camera and its mountings, view angles and other good stuff… please do check it out, it’s pretty cool.

NASA’s Apollo Coverup – A Forensic Look At The 16mm DAC Film Footage

Subscribe

LunaCognita
March 16, 2010

In this presentation, we will focus on taking a closer look at several interesting segments of film footage from the NASA archives. All the footage shown and analyzed here was originally shot by NASA astronauts during the Apollo missions (1968-1972) on 16mm film, using what was known as the “Data Acquisition Camera” – the “DAC”.

The Maurer “DAC” cameras were modified variable frame rate 16mm motion picture film cameras used by the various Apollo crews throughout their missions to film scenes of interest through the windows of the spacecraft, interior spacecraft activities, as well as to shoot exterior footage during lunar surface “moonwalk” operations and Low-Earth Orbit or Trans-Earth-Coast EVA ops in cis-lunar space.

I included a bit more information on the Apollo DAC camera in the brief writeup I did attached to the earlier teaser/trailer video for this presentation – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo81LM…

FRAME-STACKING
In the last half of this presentation (starting at 4:30), I show various examples where I employ an enhancement technique known as “frame-stacking” against the raw DAC archive footage. In certain cases, frame-stacking can be employed to forensically attack the raw frames of film and produce an enhanced composite still-frame of a stable (or motion-stabilized) scene. It should be noted that “stacking” is by no means a new method of enhancing video or motion picture film footage. It is a digital enhancement technique that has been around a lot longer than most people would probably believe, and in many cases it can provide us an improved look at some of the deeper image detail that is actually buried beneath the random “noise” in the raw footage.

Frame-stacking exploits the fact that the DAC footage, like any motion picture camera or digital video footage, is comprised of many sequential still images shown in rapid succession to simulate the appearance of motion to the viewer’s eye. If the raw footage is providing us with a stable (or motion-stabilized) scene that has no or little movement in the field-of-view, it might appear that the scene is comprised of many individual photographs that all seem to capture the identical view. However, appearances can be deceiving, and the truth is that each of those individual frames making up the raw film footage have slight variances between them, with each one suffering from its own unique random noise artifacts. “Stacking” works by analyzing and comparing all the raw frames that make up a segment of footage, allowing for the detection and subtraction of random noise artifacting from each individual raw frame. Those individual cleaned frames are then stacked together in order to construct a high-resolution composite image of the captured scene.

The first two examples I show in the frame-stacking segment were included merely to demonstrate the effectiveness of this enhancement technique when employed against raw archive footage of a known object – in this case, an Apollo Lunar Module. The first example is film footage from Apollo 9 taken in low-Earth orbit with an automatic 16mm DAC camera mounted to the open hatch of the CSM aiming “up” towards the Lunar Module (which was docked to the nose of the CSM at the time). Astronaut Rusty Schweickhart (LMP) can be seen standing on the porch of the LM, where he was conducting an EVA to test and verify the performance of the Apollo A7-L spacesuit and PLSS life support pack. A magnified split-screen closeup of the LM’s Rendevzous Radar Antenna allows for a direct comparative analysis of the raw footage versus the “stacked” enhancement as an example to demonstrate the improvements in clarity that can be gained.

The second demonstration example is not actually DAC footage, but rather is television footage from the Apollo 15 mission showing the LM “Falcon” sitting on the lunar surface, taken with the tripod-mounted GCTA-TV camera. I chose this example of raw GCTA-TV footage because it clearly suffers from rather severe noise issues, providing another good demonstration of the enhancement potential that frame-stacking can offer. As you can plainly see in both the DAC and GCTA-TV examples showing the LM, the stack enhancements offer considerable improvement in image clarity, allowing us to extract detail that in some cases may appear to not even be detectable when viewing the raw footage.

This presentation here is just the first part of a multi-part series focusing on the truth (and the lies) in the Apollo DAC footage. Hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for more to come!

Cheers,
LunaCognita

Keep them coming, LC, we be diggin’ it…

The Tantalizingly Tempting Thing On The Moon Tshirt

The Thing On The Moon by iggymak

Ah, yes, well, here we have the lovely Luz along with righteous dude Darren both modeling variations of my Thing On The Moon Tshirt, which celebrates what may just be the strangest thing that I have ever clapped eyes on — namely, well, the “thing” — discovered back in the day by none other than the notorious Mr. John Lear.

It’s on a photo taken on the exceptionally notorious far side of the Moon… by the intrepid crew of Apollo 8.

A high resolution version, that is; obtained by Lear from his buds a bit before they got real strict about taking stuff like that out of circulation. Score!

This design is my enhancement of a crop of this particular anomaly from that very high res version.

If you’re motivated, the official NASA image number is AS8-12-2209.

High Strangeness at it’s best, eh?!

I mean… seriously… people… wtf is that?!

Apollo. LunaCognita looks at 16mm Film Anomalies.

Madonne! Oh, man, is this good, folks… wicked good, even. Yes, dear readers, once again LunaCognita has managed to knock my socks right off with this video. Needless to say, I can hardly wait for the full version… because there are objects filmed here that I’ve not seen before, and they are spectacular. Where in the heck does LC find this stuff?

I imagine they’ve been ordered from the NASA archives, but how does one know which ones to buy? Connections within the Pegasus Research crew certainly help in that regard, but still… Oh, and, we mustn’t forget that most of the film that was shot hasn’t been released, still, as far as I am aware… oh how we’d all love to see those.

There is so much material at NASA that is classified… one wonders, if there’s nothing of interest up there besides a bunch of cool minerals… then why is there a need for assigning classified status to images, film and research documents at all? Hmmm?

This film can give some insight into that conundrum.

Amusing it is how the trolls and troglodytes commenting at YouTube call this ice and junk falling off the command and LEM modules. Too funny. Junk? Right, we build such fragile craft… Ice? Umm, this is the Moon, dude… Jeez!

Enjoy the mystery…

Hi everyone,
This brief presentation you will see here is just a bit of a teaser/trailer, showing a short segment from a larger video project I am currently in the process of working on. While the full presentation is still awhile away from being complete, I have received more than a few emails asking me about when my next video was going to come out, so I thought that in the interim, I would release this short segment just as a teaser to show a taste of some of the interesting visuals I plan to include in upcoming presentations where I will provide my own analysis of some of the Apollo-era films. All of the footage you will see here was captured on film during the Apollo missions to the Moon, shot by NASA astronauts. Originally exposed on 16mm film, this footage was taken using what was known as the “DAC” – the “Data Acquisition Camera”.Hope you enjoy,
Cheers!
LunaCognita

THE “DAC”
The Maurer “DAC” cameras used to shoot this footage were modified variable frame rate 16mm motion picture film cameras that were used by the various Apollo crews throughout their missions to the Moon to film scenes of interest through the windows of the spacecraft, as well as to shoot exterior footage during lunar surface “moonwalk” operations and Trans-Earth-Coast EVA ops in cis-lunar space during that return-to-Earth phase of the missions.

When it was being used in “automatic” mode, the DAC camera could be set by the astronaut to expose the film within it’s magazine at one of three set frame-rates – 1, 6 or 12 frames-per-second. In the 1 fps mode, the DAC also could be (and occasionally was) used as a still picture camera to shoot single frames of film.

When placed in “semi-automatic” mode, the DAC camera also offered a 24 fps filming capability, although that mode was used somewhat sparingly during the Apollo program as it only allowed for a maximum 3.7 minutes of run time before a film magazine change was required. More typically, one of the three different “auto” modes were used in order to take advantage of the frame-rate control capability to optimize film usage. These slower frame rate settings of course means that when filming in one of those modes, the DAC was functioning more as a sequential still camera rather than a true 24fps motion picture camera (I realize all motion picture film cameras are essentially stop-motion sequential still cameras, so I am referring to the frame-rate playback issues here). The DAC camera could be used as a hand-held movie camera or it could be hard-mounted to various points inside or outside the spacecraft (or to the LRV or the MET during lunar surface ops) in order to provide a stable platform and hands-free filming capability.

LunaCognita
January 20, 2010

YouTube commenter VideoGearHead said… (I thought this was nice…)

1:38 WTF?!!
1:48 busted-up glass dome?
2:21 fractured moon?
Wowa!

5 million stars!

One more thing…and this frosts my jaw the most…I watched the missions to the moon. I remember when I was in the Boy Scouts spending two bucks to have my name put on the Voyager craft. I remember waiting in anticipation to see really cool pictures of our own solar system – Saturn etc. – and remembering them not being what I expected and having to wait YEARS to see them.

Thank YOU for your vision!

Howling At The Moon, Doggy Style.

I’ve stumbled across the Michigan Dogman via Phantoms and Monsters. This elusive and nearly unheard of creature, is news to me, although I don’t feel as bad as usual as many in Michigan are still unaware of it. It’s basically the old “there’s just too much stuff” thing.

Hemmed and hawed about posting this picture… then I figured I would since I’d spent time adjusting it… so, above we have my enhancement of the Temple photo, snapped just last winter by a teenage girl babysitting in Temple, Michigan – just as our pal’s leaving the building.

Said building being the barn on the right. It’s a straight crop down the middle. A red flag went up and waved seconds after I adjusted the exposure up 1.4 stops. The thing’s like nearly 20 feet tall. This is, to be kind, inconsistent with sighting reports.

Clicking the pic will give you my enhanced full frame. You can also get the original shot in all its dark nighttime glory at the Michigan Dogman site for your own enjoyment.

And you might want to look at it, or not, as the above picture… is a hoax.

I read that on the site’s blog. Checked it out. Quite true. It is. OregonBigfoot.com researcher Scott Davis did a simulation in Photoshop of this, layering in a creature from a Chronicles of Narnia movie, the Prince Caspian one. I just overlayed Scott’s mockup onto the submitted version. They match. Pretty much pixel for pixel, too, just like the “nose-out” CGI multilayer overlay on 9/11.

Well. So much for that…

But all’s not lost, as there’s the Gable footage.

Mindstage Productions, operator of the site above and a film production company, acquired the apparently famous Gable film, seen below on YouTube, at a tag sale as an 8mm Kodachrome home movie reel. It’s not known who shot it, but they had good taste in film stock. Quite faded out now, though. It’s downloadable at the site in full splendor, enhanced even (restored’d be a better word). They’ve made a DVD about this creature which I haven’t seen.

There’s a glimpse at 2:40, but the goods come in at 3:08, where a very odd looking, very real looking and, if you were there, god damn scary creature is seen; and then starts an attack run…

Ya, mon, those were teeth. No one knows who shot that yet, but, from the footage it doesn’t appear that things turned out so well for them.

And here’s a nice piece that’s also at P & M. Gives a good brief background to get you set up.

Now normally the many shots of grass and the ground whizzing by indicate to me that a film is a likely hoax as in most of the fake Bigfoot vids, the thinking being it shows fear but the context of those entire pieces are typically poorly done.

In this film, one can readily see the context as just home movies… and then see that thing… and you know why he’s running… for his life. Very different.

Some say it’s a hyena. Doesn’t look like any I’ve ever seen. Especially the body movements. Some say it shape shifts. I don’t see that. It is indeed something very different, though… and I’d much rather run into a Bigfoot than one of these things… unless I had a Glock 18C with a deGroat Tactical Armaments 100-round mag on it handy!

Lon Strickler at P & M has already got some new sightings in, also to be seen at Cryptomundo. Maybe we can solve this one…

There’s a DVD out with Linda Godfrey and others called Hunt the Dogman you might want to check out.

Goodhue’s Friendly Hairless Cryptid.

This is pretty cool… Loren Coleman’s posted four photos of a strange hairless animal that supposedly jumped into the trunk of a vehicle in Goodhue, Minnesota, near Minneapolis… now that’s rather odd behavior for a wild animal, but, hey, what do I know? The consensus of the commentators at Cryptomundo seems to be that this is a hairless raccoon, with several authoritative links that seem to show that that is probably the case.

The photos on site were so dark one could barely see anything, with the creature appearing pitch black, and for some reason a tiny flag went up, so I checked them using Camera Raw – when I added a bit of fill light and some tiny exposure tweaks, (on the order of 3/4 stop or less, noise reduction, no sharpening), some detail did pop out, mostly in coloration and seeing into the shadows, and it looks to me as if the little guy’s not in such great shape. Just a note: These 4 pics are probably the most pixellated images I’ve seen nearly anywhere… I mean really bad!

Some thought this pic a bit creepy as the eye seems very cat-like, or reptilian… most interesting… it seems to “fit in” to my eye, but, yeah, perhaps it is a bit strange. I don’t think it’s creepy, definitely different, though! Animals that are normally expected to be furry sure do look strange without that hair… The trunk of the car seems odd to me… I’d expect more structural stuff to be about rather than the big expanses of flat steel, then again it could be some large domestic car… hmmm. Probably not an issue.

Our little friend seems to be out of the trunk in this last shot, posing nicely on some bricks.

Quacker1 points out that many raccoons are not afraid of people and that their innate curiosity could explain why it leapt into the person’s car… could be, I know they can do a pretty good number on coolers at campsites. Why not leap on over to Cryptomundo and keep track of all the commentators trying to sort it all out… it’s fun, eh?

The Green, Green Grass Of… Moon?

This is a crop of the somewhat notorious Apollo 17 image AS17-137-20925HR. Why notorious? It’s that green thing. Some have been so bold as to suggest it’s some sort of lifeform. Since this is the moon, I’m not too sure about that conjecture… Although it has been shown that the moon has an atmosphere and water ice, there doesn’t appear to be a heck of a lot of water around this locale. Be that as it may… there this thing is. Note that it is not at all required to do any enhancing to the original photo in order to see our green friend. Nope, it stands right out… in a pretty deep shadow no less. As if it’s actually self-luminous. High strangeness, indeed.

An unknown form of living thing is a bit more likely than some sort of alien device doing who knows what…

For the image here, I started with a version with enhanced gamma, although I don’t remember where I got it. (I have such a backlog of these things to write about… sheesh.). I elevated the brightness and contrast by 30 each to get the lighting up to snuff and approach daylight a bit. [No pixels were harmed in the making of this picture.]

Nice purple mineral it’s sitting on, by the way. Food, maybe? Like the NY Lottery ads say, “Hey, you never know.” Life out there doesn’t necessarily have to follow our dogma. If you said 50 years ago that there were creatures on Earth that live 2 miles down and eat rocks, you know what would’ve happened, right? Right.

It would be so sad if the anomaly is a film defect, but of course it could be, can’t leave that out no matter how doubtful the scenario, the film being custom made expressly for the lunar program. Nothing remotely like it has appeared before or since.

So… being the romantic nut that I am, I vote for… High Strangeness.

Update 5/20/09: added image below. For this version, only brightness was applied to the original hi-res image as released to the public. This is to better show you the very interesting colors at the tip of this object and what may well be projections in the tip area.

Nahuelito? Or A Painted Log? Hmmm…

From my High Strangeness blog…

This very nice new photo of the Argentine’s legendary mystery creature known as Nahuelito has been making the rounds of late. An excellent post about it over at Loren Coleman’s Cryptomundo should be perused at your leisure.

The original photo above is a bit dark where it counts, so I thought I might enhance it a bit, mostly with the response curves in Photoshop to make his or her ugly mug a bit more visible in the top image. It has been suggested that it’s a painted floating log… If that’s what it is the hoaxers did a wonderful job of carving the wood to a suitable form for an eel or aquatic reptile before painting the eyes and teeth. Naturally I’d like to think that someone got really lucky, but hey, who knows…