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Looks Can Be Deceiving

Could some of the drones we've seen recently be tracks of he mind?

By: Jim Becherman
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... Drones, drone everywhere - and who to think?
..... There were 49 reported sightings this past Sunday [12/08/2024] along, governor Phil Murphy said at a press conference Monday. [12/09/2024]
..... He also stressed that these mysterious appearances, which have been baffling New Jerseyans in 12 counties since late November, [2024] pose no known threat to public safety. At least one of Sunday's [12/08/2024] sightings, he added, was a mistake: an airplane, taken for a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle).
..... Which prompts the question: How many of these sightings are mistakes?
..... Could some of the drone-mania that as gripped the state over the last few weeks be due to simple errors of vision, mistaken identity, optical illusion?
..... Given history, various episodes of mass hysteria, form UFO sightings to 2016's epidemic of clown sightings - remember those? - it can't be altogether discounted. Especially given social media's role, nowadays, in amplifying everything.
..... It seems highly unlikely that so many people across New Jersey ( and also Staten Island) could be reporting something wholly imaginary. But it seems equally unlikely that so many drones could be launched in so many locations over so many days without the source of at least one being discovered.
..... And if this is all some kind of vast, clandestine surveillance operation - as some have suggested - why do these things fly only at night? and why would they make themselves so easily seen with those widely reported, FAA-regulations flashing lights?
..... "Whoever is flying them is complying with FAA rules to put blinking lights, so as not to collide with other aircraft, or vice versa," said Gary Swangin, Warren County astronomer-at-large and former director of the Newark and Panther Academy (in Paterson) planetariums/ They want to be seen.

Light in the sky

..... One of the most common inquires he sued to get, as planetarium director, was about UFOs.
..... People were constantly calling to report strange objects, lights somethings in the sky. during the early 1970s, when interest was at its peak, Swangin set up a UPF hot-line and used a questionnaire developed by astronomer J. Allen Hynek - who minted the phrase "close Encounters of the Third Kind" - to help witnesses sort out their perceptions and perhaps arrive at the truth.
...... "It was very helpful," Swangin recalled. "When people see something like this in the sky, the often fail to note things. Sight alone is nice. But did you hear anything? did you smell anything? And, of course, those standard questions: what time of day, what direction?"
..... Needless to say, none of the sightings reported to Swangin turned out to be - definitively - an Allen spacecraft. But many did turn out to be other things.
..... Among the most common UFO explanations, though the years?
..... Ordinary aircraft. satellites, Meteorites - particularly the rare kind, called bolides, that explode in mid-atmosphere, sometimes spectacularly.
..... Alis weather balloons, "That's at the top of the list of mistaken identities," Swangin said.

Conditions and light

..... Then there are the tricks that light, and atmospheric conditions, can play on the eye.
..... Sometimes when a planet or a bright star is low on the horizon, their light can be passing through many layers of the earth's atmosphere," said Amie Gallagher, director of the planetarium at Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburg.
..... "So it might be bright and twinkle a lot or even change color a little bit," she said. "It might be Venus or Jupiter, and also the star Sirious, which is the brightest star in the night sky."
..... Then there is a phenomenon called autokinesis. It can make you think you're seeing moving lights.
..... "What happens is, when you start at a pinpoint of light in the sky, the muscles in your eye try to focus on the object," Swangin said. "So as a result the object moves - it sways back and forth and up and down. It's actually stationary, but some people claim the object is moving. It's only a physical thing that's happening to them."
..... Pilots eye often bedeviled by this phenomenon: they're told to focus the eyes on objects at varying distances and avoid fixating on one target.

Noise and distance

..... For the layperson, such sightings are further compromised by issues of context and distance.
..... It's often hard to judge how distant, how high up, an object is in a darkened sky. Which is, precisely, the difference between a drone and an airplane. "You can't look at it against a black sky and try to determine whether the object is far or close to you," Swangin said.
..... That's why it's important to note whether the object made a noise. "Then it's within 200 feet," Swangin said.
..... Questions of what direction the object was moving are also useful. If it's moving toward the west, toward the setting sun, it could be subject to distortions of light and atmosphere. If it's moving toward, or away from, a nearby airport, that's another tell.

A team effort?

..... To get to the bottom of this year's [2024] drone phenomenon will require lots of reporting from lots of credible sources.
..... Ultimately, it may require a group effort like Operation Moonwatch - the 1950s program to track the first artificial satellites, before today's [12/08/2024] global radar infrastructure had been established. Teams of amateur astronomers, stationed aorta the world, would relay their sightings of Sputnikls and Explorers to Smithsonian, which would triangulate the data and determine exactly what the object was and where it was headed.
..... "If you get a group of people who could see if there's a pattern, whether these things emerge from one central place, then you could pinpoint where they're coming from," he said.
..... Until then, the question will remain: Are these drone sightings real? Are they imaginary?
..... A little of both?
..... Swangin for his part, has no doubt. He's actually seen one.
..... "Last week, [12/05/2024] when I was driving, it was right in front of me," he said. "It was stationary, and I could see the two strobe lights on it, red and green lights. and they were flashing. I was about two blocks away from my home in Warren County."
..... He did what he was trained to do. he noted distance, and direction.
..... "It was very low altitude, a couple of hundred feet," he said. "It started to move in a northwest direction. It was easy to see. I couldn't believe it."
..... Swangin invites anyone who has had a sighting to contact him at spacebservatroy@aol.com.

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