1-16-99
Videoanalysis 6/24/96
Rosh Haayin, central Israel
Events as reported to me from Barry Chamish:
'On 28/9/95, Mr. M. noticed an unexplainable object in the
skies over Rosh Haayin in central Israel. He grabbed his video
camera and captured a silvery, glowing object become, two,
three and then four fiery orbs, in a near square formation, over
a wide expanse of the northwestern sky. After this incident, Mr.
M. became a constant skywatcher. His dilgence was rewarded
on 24/6/96 when a similar silvery orb appeared in the lower
western sky. He trained his video camera on the orb... And then
a glowing white oval-shaped object appeared some 20 degrees
west of the object and streaked toward it at high speed. Within
three seconds it struck the stationary orb, causing a huge
explosion in the sky which must have destroyed both objects.
Stunned, Mr. M. stopped filming immediately after capturing
the explosion.'
The submitted video, which was in PAL format, was converted
to NTSC format. It shows several events; a group of lights, one
apparently dropped from another (the dropping is seen in the
stills marked 28/9/1995 and 3:27:33); a stationary light which
is apparently struck by a moving light, and a triangle of lights.
The group of lights is interesting, but I could find no basis for
investigating any form of anomalousness. The triangle of lights
has no reference objects to indicate what or where it is.
The stationary light was much more interesting. Various lights,
probably streetlights, in the video were used as reference
objects, and showed that the light was stationary over some
30 seconds. An approaching airplane's landing lights will
appear stationary, although motionlessness over this length
of time seems unusual.
A vertical tower structure, apparently made of girders, is near
the light. Some horizontal structure is atop the structure. It
was not sufficiently defined for continuous measurements to
be made from it.
Another bright object appears to the left and slightly below
the stationary object. In 2.9 seconds, it moves toward the
stationary object, apparently hitting and exploding. In 1/4
second, the explosion disappears with no trace of either
object. The 5-frame sequence to the right illustrates the
sequence.
The bright object can be seen to move between the girders
of the vertical structure. This is useful in determining the
relative size of the moving light. (The size of the light as
seen on the video, is misleading; it is presumably much
smaller than what is seen, due to extreme overexposure
and glare.) The light disappears or reappears completely
6 times; in 3, the change is abrupt; completely bright-to-dark
or vice versa. In the other 3, the change is gradual, with a
frame showing partial brightness. What can be learned from
this? One must remember that the video is a sequence of 1/50
second time exposures. Assume the light is small, and that the
moving object has only one light. If by chance, the
disappearance coincides with the period between exposures,
an abrupt disappearance will be seen. A large light, or several
lights horizontally separated, will never disappear abruptly
while moving slowly. Since 6 occurrences form a useful
population of samples, the moving light can reliably be said to
be quite small. This probably eliminates the flame from a missile
as a source.
Although the vertical structure was not a reliable reference
object, the two lights' relative position could be measured.
Over 500 measurements of the two lights' position were made.
The graph at below shows the distance between the 2 lights.
Breaks in the data line are due to unreliable data from camera
motion or the moving light going behind the girders. Reference
straight lines show constant speed. The slopes of the lines show
that the moving light spent about a second at some speed, then
sped up about 16% before the collision. The 16% is not due to
a zoom change; the tower is sufficiently visible to verify that its
size does not appreciably change. Although the graph shows
noise and missing data, the acceleration certainly occurred in
under a second. No reasonable object I know of is capable of
a 16% acceleration in a second.
(Graph by Jeff Sainio) Position vs. Time
When the 2 objects apparently collide and explode, the apparent
size of the light expands by a factor of roughly 2.5; this does
not appear to be due to overexposure, but is the real size of
the object. The last 2 frames of the video are NOT overexposed,
but diffuse; since overexposure is not involved, this indicates
the actual size of the explosion is shown. The real increase in
size of the bright area is certainly much larger than 2.5. In
the video the explosion moves downward; this is probably due to
camera motion of the startled videographer; the reference tower
is too smeared to verify this conclusion.
The explosion is not due to any conventional method I am
familiar with; conventional, large explosions require much more
than 1/4 second to disappear, and usually generate flaming
debris that falls from the explosion. Neither characteristic is
seen here.
The acceleration, light size, and explosion are not explainable
in any convention way that I know of, and this case remains
unidentified.
Click here for .AVI movie of explosion.
Jeff Sainio
MUFON Staff Photoanalyst
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