MUFON Case #56393

Chew

Senior Member.
or, turning your camera upside down makes things looks more mysterious.

As reported here: www.openminds.tv/video-utah-ufo-looks-like-school-of-birds/29831

The video starts off showing bugs zipping around. Then it shows weird-looking strings floating up. But they're not floating up; they're falling down. At 2:03 there is a clear shot of one of the strings with the Big Dipper high in the sky and the bowl of the dipper pointing right-side up.

Right-side up??? Anybody familiar with the night sky knows that when the Big Dipper is high in the sky it is upside down. When the Big Dipper is right-side up it is low on the horizon; as seen from Ogden, the lowest star in the bowl in the screencap below, will only be 5° above the horizon.

Untitled.png
 
I think it must depend on latitude: I often see the Big Dipper (or Plough as I call it) high in the sky and right-side up, but then I do live rather further north than Utah.

Here is the sky chart for the date and time of the video in question. You can see that the Big Dipper is almost directly overhead, which matches the screenshot above.

upload_2014-9-4_18-25-16.png

The camera pans down to the northern horizon, though, you are right. You see the ground appear at the top of the screen, and the camera pans past the Little Dipper:

upload_2014-9-4_18-29-27.png

([URL='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Ursae_Minoris']η UMi[/url], at the top left of the "bowl" in this view, is too faint to show up.)
 
Here is the sky chart for the date and time of the video in question. You can see that the Big Dipper is almost directly overhead, which matches the screenshot above.

The sky chart view in heavens-above is what the sky would look like if you were laying on your back with your feet pointed south. Imagine how it would look if you were laying down with your feet pointed north, which would be the view in that part of video.

Load it up again and click on the Big Dipper to zoom in. It will change to an altitude-azimuth view (i.e. 'up' will be at the top).
 
It someonething is nearly directly overhead, then it's orientation is essentially arbitrary, as you can go "down" to the horizon in any direction. Here's the equivalent view in Stellarium from Ogden, just after sunset.



So you can't really say which way up it is. One end goes "down" to the east, and the other goes "down" to the west.

 
The sky chart view in heavens-above is what the sky would look like if you were laying on your back with your feet pointed south. Imagine how it would look if you were laying down with your feet pointed north, which would be the view in that part of video.

Load it up again and click on the Big Dipper to zoom in. It will change to an altitude-azimuth view (i.e. 'up' will be at the top).

I'm not disputing that the camera was panned down to the horizon upside down. But the Big Dipper was pretty much directly overhead. If you stood facing south and looked directly up, you'd see it as the right way up, as shown in Mick's screenshot. If you stood facing north and did the same thing, it would look upside down.

By the way, the date given on the video (May 8, 21:44) doesn't match the description underneath, which says it was May 15. But the position of the stars is not much different.
 
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