Ian was right

[Daniel]

Wrong date entered Stephan, for your NOAA Magnetic Declination results. Are you sure your own transcript of the halt tape is fully accurate? I personally would follow Storms transcript. Halt mentions they're at the edge of the second farmers field, does he mention exactly where he was standing, instead of dead centre, of the far edge, in a farmers field as shown in the photo. If this is the second farmers field, where is the first? Would Col Halt refer to the second field after passing through the first one?

As always I'm curious, off to work.

Daniel

[Frank]

Instead of loosing ourselves in a Lighthouse versus No lighthouse discussion, let’s step back a little.
Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Some parts of the events sound and look very similar to the lighthouse. Is that strange? No – the lighthouse is bound to play a role if you are out in the dark woods investigating an earlier UFO sighting.

Other parts do not sound and look like the lighthouse at all. Is that strange? Yes – if all they saw was the blinking light of the lighthouse and some shimmering stars & planets, you don’t expect that they observe:
- An object that has glowing pieces falling and shooting off
- An object that breaks up into several objects in a ‘silent explosion’
- Objects that display red, green and blue lights.
- Two of those objects, one to their left (to the north) and one in front of them (to the east)
- The object in front of them moving to the right (to the south)
- One additional object appearing in the north ('we got one again left')
- All these objects moving out fast, heading north
- The object that moves from south to north coming in and shining down a beam at their feet

And you certainly do not expect them to send a UFO memo to the MOD two weeks later because of one unidentified distant lighthouse and some misidentified shimmering stars & planets!

So we should not look at this in terms of Lighthouse or No Lighthouse. It probably was Lighthouse PLUS Other Stuff that has not been explained so far.

Ian (&Stephan), how do you explain the following observations:

SGT BALL: Pieces are shooting off.
LT COLONEL HALT: Pieces of it are shooting off.
SGT BALL: At eleven o' clock (directional reference)
(…)
SGT BALL: Look to the left!
SGT NEVILLES: Yeah, definitely moving. There's two...two lights. One light in front and one light to the left.
(…)
LT COLONEL HALT: Pieces are falling off it again.
SGT BALL: It just moved to the right... went off to the right.
LT COLONEL HALT: Yeah ... strange, Auh.
LT COLONEL HALT: We got one again left.
(…)
LT COLONEL HALT: Ten degrees off the horizon, and the ones to the north are moving, one's moving away from us.
SGT BALL: Movin forward!
SGT NEVILLES: It's moving out fast!
LT COLONEL HALT: They're moving out fast.
SGT BALL: This one on the right's heading away too.
LT COLONEL HALT: Yeah, they're both heading north. Ok hey, here he comes from the south, he's coming in toward us now.
SGT BALL: Holy ***!
(BREAK IN TAPE)
LT COLONEL HALT: Now were observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground.
SGT BALL: Look at the colours... ***
LT COLONEL HALT: This is unreal

[puddlepirate]

H: that's a strange, small, red light

The lighthouse is a navigational mark. It emits WHITE light. That might not be important to anyone who has not been to sea or lives inland but it is a very important point. Orfordness is a sector light. That means it shows white to seaward and red and green in different sectors extending in an angle of arc from the coastline to around 47deg to seaward. It is essential that the colours are clearly distinguishable from each other. Thus the white light is white - not red,orange or yellow and is clearly seen as white. When at sea and approaching the ness, if you see a red light you are in the danger zone and must alter course to seaward until you can no longer see the light. The flash of white light at every five seconds identifies that light from every other light around the UK coast. Note, it is a flashing not occulting light. The red light is much lower than the white (it's at approx 13m) and does not flash. It is a steady light - as is the green which shows to the north. If mariners get this wrong, i.e. mistake the identity of the light or ignore the red sector light, they end up either going aground, going off course or both. Get hold of any nautical chart and any nautical alamac such as Reeds for details of the sectors the lights are seen in. If Halt saw a red light then no matter what other factors are being played with it was NOT the lighthouse. End of. The lighthouse is there for reason, not just to decorate the coast.

[puddlepirate]

One other thing... on the northern end of Orforness there are a number of very tall radio antenna used by the BBC World Service for their transmitters. These are on the old Cobra Mist site. Each mast has a red light fixed to the top. If Halt saw a red light or a number of such lights then it is entirely possible he was looking at the masts. These stand much higher than the lighthouse and any surrounding high ground so should be visible above the tree line horizon. The lighthouse bears 093 from the edge of the farmer's field - i.e. approx due east (090). The masts bear just north of east at something like 087. Taking a compass bearing with a handheld compass, in a pitch black forest at night could easily lead to mistakes..... the easiest of all is to take the reciprocal as the bearing....so an error is entirely possible. He might not have used a compass at all but estimated the readings based on his knowledge, i.e he might have known he was heading approximately due east so simply guessed the angle off.

[stephan]

as for the date I took the 1st night of events. You could also take the 2nd night (Halt's night) or the 3rd night. It's always the same magnetic declination, i.e. 5°13'. It doesn't change that fast

as for the movements I've already given a possible explanation (see some posts back) only slightly different from Ian's explanation (see video). Again, the ''pieces of it are shooting off'' part I have no explanation for so far. I don't know what caused this observation. Perhaps reflections in the starscope ?

It would be very interesting to know at which points of the tape Halt used the starscope to look at the ''objects''. He may have interpreted the movements he saw through it and which were caused by shaking the device (it's difficult to work with such devices without using a tripod or some type of mounting to prevent vibrations) as real movements of the object. There are also many other lense effects which can occur (focus, brightness etc.). If you look at the features of the AN/PVS2 starscope that was probably used by them you find that it has an Automatic Brightness Control (ABC). I believe Ian mentioned somewhere in above video posted by Admin that the changes in brightness may have caused Halt's impression that the object was moving towards them. In addition stars like Sirius are notorious for their twinkling and color changes. They indeed change colors (due to atmospheric disturbances) from green to white to blue to red as this video for example shows:


(gets this guy some extra views )

[stephan]

H: that's a strange, small, red light

The lighthouse is a navigational mark. It emits WHITE light.

in the video it appears yellow. Nevels (?) also corrects Halt when he says it's yellow. Halt ''admits'' 'I saw a yellow tinge in it, too'.

[Admin]

The light observed by Halt has always been red (even with a "yellow tinge") - right through from the tape, to the memorandum, to the account he gives today.
If you return to the BBC's Breakfast report with Vince Thurkettle and Ian Ridpath, Vince even describes the lighthouse as a "pulsing white light", as it flashes behind him.

[stephan]

well, to me it looks yellow (if you lower the brightness - which doesn't change the color - of the video you'll see it quite clear). But obviously different people see different colors. Even if Halt said red then why was he corrected and then found for himself that there was a yellow tinge in it, too ? Red + yellow would make it organge which is not far away from yellow.

[puddlepirate]

There is a conundrum with the light as it appears in the video. Assuming the light is the Orford Ness light and not somebody fooling around with a torch in the background, it's quite high.Too high. It's above Thurkettle's left shoulder. This is way too high for a light that stands just 26m from ground level, 5.5 miles away. Even on Orford Jetty it is not that high....from memory it would be about waist high against somone standing close to you on the jetty - and it's a tiny speck of light. A pinprick. For it to appear over the left shoulder of someone of average height standing close to you, 5.5 miles away from the light (ignoring the fact that there is high ground blocking the view in any case) means something is wrong. The forest is at something like 29m above sea level (the light is 28m above sea level). That is higher than the light itself so even if it could be seen it should be below Thurkettle's shoulder, not above. Either the vid was shot much closer to the light and at a much lower level (maybe even on the 'ness itself) or it's a fake set up by someone standing in the background using a torch. Or it is not the lighthouse but something else.

[stephan]

I've checked the colors now with a color scanner and here are some colors that I found in the light in different frames of the video:



so we have both white and yellow and when the light turns away from sight it indeed appears in a reddish/brown tinge.

[stephan]

puddle,

at first I also thought that the light in the video was too big. However, then I imagined how they might have filmed it: Vince was standing not right in front of the camera but, say, 10 meters away or so. Then they zoomed in until they had Vince's torso in the frame and the light was - of course - also zoomed in. I've already posted that earlier where I said that Halt was probably looking at the magnified picture of the starscope. So their little cheat with the zoom would be more or less forgivable

as for the height of the lighthouse take a look at the pictures taken by Ian in daylight: http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2.htm

[puddlepirate]

I posted a longer message but decided to delete it. Put simply, it is an inescapable fact that the further you move away from something the smaller it becomes to the observer. Thus it is simply not possible for a 28m high light to appear above the shoulder of someone standing on ground 29m high, 5.5 miles away. Personally and I stress this is only a personal view based on my visit to the 'ness, I think the vid was shot somewhere near to the landing stage on the 'ness itself. That location would put the light at about the right elevation and intensity.

This image was taken on the 'ness from the road leading back to the jetty used by the ferry. I'm about 5' 11" and was standing on the road itself, therefore the image is the view at just above shoulder height. The grass is the grassy bank bordering the road. If I'd placed someone of average height in front of me you can see that the light would be just above their shoulder. http://www.flickr.com/photos/powfoto/49 ... 052588878/

[stephan]

unfortunately I have never been there so I could check the sight for myself. I have to rely on videos and photos found on the net. The photo made by Ian doesn't look fake to me and you know what I think they did in the video. It's the same type of effect you have in movies with people standing in front of a huge moon. You simply place them far away from the camara, zoom in until they appear as if they were right in front of it with the Moon looking like a giant. See photo (here's it's done with a tree):

[puddlepirate]

But when you zoom in you cannot isolate parts of a subject, everything the lens sees is enlarged. You can throw the background out of focus by using a large aperture to reduce depth of field (an effect amplified by telephoto lenses due to their very narrow depth of field). In the vid Thurkettle is being interviewed so he had to be standing reasonably close to the interviewer, cameraman and sound recordist's microphone...

[stephan]

here, I just made this.



on the left: zoomed in, the torch is standing some 3 meters away while the dustbin is some 15 meters away
on the right: zoomed out, the torch 1 meter away, dustbin 13 meters away.

size of the torch is the same while the dustbin on the left is much bigger than on the right.

translated into the video with Thurkettle: Vince is the torch and the dustbin is the lighthouse light.

[puddlepirate]

Excellent. That exactly proves my point. In the image on the right although the dustbin is much bigger than the torch because it is further away it looks much smaller. In the image on the left (if you had kept the dustbin in focus) the torch starts to go out of focus and the more you zoom in on the dustbin the more out of focus the torch would become. This is because depth of field decreases as the focal length of the lens increases. In the vid Thurkettle is clearly in sharp focus.....

How small would the dustbin be if it were 5.5 miles away from the torch?

[stephan]

puddle, the torch was in focus, not the dusbin. The blur comes from my shaky hands The further the torch is away the sharper both objects become. So my suggestion was Vince was about 10 meters away. Makes him sharp and the lighthouse light as well although it appears a bit more out of focus than the scene where it is filmed alone. The audio could have been either amplified or they used a sensitive mike.

[Frank]

An important thing on Halt’s tape that seems to be overlooked:

In the first part they just see lights. First they see a ‘strange flashing red light’ ahead. Then they see two lights, one in front and one to their left. One of these lights goes off to the right and another is seen to their left again.

In the second part, however, Halt clearly talks about objects with colored lights on them. So not just lights anymore! Two to the north and one to the south. Then two or three objects start moving north very fast, including the object to the south which is moving towards them and sends a beam down to their feet.

There is no way that stars, planets, or a lighthouse can move, let alone move fast to the north! And if somebody consistently talks about ‘lights’ when he sees lights, and then suddenly starts talking about ‘objects with colored lights on them’, you can bet these objects are of substantial size and aren’t misidentified stars or planets!

[John Burroughs]

Trust me Ian will try. He flat out told me via E-Mail Halt was fooled by a star when the beam came down at his feet. All Ian has done is show there was a lighthouse out there for 30 years of hard work. And what the 3 of us came up on was close to the ground not off in the distance and it was red in color not white or tinge of orange with blue lights around it. Look at what I drew right afterwords and then filled in with color.....

[AdrianF]

OK, I'd like to jump in here.
PP, I would say that Stephan is probably right as far as the BBC clip goes with Vince. My best guess, looking at the clip is, he was probably around 5-10m from the camera and the lens was probably zoomed to around a 100mm ( 35mm equivalent ). The lens would have been wide open and from my experience filming at this spot, this is exactly what I would expect to see ( presuming I'd framed someone to stand in front of the lighthouse ) with the light over his shoulder.

As for the colour, I posted on this a while back and admin has since reposted my clip. Here is the original with the focal lengths used and
If you want to read more on the colour then there is also an explanation of what I did on my web page http://chillfactorfilms.squarespace.com/media/
It's all relative to the conditions. Certain nights the light appears more reddish and others more white.