The Mystery Behind the Best UFO Picture Ever Seen (theguardian.com) 22
In August 1990, two hikers in Scotland captured photographs of a mysterious diamond-shaped aircraft accompanied by a Harrier jet, but the images and story were suppressed by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for decades. Was it a prank, a hoax, an optical illusion or something else entirely? The Guardian's Daniel Lavelle reports on "what really happened in Calvine." Here's an excerpt: On a misty evening in August 1990, two men hiking on the moors surrounding Calvine, a pretty hamlet in Perth and Kinross, claimed to have seen a giant diamond-shaped aircraft flying above them. It apparently had no clear means of propulsion and left no smoke plume; it was silent and static, as if frozen in time. Terrified, they hit the ground and scrambled for cover behind a tree. Then a Harrier fighter jet roared into view, circling the diamond as if sizing it up for a scuffle. One of the men snapped a series of photographs just before the bizarre craft shot away vertically and disappeared.
Craig Lindsay was a press officer at the RAF base in Pitreavie Castle in Dunfermline, 50 miles away, when the Daily Record got in touch a few days later. The hikers, who worked as chefs at Fisher's Hotel in Pitlochry, had sent six photos of the diamond to the newspaper and told their story. The Record's picture editor, Andy Allen, sent Lindsay the best of the bunch. Lindsay had never seen such a clear photograph of a supposed UFO, so he forwarded the picture to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which told him to ask the Record to send the other five photographs and their negatives. The MoD also instructed him to phone the hikers, which he did. One of them told Lindsay the whole story: the diamond, the jet, how it levitated eerily with no sound and accelerated with no obvious propellant. The MoD told Lindsay to leave the case with them. He pushed the diamond to the back of his mind.
That autumn, Lindsay attended a routine meeting in London. On his lunch break, he went for a wander around the MoD's offices and saw something familiar. "There, on the wall in front of me, was a great big poster-size print of the best of them [the photographs]. So, I spoke to the guys that were there and I asked them what their other photographs were like." The ministry's staff placed the other photographs on a windowsill. The snaps showed the Harrier jet moving from the right side of the frame to the left, while the diamond didn't move an inch. He quizzed some of the specialists who had investigated the photos. They told him there was no evidence of a hoax, but they didn't know what the diamond was. "I gradually forgot all about the thing," says Lindsay. "Nothing had appeared from the first inquiry ... I assumed that everything had just been forgotten." The Record didn't run the story, the hikers never spoke publicly about the photos and the images weren't seen by the public for 32 years. "It is the 35th anniversary of what has been described as the best UFO photo ever taken. Now is the time to come forward and tell us what really happened," says Prof David Clarke, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University who worked as a reporter in the 1990s.
Craig Lindsay was a press officer at the RAF base in Pitreavie Castle in Dunfermline, 50 miles away, when the Daily Record got in touch a few days later. The hikers, who worked as chefs at Fisher's Hotel in Pitlochry, had sent six photos of the diamond to the newspaper and told their story. The Record's picture editor, Andy Allen, sent Lindsay the best of the bunch. Lindsay had never seen such a clear photograph of a supposed UFO, so he forwarded the picture to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which told him to ask the Record to send the other five photographs and their negatives. The MoD also instructed him to phone the hikers, which he did. One of them told Lindsay the whole story: the diamond, the jet, how it levitated eerily with no sound and accelerated with no obvious propellant. The MoD told Lindsay to leave the case with them. He pushed the diamond to the back of his mind.
That autumn, Lindsay attended a routine meeting in London. On his lunch break, he went for a wander around the MoD's offices and saw something familiar. "There, on the wall in front of me, was a great big poster-size print of the best of them [the photographs]. So, I spoke to the guys that were there and I asked them what their other photographs were like." The ministry's staff placed the other photographs on a windowsill. The snaps showed the Harrier jet moving from the right side of the frame to the left, while the diamond didn't move an inch. He quizzed some of the specialists who had investigated the photos. They told him there was no evidence of a hoax, but they didn't know what the diamond was. "I gradually forgot all about the thing," says Lindsay. "Nothing had appeared from the first inquiry ... I assumed that everything had just been forgotten." The Record didn't run the story, the hikers never spoke publicly about the photos and the images weren't seen by the public for 32 years. "It is the 35th anniversary of what has been described as the best UFO photo ever taken. Now is the time to come forward and tell us what really happened," says Prof David Clarke, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University who worked as a reporter in the 1990s.
The summary is too long already (Score:1)
Like I'm gonna read TFG of crazy shit.
Re: (Score:1)
The aliens clearly abducted your patience lobe.
Re: The summary is too long already (Score:2)
You do realize... (Score:2, Informative)
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Um, my brain has room for both. I am sorry if yours doesn't.
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War, famine and injustice? What is this, 1950? I'm worried about AI, microplastics, and... Ok, war too I guess.
UFOs: a quasi religious mythology (Score:2)
“The projected image then appears as an ostensibly physical fact independent of the individual psyche and its nature. In other words, the rounded wholeness of the mandala becomes a space ship controlled by an intelligent being.”
Info and photo: (Score:2)
Info and photo: https://allthatsinteresting.co... [allthatsinteresting.com]
Its a reflection of a rock next to a fallen fence (Score:5, Interesting)
As a photographer (for most of my life) - I see a reflection of a rock next to a collapsed fence, and the reflection of a plane flying over. Reading the article the "Chefs" that were responsible for the shot - claimed to have taken it in an area where there were no flights of this aircraft and no bodies of water... so probably taken somewhere else then...
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I also see this.
But then we can't rule out it's not a USO (Unidentified Submersible Object)!
TL;DR: MoD knows what it is (Score:3)
The article never states what it is but instead merely implies that the UK Ministry of Defense knows what the object is.
The rational conclusion is that it is a balloon of some sort. Given the circumstances, one could conclude that it was being used to test some military tech in R&D.
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It's a garbage pod.
Best UFO Picture Ever Seen (Score:2)
b. Where are the negatives?
c. Are there any other photos by the same individuals?
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According to TFA (I read it before it was on /. so don't judge me), the answers to c and b are respectively that they had five or six photos, and that the Ministry of Defence took the negatives.
UK newspapers take orders from the military? (Score:3)
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I'd sooner live in a constitutional monarchy where the monarch is pretty much a figurehead than live in a so called "democracy" where you only have 2 parties to vote for and the president is an elected king in all but name and can seemingly ride roughshod over whatever laws he pleases.
But hey, enjoy living in the "land of the free". What a joke.
D notices (Score:2)
The UK has an official system to allow the government to get the press to shut up about issues that it needs to have away from the public spotlight / bad actors' view. It's an informal system in that ignoring a D notice doesn't result in court action, but it does provide a means for journalists to be asked to shut up about things that really do need to be kept quiet. Of course it's subject to abuse - as any such system will be - but it's probably better than the ad hoc system that seems to apply in the US,
Its the scottish highlands... (Score:2)
... not northern siberia. Even in the most remote part of the highlands other people would have seen and heard 2 jets shadowing a giant diamond craft. Its quite obviously a hoax.
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Right, I find it suspicious that the best picture of something happened before smartphones.
There are literally a billion more cameras now than there was then.
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One could also remark that nowadays we're all glued to our smartphone screens and not so much watching idly the skies for the chance to spot a UFO (or anything), so even if we have many more cameras, we're not as observant as before the advent of those things...
But maybe I'm getting old.
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Ok but even in the extreme case where we are 99% less observant that will be way more than offset by the 8 billion percent increase in cameras.
Several things in the image don't add up... (Score:1)