Gleaves - UFO PHOTO: COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF WORLDWIDE UFO IMAGES THROUGH THE DECADES

UFO PHOTOS

COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF WORLDWIDE UFO IMAGES THROUGH THE DECADES

JASON GLEAVES

UFO PHOTOS

First edition published in 2018 by Flying Disk Press

FLYING DISK PRESS

4 St Michaels Avenue

Pontefract

West Yorkshire

England

WF8 4QX

Published by FLYING DISK PRESS

Cover design by Jason Gleaves

Copyright 2018 Jason Gleaves. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the publishers of this book.

CONTENTS

Page 4: Dedication

Page 5: Acknowledgements

Page 6: Foreword by Nick Pope

Page 8: Authors note

Page 9: Introduction

Page 11: RAF Cosford incident

Page 22: Types of analysis and enhancement software used

Page 29: Range and variation of visual resolution of UFO images

Page 31: Case histories

Page 117: Helpful reporting procedures

Page 119: Summary and conclusion

Page 122: Afterword by Philip Mantle

DEDICATION

I would like to dedicate this book to my wife Vicky for putting up with me and my hours of researching...

Ditt o

Acknowledgments

Books are so difficult to put together and without the help of friends, family and colleagues this book was always going to be just a dream, with them it has become a reality. I would like to acknowledge the people who took their time and especially their patience to help and guide me through this process. Vicky Gleaves for putting up with my endless hours of research, Harry Gleaves for his hugely valuable artistic input plus Rosemary Payne and Roger Payne for their help. I would like to thank Philip Mantle for his invaluable experience and huge help regarding publishing, also Nick Pope (ex-Ministry of Defence UK) for his contribution towards the RAF Cosford, RAF Shawbury incident and aftermath, Ufologists and investigators Paul Sinclair and Tony Topping for contributions towards the book. Thank you to Luis Sergio Bernardes Kantek, Don Doyon and Marie Kayali for letting me use their fascinating images and details regarding their experiences and sightings. Also author Peter Robins for his kind help and advice.

Foreword

A picture paints a thousand words. Nowhere is this old adage truer than when it comes to the fascinating and often frustrating subject of UFOs. A topic that, a few years ago, was only occasionally featured in the media, has found itself thrust into the mainstream, largely due to the vast number of photos and videos of UFOs that we now have an unintended consequence of the ubiquity of mobile phones. To give a practical example of this, when I worked on the Ministry of Defences UFO project back in the nineties, only a very few UFO witnesses were able to back up their accounts with visual evidence. In most cases, all we had was testimony. That wasnt the end of the story, of course. We had considerable resources at our disposal, including radar, but the value of photographic and video evidence when it comes to undertaking a meaningful investigation cannot be overstated.

The exponential increase in visual UFO evidence brought with it two problems. The first was information overload. The second was the signal-to-noise ratio problem. Simply put, there are a lot of fake photos and videos out there and lots of imagery that while not hoaxed shows nothing more exciting than a reflection, a lens flare, dust or dirt on the lens, or an insect that just happened to fly in front of the camera as someone was photographing a spectacular landscape shot. If I had a pound for every time I heard the phrase I saw nothing unusual when I was taking the picture, but when I looked at the image later well, Id have a lot of pounds! And thats where this fascinating book comes in handy, because Jason Gleaves has expertise that might just help make sense of this frustrating situation.

Jason has been involved in researching and investigating UFOs and other mysteries (like many experts in this field, he uses the phrase high strangeness events to describe a lot of this) for many years, but his particular area of expertise is imagery analysis. Jason has skill and experience in carefully examining photos and videos, sorting out the fact from the fiction. But Jasons story goes deeper than this. He brings two other things to the table that make this a particularly fascinating book. Firstly, his military background, as a former member of the Royal Air Force. The military are frequently cast as the villains of the story, as its told by the UFO and conspiracy theory community. They as the cutting edge of the sinister government forces that many believe are at work here are the ones who many believe respond to reports of crashed UFOs, intimidate witnesses, remove evidence and generally act as the muscle when it comes to the UFO cover-up. The reality is somewhat different, but whatever one believes about cover-ups and conspiracies, theres no getting away from the fact that a UFO book written by someone who served in the military has a certain degree of authority even if its simply a question of knowing that the author isnt going to misidentify military jets or night exercises involving flares as being something more exotic. The second aspect of Jasons background that makes this new book particularly interesting is that he doesnt just research and investigate other peoples sightings hes had UFO sightings and other strange experiences himself, giving him a personal connection with this subject. In an interesting piece of synchronicity, Jason was based at RAF Cosford in March 1993, when a UFO flew directly over the base. I was the Ministry of Defence official who led the investigation into the sighting! This fascinating book is thus part investigators manual with the focus on imagery analysis and part personal journey of discovery, as Jason brings his considerable knowledge and experience to bear one the greatest mystery of modern times.

Nick Pope

Ministry of Defence UFO Project (1991 1994)

Authors Note

Unless stated otherwise, the views expressed and images depicted in this book are my own and should not be construed as representing any other persons or agencys opinion in any other capacity.

Two possibilities exist:

Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Arthur C. Clarke

Introduction

I have been involved with analysing unidentified flying objects and unknown anomalies for many years and during that time I have been fortunate enough to participate in numerous in-depth research and investigations regarding image/video footage analysis. I have personally contributed on numerous forms of UFO media helping witnesses and ufologists within our community worldwide.

Throughout my civilian life and military career (Royal Air Force) I have had my fair share of high strangeness events and sightings, some might say odd happenings, which I believe gave me a solid footing for my interest and knowledge in this supernatural world of UFOs and strange phenomena alike.