The Rembis Report and Other Fascinating Topics - Volume XCVII

I have been sitting on this for a while now.

The evening of March 28, 2020 was a lovely spring night. A perfect temperature with no bugs and clear skies for stargazing, so I went out to my backyard to take advantage. I set up the tripod and the zoom lens on the camera to get some shots of Venus and the Moon.

I have been taking photos of the Moon and planets for years. Just for fun. I don’t take particularly great pictures. My equipment is ordinary and I have never studied photography, but I know the basics, and how my camera works.

What I don’t like about my camera is that it has a computer chip in it that thinks. Unlike my old single lens reflex camera that took rolls of 35 millimeter film, the Canon EOS Rebel T5 carries out the specific mission of not letting you take a picture of what it perceives as nothing. So, those low light shots that I used to take with 1600 speed film in the old camera are just memories now. Trying to achieve the same thing with this camera, shooting in low light at exactly what I want to shoot at, can’t be done perfectly at all times. It stops the user from wasting a shot when it senses that the light or something else is not just right, even though, that is what I want; to play, experiment, create. No. Not on the Canon EOS Rebel T5’s watch. It ain’t happening. Only the finest for my photographers! says the Rebel. So, I end up with a lot less pictures than I want. In low light it is always a challenge.

But this night, I got lucky. Somehow I made just the right adjustments and with my zoom lens, pointed at Venus, clicked away and got a couple nice shots. Then I focused on the Moon, once again, not bad. But I wanted both objects in one picture. They were pretty close to each other, but not close enough with the manual setting. The Moon was drifting toward Venus, but had not gotten there yet. I could have the Moon and a bunch of sky to the right, but no Venus. It was just out of frame. Same thing with Venus, a bunch of sky to the left and the Moon, just out of frame. This is with the zoom lens pulled all the way back. The widest angle I could have with that lens.

The camera was working so I didn’t want to change the zoom lens. I moved over to the south side of the yard to get into a darker spot where the streetlights were blocked. Most of the lower sky was taken up by trees, but I could still get Venus, so I focused on that. Yet, the Rebel was having none of this nonsense and would not allow the shot. It just would not register what I was looking at and allow the photo. I tried everything, changing settings back and forth, pointing, shooting. Nothing. Ha! Ha! said the Rebel You’re welcome! 

Then I changed the setting and put it into video mode, but in the dark, I didn’t know that. I thought it was some other automatic setting and it started working, producing one second photos, which I did not want. I wanted longer exposures.

Then I noticed a star cluster. I was not expecting to see a star cluster, but there it was, in the upper left of my shots of Venus, in the gap of sky near the top of the trees.

I squinted up at it. That star cluster was too cool not to photograph so I went back to the other side of the yard again where I had completely clear sky, and I focused on it. It was halfway between Venus and the Moon.

If you have read my previous reports on stargazing, you know I have poor eyesight. I have worn glasses since first grade, and even with the high index lenses, as thin as they can be made now, they are still a quarter inch think. Yes, I wear Coke bottles. Have my whole life.

So whatever I get in my viewfinder is fuzzy while I am looking at it. I cross my fingers and shoot, hoping my quarry is in focus. When I photograph stars at night I don’t actually know if I have a good shot until later, when I see the picture on a computer screen. Daytime shots I have no real trouble with.

I took two shots directly centered on the star cluster with Venus in the lower right of the frame. When I moved the camera over to get the Moon with the star cluster, I would lose Venus on the other side of the picture, so having Venus and the Moon together in one shot was not happening with the zoom lens. I put the wide angle (regular) lens on and focused again. Not only was everything too small, but the Rebel thought everything was too dark and wouldn’t let me take a picture at all. So I put the zoom lens back on.

Finally, I had Venus and the Moon in the same shot. They were not close enough before. It took me five minutes to get the camera steady and set up again with all the right settings. The Moon, even though it was just a sliver, was so bright that it was all I could see in the viewfinder, blinding me, so I snapped a picture, hoping I had Venus and the Moon with the star cluster right in between them. I got one shot like that, and then the Rebel rebelled once more, and would not allow me another shot. I don’t know why. Maybe it was too dark, or just not right, I don’t know what, but it wouldn’t let me take another still shot after that. So, I set it up to take a video for about a minute and called it a night.

I already had plenty of other pictures of the Moon and Venus from previous nighttime photography forays, and it would not be the last time to see them anyway, so I packed up and went inside.

The next day I examined my photos and nearly forgot all about the star cluster, which I expected to be just a blur. But instead, I got this.

It is a lot of black sky, for sure. The point of light in the lower right is Venus, but the star cluster in the middle is not a star cluster. It is something else. When you zoom in you see this.

What is that? I wondered. Definitely not a star cluster. It looks like a craft. Like it has lit panels and a geometric design. Weird, right? Is that a space ship?

I looked at the next photo, taken only ten seconds later. It should have been basically the same. But this time the thing in the middle was a little bigger, and it had a completely different shape. Here is what it looks like zoomed in.

How did it change shape in ten seconds? What does that? Not star clusters. Maybe It was turning, or tumbling, and I got two sides of it. So, what is it? The first picture (6771) is a one second exposure, while the next (6772) is a twenty second exposure, but there is no blur, no evidence of movement. The only way this happens with a twenty second exposure is for the object to remain still. Even Venus and the Pleiades cluster (in the upper right corner) left star trails in this same image. If I had focused on the Moon for twenty seconds it would be a big blob of light, like it is in the last photo of the night (6773).

You can view all of the photos I took that night, listed with full details about each one on the link to my Flickr page below. Please take a look, blow them up, zoom in, see for yourself.

Imagine my shock and surprise. I studied the photos, staring at them all day, wondering what it was. Did I really photograph a UFO?

I showed only a few people at first. Nobody was impressed.

“Looks like lights.” they said.

“Right. Lights in the sky that don’t make any sense.” I replied.

“Maybe it’s a streetlight.”

“It is not a streetlight!”

I obviously had work to do in order to be taken seriously. So, I studied my photos for months. I did a lot of math and made multiple calculations based on the pixels in the pictures, where I stood in my yard, and the angle at which I was looking up into the sky. I took other photos of other things for reference. Things which I knew what they were, that anyone could recognize, like birds and airplanes, and I knew how far away they were, and compared them to my pictures, so that I could make educated calculations and estimates that made sense.

I reached out to photography and mathematics experts who had little interest in helping me calculate the distance to and size of the object. I scoured the internet yet again, as I do when I want information, and found a few websites that gave me pointers on such calculations. I made my own spreadsheets and measurements and calculated everything and put it all into a video that I uploaded onto Youtube.

In the almost three years it has been available to watch, the video has had over 2,400 views, 39 likes, and no comments at all, save the three I made myself wondering why nobody comments. Maybe it is too long. At 18 minutes and 23 seconds it is just about the length of the average TED talk.

But why no comments? None? I wondered. Doesn’t anybody like science? I share all of my data and ask everyone to weigh in with their opinions and this is what I get? Nothing?

I was dying for any so-called UFO expert to respond. I emailed several and got no replies. Then I sent my video to The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and an investigator in North Dakota wrote back. Finally! Somebody cares!

Jeff from North Dakota was thrilled. He considered it a craft and thought it deserved further investigation. But Jeff was not in charge of anything going on in Florida. He was only the initial contact, not the official investigator, and could only give me his opinion, which was that it looked like a craft, but no idea what kind, or why it behaved the way it did. He was disappointed that I had no video.

Jeff was not the official investigator. That duty fell to Jim in Florida. Jim never paid me a visit, but watched my video, conducted a phone interview with me, as Jeff had, took all of the information and compiled it into a report that he sent me a few weeks later. He concluded that the craft was indeed the Moon.

It doesn’t look like the Moon. I protested. Yet, Jim did not respond to that message and politely let me know that this case was closed.

It is not the Moon! I have pictures of the Moon and I have been looking at it my whole life and I made no mistake. It is not the Moon.

Here is what Jim the MUFON investigator saw. Click here to download the MUFON PowerPoint report.

Something I discovered once Jim brought this photo to my attention was that I had captured the UFO and the Moon together in the same shot - twice. In photos 6761 and 6762 it is approaching. These photos were taken 52 seconds apart and there is a discernible difference in the way the UFO looks in each picture. They are both 4 second exposures and the Moon looks just about the same. Plus, the Pleiades cluster is in the upper right of each of these pictures.

Venus and background stars, like the Pleiades, look like they move at about the same rate with the rotation of the Earth to the naked eye, but in the 7 minutes between IMG_6761 (Moon/UFO) and IMG_6772 (Venus/UFO), Venus shifted beneath the Pleiades. The Earth’s rotation keeps the background stars stable, but closer celestial objects from our solar system move past them. This is why the Pleiades is in both photos. The foreground objects moved in relation to the background stars in that 7 minutes.

Here are closeups of the UFO when it was approaching. First, it looks like a group of objects, like a star cluster in the distance.

Next, 52 seconds later, it looks like something else, like two bigger objects closer together.

Jim, the MUFON investigator ignores what I told him about being unable to capture both the Moon and Venus in a single frame with the zoom lens. He misidentifies the UFO as Venus in the Moon photos, and then, mistakenly cites it as the Moon in the Venus photos.

In case it is not perfectly clear this graphic should help explain the situation. The UFO was between the Moon and Venus and both known celestial objects could not be captured in one shot with the zoom lens at the time these pictures were taken with the manual setting. It could be done with the video setting, but not this one.

Does Jim care? No, Jim doesn’t care, he is not listening. He is just looking at pictures and glossing over the fact that my zoom lens did not take the photo he thought it did.

The graphic below is exactly what the sky looked like that night from my location in Clearwater according to Stellarium, the same program used by MUFON.

When you examine 6761 and 6762 closely and realize that everything is moving (the UFO, the Moon, Venus) against the background stars, you see how everything was slowly shifting to the left of the Pleiades. If I were able to, I would do some animation that would help, but I don’t know how to do that.

What I do know is math and research and that this object is not the Moon. I can prove it is not the Moon. While I care about discovering what it really is, that is secondary. It doesn’t matter what it is. What I really want to do is prove that it is NOT THE MOON! Because Jim from MUFON is wrong. He did not take me seriously and dismissed me. He ignored the facts. I don’t like that.

So, while the message may never get back to Jim, it is important to me to prove that this is not the Moon. And I think I can. I have a few ideas to explore further and I think I may have figured it out.

Is it a drone? An airplane? A spy balloon? Aliens?

I can’t say for sure, but I have been kicking this around for quite a while, and I think I might know exactly what it is.

To find out, please bear with me and tune in again in a couple weeks, when I will present my final argument and present all of my latest evidence. In the meantime, click the links above, look at all the photos, read Jim from MUFON’s report, and mull it over yourself. And if you have any ideas, please let me know what they are.

Everyone has an opinion. Plus, we may never really figure it out. No reason we can’t all be wrong.

Especially Jim.

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Thanks for reading.

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