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SKEPTOID BLOG:

RAF Vulcan and a UFO

by Mike Weaver

August 19, 2015

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Donate I came across this tiny gem of a UFO sighting via the Huffington Post, UK. According to the article, Elaine Costello, a resident in Sussex, England, was filming a RAF XH558 Vulcan bomber flying overhead. Upon reviewing the video, she noticed an oddly moving dot in the sky, after the bomber had passed out of frame.

The video is available on YouTube here, and is embedded below. Take a lookâ€"it's only nine seconds long. The object is visible very briefly in the last second of the video.



Here are two more screen captures I grabbed from the video.



From watching the video and examining the screen caps, I'm reasonably convinced that this is simply an insect flying past, close to the camera. The speed that it appears to be moving, were we to assume it was at a similar distance as the bomber, would be quite high. If, instead, it is quite close to the camera, its speed would appear to be much more in line with more terrestrial phenomenon.

Ms. Costello states (from the article):
I have slowed the video down and the object goes behind cloud briefly. I took stills from the video and zoomed in. The results are interesting. At least one other person saw the object.
I've run through this video quite a few times and cannot find any frames in which the object is behind a cloud or anything else that would give us an idea as to its distance from the camera. Perhaps I missed it. If it does indeed go behind a cloud, that would discount the hypothesis that it is an insect or other small, close object. I am a bit curious as to her claim that another person saw the object. Was that with the naked eye? If so, where did it go? The video ends before we can see the object's destination.

It was mentioned to me that The Sun also had a write up on this event. They have a version of the video where they have slowed it down and claim to have captured frames in which the object is obscured by clouds. I've viewed it and am not convinced. I believe the dimming shown (the object is never out of sight, just less or more distinct) is due to the object being in poor focus, moving quickly, and the phone's camera being unable to keep up with it. It looks more like a motion blur than clouds. The video is in the article here.

I expect that this is a simple misunderstanding of the video and that the insect hypothesis is likely the correct one. I invite you to judge for yourself.

Be well.

by Mike Weaver

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