On February 21st of this year, the object in the video above was allegedly filmed travelling near the Popocatépetl Volcano in Mexico. A French Language UFO (OVNI) website, AreaZone51.blogspot.com, carried the story; below is a translation, featuring commentary provided along with the footage:
Televisa still cameras managed to record a very interesting image this morning, at approximately 2 AM. The craft appears to be a cylindrical object… Televisa news said that the video is in real time, which indicates it was not travelling very slowly… CENAPRED (The Mexican National Center for Prevention of Disasters) reported 39 exhalations from the volcano around this time, and of low intensity.
Further information from an earlier report was provided in a news excerpt (possibly from a Televisa News report), which states that similar footage had been obtained earlier this month at the location, involving two objects seen at 5 AM on February 7:
MEXICO CITY, Mexico, February 7, 2013. Wednesday morning Televisa cameras captured the presence of two bright objects in [the sky near] the top of the volcano Popocatepetl. First [the] light moved from the far left to the center of the volcano.
Then [witness unnamed] felt the presence of another light that moved slowly in a straight line with… Popocatépetl. This happened shortly before 5 am.
Is the object seen streaking through the sky here an intelligently controlled “mystery aircraft,” and one of several reported UFOs seen in the area in recent weeks?
In the video, the grainy “live-cam” footage we see is similar to a video system employed by Mexico’s CENAPRED organization to monitor the volcano’s activity (for more on this, you can follow this link to view images of the volcano that are updated every minute by a camera mounted at a nearby station at Tochimilco, Mexico). The French language commentary claimed this footage had actually been captured by Televisa, though it remains unclear as to whether it was “obtained” by them, rather than being actually filmed by the news agency. But much like other footage from low-resolution mounted cameras of this variety, it becomes difficult to discern the exact distance between the object and the volcano itself. It seems more likely that, rather than being a large object traveling close to the volcano, we are seeing a smaller object that is close to the camera.
UFO, or Merely “Sky Fishing”?
Initially, upon viewing the strange, fuzzy outline on the exterior of the elongated object (visible in the frame to the right), I found it very reminiscent of the rapid vertical wingbeats of an insect in flight. This phenomenon, as interpreted by a variety of video camera models, often can result in the impression of a consistent zigzag or spiral pattern that, for years, was believed by many to represent some variety of life form unto itself; simply because the exotic manner in which these “critters” appeared on camera was, at times, very convincing. Names such as “sky-fish” and, more popularly, “rods” were given to the mystery animals, when in reality, these were common insects entering the frame, whose rapid wingbeats and other movements were being interpreted vastly differently through the mechanical eye of the camera. By clicking here, a similar photograph of the “sky-fish” wingbeat phenomenon in question can be viewed; in this case, the “rods” are obviously moths fluttering around an outdoor light.
The clearest remaining problem with dismissing this footage as merely being an insect flying past in close proximity to the camera is that the original Spanish and French language reports also made some references to the object traveling slowly; if this footage was indeed a compilation of images taken every minute, like the link to the Tochimilco camera above, it would suggest that the object had indeed been moving very slowly. However, we can be certain that this is not the Tochimilco camera, as the shape of the surface around the volcano’s summit is exactly the opposite when comparing one video with the other; the large crater has a very distinctive shape, and thus the Tochimilco camera’s angle appears to mirror the angle of the video above, rather than match it, showing that the footage was taken at a different location. Additionally, subtle movements of the ash cloud in the footage containing the UFO appear to show that the camera in question is depicting movement that is close to real-time (thus, this corroborates with the portion of the initial report, stating that “Televisa news said that the video is in real time, which indicates it was not travelling very slowly”).
Altogether, if we had to submit our best guess as to what this object was, at present it seems fairly safe to assume that the likely explanation is a small insect was the culprit here, moving close to the camera (and perhaps close enough to further accentuate the IR “illumination” of the object in conjunction with the camera’s night-vision mode), rather than being a large, cylindrical or “cigar-shaped” UFO.
The CENAPRED cameras are set to give a frame rate of 4 frames per second. Given that the object appears on 15 frames, we can conclude it took the object 1 full minute to traverse the whole distance of the camera’s aperture.
Escamilla’s video camera (the one he used to record his RODs) like all commercial equipment is set to 30 fps.
So no, I don’t agree with the insect hypothesis.
Here are more videos taken at mount Popo.
http://youtu.be/S5tsFZS-A6c
RPJ,
Interesting observations! Here are a few things still worthy of consideration. The CENAPRED camera that I linked in the article retrieves stills once every minute, rather than every four seconds. Can you share a link with the information about the cameras that utilize a four-second interval (as the camera linked, compared with the one in the video, clearly show different angles, and thus different cameras)?
Also, at least one report claimed that the images were actually filmed by Televisa, although this seems a bit strange, as the video appears to be a mounted camera of some variety (as I’d mentioned, and in keeping with the CENAPRED cameras being used). I had wondered whether language barriers might contribute to a misinterpretation of the actual filming source.
Share a link! If that was indeed a CENAPRED camera (as I had initially thought as well), and the four-second interval is a known quantity, it might help clear this up.
You would think finding a simple answer to the issue of these cameras would be easy, but either I’m too stupid to find it or neither CENAPRED nor TELEVISA give straightforward answers in their websites.
In this official page, CENAPRED provides information about the camera they keep on top of mount Altzomoni: it is a surveillance camera model ESPRIT by PELCO, and the image is refreshed every minute. HOWEVER, in this study they published to explain the video of October 25th, they show a series of sequences of the object taken every 0.25 seconds (4 fps) so it is my guess –correct me if I’m wrong– that even though the camera is recording 4 frames every second, the webpage refreshes the image only every minute, possibly due to bandwidth limitations.
The Altzomoni center seems to be a joint venture between TELEVISA & CENAPRED, meaning TELEVISA built the facility & installed their own camera, and let CENAPRED put a camera of their own. The TELEVISA camera is more sensitive to light, hence their images are brighter. I haven’t found an official website describing the technical characteristics of the TELEVISA camera, but perhaps it’s not so wrong to speculate it has the same or similar frame rate to the CENAPRED camera.
CENAPRED also has 3 more cameras surveying mount Popo, at the station Tlamacas, station Tianguismanalco & station Tochimilco. However the page doesn’t offer any additional info about the technical characteristics of these other cameras, so whether they are the same brand & type as the one they keep at Altzomoni I do not know.
The company Webcams de México also keeps a camera pointing to mount Popo, and on October 25th they also captured 2 other different objects ‘falling’ close (or into) the volcano.
This is a link to their timelapse, which I haven’t checked out because it doesn’t open on my end.
And finally I want to conclude that I found interesting how one of the astronomers who was consulted to analyze the 1st video –the one that caught all the attention last year (Oct 25th)– said on that occasion how it would have been more interesting if the object appeared ‘rising up’ instead of falling down –hence the official conclusion is that it was a Taurid bolid– and yet on one of the videos I provided, the cameras caught an object coming out of the volcano.
Incandescent ejected material… or was the phenomenon reacting to the scientist’s comment?