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In reply to the discussion: UFO Hearing totally erased all other coverage. Not. [View all]Kid Berwyn
(14,907 posts)From the Orange County Register:
OCs moment in UFO history
By DOM ARMENTANO | Orange County Register
October 30, 2009
UFO skeptics often allege that there is no authentic photographic evidence that UFOs exist. UFO photos are often featureless lights in the sky, misidentified birds or airplanes, natural phenomena such as Venus or some peculiar-looking cloud, crude hoaxes (doctored negatives, string-suspended models, thrown hubcaps) or pictures and videos that have been computer-manipulated (Photoshop). There are hundreds of UFO photos and videos on the Internet, but a safe bet is that a high percentage are completely worthless.
There is at least one exception, however, and it is a huge exception. Around noon on Aug. 3, 1965, near the intersection of what is today Walnut Avenue and Myford Road in Tustin, Rex Heflin, a 38-year-old highway maintenance engineer, snapped three close-up photos through the windows of his truck of a low-flying hat-like UFO. (He also took a fourth picture; more on that later). The pictures Heflin took with the Polaroid camera he carried for work clearly show a round, hat-like object with a dark band around its raised superstructure.
The pictures of the object are unambiguously clear and present an immediate problem for skeptics: Either the photos are clever fakes or they are actual pictures of a very unconventional flying craft; there is simply no third alternative explanation. Heflin initially told investigators that he believed that he had probably photographed an experimental aircraft from a nearby Marine base. As we shall discover shortly, however, there are several unique features in the pictures themselves that lower the probability that the strange craft was one of ours.
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However, the recent reanalysis of all four of the Heflin photos, employing state-of-the-art technology (obviously not available back in the 1960s) now concludes that the smoke-ring photo, rather than discrediting Heflin, actually appears to strongly substantiate him.
First, the latest photo analysis was accomplished with all of the original Polaroid photos and high-resolution first-generation prints and does, in fact, show similar clouds in all four of the photographs. Second, computer enhancement of photo two shows a bright line (or light beam) extending out from the bottom center of the disc to its outer rim, which is exactly what Heflin claimed that he saw back in 1965. And finally, computer enhancement of photo three shows something quite extraordinary: There appears to be a stream of black particulate matter trailing behind the UFO, which was not apparent under normal viewing.
Continues
https://www.ocregister.com/2009/10/30/ocs-moment-in-ufo-history/