- Joined
- May 20, 2006
- Messages
- 50,990
- Reaction score
- 22,489
- Location
- NE Florida
- Resorts Owned
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Marriott Grande Vista
Marriott Harbour Lake
Sheraton Vistana Villages
Club Wyndham CWA
What I've learned from looking at all the videos, photos and other research.
- Lights in an unfocused video look very different when zoomed way in. Many people will see a light in the sky, point their phone camera and zoom in as far as possible. Thus they think they are seeing the object close up as if they were just a few feet away. That isn't how it works. They are instead looking at an unfocused point of light in the sky which often looks like some glowing orb. They think it is some kind of drone with a forcefield around it. It is what is referred to in the photography world as a bokeh ball. We shouldn't study out of focus video and photos when trying to ascertain what something really is.
- People don't know what standard aircraft lighting looks like. This video explains it well. See red and green lights along with flashing lights. 99.9999% of the time it is going to be an airplane. The other 0.0001% of the time it might actually be a drone or some other type of unmanned aircraft. But you would have to look at tens of thousands of lights in the sky to find one that wasn't.
- People like to think that by saying something it automatically makes it true. We are all guilty of this, even myself. By saying "it wasn't a plane" doesn't make it not a plane. Another video I saw was how the drones were spraying something down at the ground and they said "it wasn't a contrail", that doesn't make it not a contrail.
- People saying "I've never seen anything like it". That's probably true, because they've never really looked before.
- They don't realize just how far away a plane can be seen in the night sky.
- Determining the distance and size of an object more than 10' away is not something people do well during the day. At night, it is nearly impossible. Our brains can guess the size and distance of many things because we know what that thing is. A car driving. We know what a car looks like and how big they are. Thus we can generally tell how big and far away it might be based on what the car looks like. Some blinking light at night, forget about it.
- People lack critical thinking on this. They instantly assume a light it is some unknown object. Thus why 99.9% of these are just airplanes.
- People don't understand air traffic. Many images of multiple points of light are just planes lined up for landing at major airports. What does it take for planes to land a few minutes apart? They don't just appear out of nowhere. Depending on your point of reference they may look like a big row or grid of lights in the sky.
- Something else true about air traffic. New Jersey is perhaps one of the busiest areas of air traffic in the country. There will be planes.
- Half of all human operated drone flights are illegal. That doesn't make them suspicious.
- Not every aircraft is visible on flight tracking apps.
- The impact of the atmosphere on distant lights can make them do what appear to be strange things.
- When posting images or video, people need to indicate where they are located and the direction they were facing. Just saying "I saw these over NY last night" doesn't tell us anything.
- Eye witness reports are incredibly bad. Especially those from a single person. Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about this.
- I have yet to see a single video that indicates mysterious drones being flown. Not one. There were reports of 50 drones coming in off the ocean, yet not a single video?
- Police officers are humans too and don't necessarily have any additional expertise in this.
- Just because you flew a plane, flew a drone or did a certain job doesn't necessarily make your comments more correct.
- Asking people to report these sightings to law enforcement is a huge waste of resources, negatively impacting other emergencies happening.
