Project IFO
(Identified Flying Object)
IFO stands for Identified Flying Object. An IFO can be described as a UFO which has a rational explanation. In other words something which looks unusual and is hence often misconstrued as a UFO. The purpose of this project is to build a database of IFOs so that people can visit the project if they have had a UFO sighting and check to see if their sighting corresponds to the description and pictures in this project. Project IFO ran for about 6 or 7 years and members of the public supplied many pictures which contributed to this project, but the project closed to new entries after Bill Bimson left MARA on the 8th October 2008. There are some IFOs which I did not have photo's of, but I have done my best to recreate what these look like with diagrams. So what are IFOs? Some examples include Astronomical objects such as stars, planets, sun and moon. There are also several types of satellites including the International Space Station, Iridium Flares and the Naval Ocean Surveillance System. There are also IFOs in the upper and lower atmosphere such as meteors, aircraft, aluminised balloons, blimps and birds. Pictures and diagrams of these examples are shown below. Satellite IFOs: Iridium flares If you see a slow moving light in the sky which starts off dim, then glows bright, then goes back to dim again in the space of about 10 seconds, you have probably observed an Iridium Flare satellite. There are about 80 of these satellites in orbit and they can flare up to about a quarter of the brightness of the full moon if you are just in the right place at the right time. They flare up in brightness as the solar panels get to just the right angle to reflect the sun on to your position on the ground. For more information on these satellites and to find out when to view them in your area, go to www.heavens-above.com I have shown a diagram below of what an Iridium Flare looks like over a period of about 10 seconds. Obviously there would only be one light shown at any instant in time.
Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) NOSS are sets of three satellites which orbit together making them appear as a triangular formation of 3 faint stars which move slowly across the sky, If the satellites are directly above you, they will appear as an equilateral triangle, but the further towards the horizon they appear, the less the formation will look equilateral. If you would like to read a MARA investigation in which these satellites were found to be the cause of a UFO report, click here A diagram of what NOSS looks like is shown below. Note that they would be slow moving and very faint.
International Space Station (ISS) and other satellites The ISS appears as a bright star which moves slowly in an arc around the sky. Its brightness varies as does the duration of the sighting depending on which part of the station is reflecting sunlight to you and how long it is out of earth shadow. Sightings can last from a few seconds to about 5 minutes For more information on the ISS and to find out when to view it in your area, go to www.heavens-above.com The ISS is the brightest of all orbiting satellites apart from Iridium Flares (described above). Other satellites look similar to the ISS but are not as bright. There are a very large number of satellites in orbit around the earth and a visit to the heavens above website will describe most of them for you but obviously not the military ones which are supposed to be secret such as NOSS above. For a 3 dimensional view of the earth with the position of all registered satellites in real time, please go to http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html This is one of the most amazing pieces of free information you will come across on the web, so please learn how to use the facilities of the java applet that you load. It provides the facility to make the java window full screen size (recommended) and the facility to zoom in so that you can get a better view of satellites in low earth orbit or zoom out to see those in geostationary orbit much further out. You can also left click on the picture of the earth and rotate the earth in two dimensions (east-west and north-south) and watch the hundreds of satellites rotate in real time with the movement of your mouse. Astronomical IFOs Astronomical IFOs consist of the moon, sun, planets and bright stars. It may seem ridiculous to many that the sun or moon may be misidentified as a UFO but it does happen. When the sun or moon are partially obscured by cloud, the witness can be presented with an oddly shaped light in the sky which is unidentified to them and hence a UFO. Most people are aware of the appearance of a total solar eclipse but less knowledgeable of the appearance of a lunar eclipse. This occurs when the earths shadow crosses the moons surface and the only light that illuminates the moon is that which is diffracted through the earths atmosphere. This turns the moon a dark reddish brown colour making it a potential UFO.
A picture of Venus taken from Liverpool in the early evening sky on 17th January 2004 is shown below on the left. Venus, Jupiter and Mars can be mistaken for what we call "Ball of Light" UFOs, although Venus is the most common one to be misconstrued. Venus is closer to the sun than earth so it is always seen during or in the couple of hours after sunset or during or in the couple of hours before sunrise. Its brightness often convinces people that it can't possibly be an astronomical object. Occasionally, two planets are seen close together in what is known as a conjunction as in the two pictures below on the right. These pictures of the Venus Jupiter conjunction were taken on 4th November 2004 from Shetland courtesy of Chris Brown.
When a high digital zoom and autofocus are used on a camcorder to take a picture of a distant light in the sky, the camcorder will often introduce various artefacts which artificially change the colour of the light or change its shape as in the 5 examples below which are all pictures of Jupiter with the camcorder set to different recording modes. These pictures were taken on 17th April 2006 from Liverpool UK.
Aluminised balloons Aluminised balloons are responsible for many daytime UFO reports and many examples of photographs and video footage have been presented on TV programs and magazines as evidence of UFOs. They are more common in the summer as this is when the majority of the balloons are sold, mostly to children. The balloon is filled with helium which makes it lighter than air enabling it to float quite high in the sky. Once it gets to a couple of hundred feet in altitude, it can look anomalous as it spins in the wind reflecting sunlight off its different surfaces. Two pictures of the same balloon are shown below on the left with a further 3 pictures taken of a different balloon on a sunny day. Note the high contrast between the parts of the balloon which are reflecting the sun towards the viewer and those which are not.
To see a video of the balloon in the 2 left photos on MARA's Myspace site click here then click on view my videos, then click on Mylar Balloon. Click the back button on your browser twice to return here. Ordinary rubber balloons Balloons don't have to be aluminised to make them look odd if they are filled with helium and allowed to drift into the sky. The picture below on the left was sent to MARA with an odd looking object in the sky shown by the red arrow in the top right. This picture has had to be compressed to keep the file size down for the web page but I have shown an uncompressed picture (centre) blown up on the area next to the arrow. The blue sphere is typical of many photos presented to UFOlogists when the person who took the photo didn't notice the object at the time that the picture was taken as was the case on this occasion. When we asked UFOlogy in the UK for a second opinion on this, a sharp eyed Eric Rush pointed out a second similar object in the bottom right of the picture shown by the other arrow and shown in higher resolution in the picture on the right. There is no real doubt that the objects are of the same type.
Solar airship balloons These are large black plastic bags in the shape of a cylinder 8 meters in length. After inflating them with air, they are tied off and then the heat from the sun warms the air inside causing it to expand and give the balloon some degree of buoyancy. If the balloon is released from its tether, they can travel quite high into the sky and present themselves to the unwary as a black cylinder or cigar shape. Click here for a story about a sighting from the Manchester evening news and click here for the advert and supplier of the balloons and click here to watch a video of one of these balloons. MARA thank Joe McGoneagle from UFOlogy in the UK for bringing this to our attention. Aircraft IFOs Aircraft are probably responsible for more UFO reports than all other categories put together. To view a video of an aircraft with its landing lights on click here then click on Aeroplane IFO. Click back on your browser twice to return here. They are usually identified as UFOs at night time by their light formations. The most common mistakes are made when an aircraft has its landing lights on during takeoff or approach to landing. These lights are very bright and this sometimes misleads people to believe they are anomalous especially if they are flying through thin cloud because a large section of cloud in front of the aircraft may be illuminated. Aircraft have many different types of lights, the most common being flashing strobe lights which may or may not flash in unison. They may also have a red light on the left (port) wingtip and a green light on the right (starboard) wingtip. A less well known light formation is a a rotating red light underneath the fuselage of the aircraft which can make a large part of the aircraft underside appear to pulsate with a red glow every couple of seconds. More recently, the Easyjet airline have started illuminating the rear part of the fuselage with what they call DeVore Lighting to illuminate the Easyjet web address and present a large flying advert to the public on takeoff. When the jet reaches a prearranged altitude, the lighting is switched off making the aircraft look like it suddenly disappeared when viewed from a distance of about 10 miles. If an aircraft is coming straight towards you or flying straight away from you, it's lights can appear to be stationary for several minutes and this sometimes misleads people into believing it can't be a conventional aircraft. Observations made from moving vehicles are useless at estimating aircraft speeds because the relative speed between the vehicle and the aircraft is quite different to the actual speed of the aircraft. Aircraft observed from moving vehicles nearly always appear to be flying slower than they actually are. Many aircraft when viewed from the ground show 3 fixed lights. The only two possible formations for these three lights are a straight line and a triangle and the latter will be most common. This sometimes gives rise to reports of flying triangle UFOs or reports of secret military aircraft operating overbuilt up areas. The three pictures shown below were taken of conventional jet aircraft flying around Merseyside.
While viewing the sky from Ashurst Beacon near Skelmersdale, Lancashire we have observed what appears to be orange balls of light (BOL) which can last for several tens of seconds and suddenly fade in and out. It is no coincidence that these BOLs are in the South Easterly direction of Manchester airport. They are simply the landing lights of aircraft taking off and coming in to land. The fade in and out as the aircraft changes direction and hence the direction of the lights change. Their orange appearance is caused by the haze at low altitude and the distance of approximately 25 miles to the airport. A further aircraft sighting has been sent into us from Alex Hammond and Gareth Morgan who spotted strange lights and photographed them from the top of Shining Tor in Cheshire. The direction they were looking in was towards Manchester Airport and the aircraft would have been lining up for approach to land at a distance of about 15 miles. The landing lights were the cause of this bright daylight sighting which is shown below in the two pictures with the one on the right a high quality zoomed in section of the lights. MARA thank Alex and Gareth for sending in these pictures.
Helicopters The most common helicopter seen around Merseyside now is the police helicopter and this can look anomalous at night time because of its strobe lights, its ability to hover in the same place for a long period of time and its night sun searchlight which sometimes shines a beam of light down to the ground when looking for criminals. Another type of helicopter has been seen flying on Merseyside which gives rise to daylight sightings of large slow moving diamond shapes (see pictures below). The diamond shapes can be of any colour because they are simply huge sheet adverts being towed by a helicopter. When seen from a distance of a few miles, the helicopter cannot be seen or heard but the sheet can be seen.
Photographic anomalies When auto-focus cameras and camcorders are used to take a picture or video of a bright light in the sky, the auto-focus often fails making the light look much larger and less bright than it actually is. The large 'orb' produced may be circular or it may have the same number of sides as the number of leaves on the aperture of the lens, typically five or six. The way to get around this problem is to put the camera / camcorder in manual focus mode and focus the camera yourself. The picture below is an example of an out of focus orb.
Birds Birds flying late at night are often mistaken for UFOs. Many birds such as swans and geese have light underbellies which will reflect street lighting. Birds sometimes fly late at night many hours after sunset. They appear as a set of dull lights in a straight line or chevron or 'U' shape which may appear to move or change shape slightly as the birds move their relative positions within the formation. The lights will appear dull orange or brown in built up areas which have orange sodium street lighting. The colour of light they reflect will always be related to the street lighting in the area. They often surprise the witness because of their silence and apparent great speed. The appear to fly very fast because the witness assumes that they are thousands of feet up when in fact they are very close to the witness and only a few tens of feet or at most a few hundred feet up in the sky. Three examples of bird like formations are shown in the diagrams below.
Birds in the daytime are often photographed and a combination of movement in flight and limited resolution of the camera when the bird is at distance can lead to anomalous shapes which were not seen by the witness at the time of taking the photograph. The picture on the left shows an anomalous object which when zoomed in could be misconstrued as a flying saucer, but if you look at the shadows from the trees, you can see that the sun was in front and to the right of the camera. A bird, probably a gull flying from left to right would have its back illuminated and the underside of its wings and tail in shade which could also give rise to the shape in the picture, (see zoomed in section of the object on the right). The person who took the photograph thought that it might be a balloon of some description, but he didn't notice it at the time of taking the picture. MARA thank Phillip and Jonathan Wild for sending in the picture to MARA.
A very interesting set of 3 pictures were sent to MARA with anomalies that were almost certainly caused by birds. Kev Purdy sent us the pictures and MARA are very grateful to him. The pictures were taken in burst mode with the 3 shots less than half a second apart. The first picture shows no anomalies, while the second shows two anomalies towards the left about half way up, one of which is behind a lamp post, hence it cannot be an insect. The third shows the two anomalies much further to the right one of which is just above and obstructing the top of a crane boom which limits the distance of the objects from the camera to between the lamp post and the crane to the right.
zoomed in pictures of the anomalies from the second and third pictures are shown below.
These objects look like some pictures of the rods phenomena which are discussed on the internet and elsewhere, but the exif information on the photographs indicate that the shutter speed was a relatively slow 1/30th of a second which would blur any fast moving object such as a bird. The area in which this was taken is very close to the Liverpool waterfront where pigeons and herring gulls are very common and after discussion with a colleague, Martin Shough of UFOlogy in the UK we have determined that given the length of object, the approximate distance from the camera, the shutter speed and the distance that the objects have moved in the time between frames, that the objects were travelling at about 50 mph, which puts it right in the range for fast flying pigeons or herring gulls. Martin Shough provided further information about the beating frequency of pigeon wings which very roughly approximate the 1/30th shutter speed of each frame which would explain the grey area above and below each line object during up and down strokes during flight. This increases the likelihood that birds were the cause of these anomalies. MARA thank Kev Purdy for supplying the photographs and Martin Shough for his calculations with distance from camera and approximate object speed. Laser shows Lasers at night are often used these days to promote everything from sporting events to night clubs to retail parks. By firing a laser into the night sky when there is low cloud cover, the promoter gets a free projection screen which is many times the size of any conventional projection screen and can be seen from many miles away. Even when there is no low cloud cover, the beams of light can be impressive when viewed from a distance of about 1 mile. MARA received a number of photos from a witness from Eastham on the Wirral Peninsula (UK) who observed a bluish light in the sky on January 2nd 2008. He thought that the light projections may have been coming from above the cloud because he could see no upwardly directed beam, but given that the light was diffuse anyway, it is unlikely that an upwardly projected beam would be noticed from anyone some miles away from the laser source. See the four pictures below.
The first three pictures show the object stationary while the fourth shows it when it was moving about the sky. All pictures were taken with a low shutter speed because is was at night time. When this was shown at a MARA meeting, MARA member Clare Rooney pointed out that the nearby Cheshire Oaks retail park had been using a laser show during the Christmas and New Year sales period and that the laser used was a bluish green. We believe that this is the cause of the light in this case. MARA thank the witness for the pictures he sent in. Lenticular clouds Lenticular clouds are large clouds which take on the form of a lens shape when viewed edge on. The lens shape is similar to the shape of a classic flying saucer and lenticular clouds occasionally cause false UFO reports. The pictures below are by Martin Shough who took them from Ross-shire, Highlands on Dec 23 2007. MARA thank Martin for sending in the photos.
Subsuns A subsun is a white halo caused by the sun reflecting off a layer of ice crystals in the atmosphere. The reflection may be entirely circular or may become elongated to an ellipse with a vertical long axis. The most likely place that you will see a subsun is when taking an aircraft flight at high altitude with the subsun underneath the sun. Two pictures of a subsun are shown below courtesy of Chris Brown, Shetland. A more detailed explanation of the cause of a subsun can be found at http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/halo/subsun.htm It is possible that a subsun could be mistaken for a ball of light UFO by passengers on an aircraft.
Fire Balloons also known as Thai or Chinese lanterns 2005 saw a large increase in the number or reported UFO sightings which could be attributed to Fire Balloons. Most of the sightings came in from Essex, but there were also many reports from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. The balloons consist of a plastic bag with an open flame heat source to make it act like a hot air balloon. I will not go into more detail about the construction here because they are potentially very dangerous. They have been known to come down and set fire to property and trees. I have been in touch with Essex Fire Brigade to ask their advice on fire safety of these devices and to see if there are any safeguards that can be taken when they are launched. They had no knowledge of the devices but did state that any open flame device which can float away with the wind is obviously dangerous. The balloons have been known to be launched in large numbers at wedding receptions which have given rise to reports of a large number of UFOs moving slowly across the sky over a period of between 5 and 30 minutes. They usually look red or orange because of the flame but could be almost any colour depending on the colour of the plastic they are made of. Southend UFO group did a test launch on one of these devices to see what it looked like on digital camera and the next three pictures show a member of the group holding a fire balloon before launch, then a fire balloon about 50 yards away, then a picture of the balloon much further away. All 3 pictures are courtesy of David Hobbs and Southend UFO group http://www.southendufogroup.com/ The fourth picture came in to MARA from Glynis Bass from Feering Essex and shows two fire balloons at a distance of perhaps half a mile. The Halewood LITS sightings http://www.mara.org.uk/Halewood_LITS.htm were also caused by fire balloons and a picture of them before launch from a garage in Halewood is shown below. MARA thank everyone who has contributed pictures to this project.
MARA have many videos of the Halewood LITS and also a sighting from Witham in Essex on our Myspace site. To view any of these videos, click here then click on Halewood 1, or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or the Witham video. Click back on your browser twice to return here. Ball lightning Ball lightning is a rare meteorological phenomenon and is thought to consist of a ball of atmospheric plasma, but nobody understands the physics of the phenomenon because its rarity makes it difficult to study. We believe we have come into possession of a ball lightning video taken on a camera phone at 7:30 am on the 11th October 2006 at Halewood, Liverpool, UK. The video can be viewed on MARA's Myspace site by clicking here then click on view my videos, then click on Ball Lightning. Click back on your browser twice to return here
The witness was awoken by a thunderstorm and tried to take a video of lightning on his mobile phone, but he captured 46 seconds of footage which shows a ball of light which flickers on and off during the footage. A full frame from the footage is shown left and shows two small balls of light towards the lower right of the picture. The orange lights are street lamps which were still illuminated at that time of the morning. The smaller light only appears for a couple of seconds during the video but the larger light varies in brightness and goes on and off several times during the 46 seconds of footage. A table is presented below to show 9 snapshots at different times which gives some indication of how the size and brightness varied during the 46 seconds. To keep the digital size of the frames reasonable, they have been cropped to just show the area where the balls of light appear, but a tree top is included in the cropped section to provide a fixed reference.
9 snapshots taken from the video approximately 5 seconds apart.
The area where this was footage was taken is close to John Lennon Airport, but we believe that this was not an aircraft because there is so little movement of the light during the 46 seconds and it flickers on and off several times, quicker than you would expect if it were an aircraft flying through cloud with landing lights on. MARA are extremely grateful to Richard Gregson from Liverpool for supplying the video to MARA. |
This
is an example of a crescent moon partially obscured by cloud. 
This
is an example of the moon during a lunar eclipse.
