UFO snapped over Thames

Keep in mind that the Sun is the British version of the National Enquirer.

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Duh, she's shooting through the window of the car she's riding in. The "UFO" is a reflection on the glass of an object in the car -- most likely an illuminated dashboard indicator or dial.

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It is unlikely that such an obvious craft would have gone unseen by all the people in London. Where are all the reports? More likely it is a reflection of some kind or a photoshop experiment.

I think Jay nailed it. I'd say it was the speedometer reflected off the windshield. I think I can even make out the markings a bit.

I'd love to see a picture of the dashboard of that model of car.

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"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Its a bit like the craters looking like mounds on some moon and mars pictures if you see what I mean. The light looks like the illumination ring part of a dial that is inside the fascia and not an external light around a craft.

You would be guaranteed some backup shots from the London Eye if it was early enough in the evening IF it was a UFO. I have been on it twice now and the views are very clear.

The salient point of the witness' testimony is where she says she didn't notice the UFO until she looked back at the pictures she had taken.

People naturally tune out reflections in direct observation because all the normal depth cues are there. If you're looking beyond the window at the objects outside it, reflections off the window of interior objects and features seem too nearby. This is why she didn't see the UFO directly as she was touring the city. Her brain automatically filtered out what she "knew" was a reflection off glass.

But in photography key depth cues are missing. So when reflections of nearby objects in glass appear in the same photograph as distant objects seen through it, the lack of depth cues suddenly makes you want to fit all those features together in one coherent scene.

The object is entirely consistent with an inset, illuminated circular dial such as those found in automobiles. And the differential lighting and orientation of the object are consistent among the photographs, indicating that the object does not change materially with respect to the frame. This indicates something fixed in the same local reference frame as the camera, even though it appears to move relative to the background scene.

Normally when such photographs appear, we want to ask whether the photographer was shooting through a window. Here we don't have to; the photographer's position inside a car is evident from the photographic context.

And I'm completely disappointed with "experts" who seem to have leapt instantly for some electronic forgery without first considering one of the most common causes of artifacts in photography. I can't say those experts have spent much time taking photographs.

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The use of large partial reflectors to both transmit and reflect images is one of the oldest image compositing tricks, dating back to the Victorian stage. Similar principles are used in Disney's Haunted Mansion attractions, where (done on a grand scale) they can produce even three-dimensional illusions of simultaneous presence, most of which are fully convincing.

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What is the Moon, then? ;-)

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I agree with the reflection idea, but I do like the bit "And experts claim it is the real thing." Well of course its the real thing, it is really unidentified.

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So obvious it's a dashboard reflection. I'm surprised The Sun printed it at all, since it doesn't have at least one bare breast.

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it looks like the reflection of the cars internal light!

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or the housing for the rear view mirror

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looks like a speedometer bezel to me. altho, it looks like it has to be pointing pretty much straight up from the dashboard. i know British cars have some funky interior layouts compared to what we are used to in the USA, so maybe there is a car over there with a speedo pointing upwards. i see the "ufo" is at the very same angle in the second picture, too, which leads me to think it's something inside the car.

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Agreed.

If you take that detail, crop it out of the picture, and rotate it for proper orientation, it definitely resembles a illuminated, recessed speedometer or tach:



I wonder if anyone on the BAUT owns that particular car?

Also, Tedward is right about this being a good example of something looking concave or convex, depending on how your eye interprets it.

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Pepper's Ghost.

we all seem to have forgotten the most obvious explanation- what we are seeing is Venus being reflected off a weather balloon and then refracted through some swamp gas. the windshield of the car made it invisible to the human eye, but allowed it to show up in a digital camera.
why must we always overlook the most obvious explanations?

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Looking at that and if I am reading it right, it appears to be by the side of the station Charing Cross. It has a walk bridge as well as a rail bridge across the Thames and there are boats up and down the river often. There are also a few moored restaurants and the place is a magnet for tourists. Just up the river (to the right) are the houses of parliament.

So the sun should be able to demonstrate the excellent journalism they have been known for over the years and someone with another picture of the same.

Checked my albums and I have a daytime picture from the Eye looking to where the car is.

On the plus side, I'm sure the student got paid for the photo...students always need money!

Pete

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There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

I agree with JayUtah's assessment.

The "flying saucer" does indeed look like an illuminated, recessed speedometer or tachometer, but is one likely to be reflected in a front windscreen like that? I think not, at least from the driver's point of view in a right-hand drive car, although something else might show up from the passenger's side, where the photos were taken from. So what is it?

We have only two photos to go by out of the three taken, but they indicate that the photographer was sitting in the left front passenger seat and shooting through the front windscreen. Pretty impressive photos for a camera-phone, considering the dimness of the lighting, the shadow and highlight detail in the photos, and the lack of motion blur.

The photo of the Tower Bridge is taken with the camera-phone pointing almost straight ahead, and the London Eye photo was taken toward the right. Both photos were taken with the cameras' optical axis close to horizontal. Neither photo shows the edge of the windscreen, indicating that they were taken close to the windscreen or have been cropped, perhaps both.

Taking into account the curvature and slope of a modern windscreen and presuming that the photos aren't cropped much and that the object is a reflection of something inside the car, it appears to be somewhere near the centreline of the car and, depending on its size, low down.

I first considered a small, oval change purse with chromed edges laid on the shelf above the dashboard, but the reflections are wrong and the purse would be too high. Number two consideration was an internal courtesy light turned on to help the photographer see the camera controls, but a centered light behind or between the front seats would be much too high to produce such a reflection in a camera that is held close to horizontal. The rear of a top-centre rear-vision mirror doesn't appear to be a suitable candidate either.

Using a white plastic 16.5cm-diameter cat's plate with 4cm angled sides, and experimenting with my own car -- a right-hand drive with manual gearlever low in the centre -- while sitting in the passenger's seat with my face close to the windscreen, I could get a similar reflection by holding the plate vertical and bowl-forward, with the bottom of the plate against the front of the gear lever. To get the same down-on-the-right slant of the "flying saucer" I had to rotate the bowl of the vertical plate a little towards myself -- anticlockwise when viewed from above -- but the appropriate angle could possibly be achieved with it facing forward, depending on the exact location of the camera.

It would be interesting to experiment with a car that is identical to the one the photos were taken from, to know it's interior layout, and to know what objects were inside it at the time. And a circular object held vertical and face-forward low in the centre might be a good place to start.

Note that the UFO expert says that because the photos aren't faked, they show "a real object seemingly under intelligent control." How about a simple reflection?

One other thing in the article that bugs me is the usual implication that UFO means "alien spacecraft." I think I recall when the term was originally coined and it was merely an abbreviation for Unidentified Flying Object, and didn't mean anything else. So a space craft that is identified as alien has to be an IFO, not a UFO. It seems ridiculous to me to call an IFO a UFO. However, we had a debate about this at ApolloHoax and it appears that to some people UFO definitely means alien spacecraft. So what else can we call an unidentified object in the sky and have the term we use mean only that?

I know! Here's a perfectly good term: Unidentified Flying Object, shortened to UFO, and all alien spacecraft would be called IFOs, just the same as Venus, blimps, parachute flares, swamp gas, lenticular clouds, the ISS, and reflections in windows.

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