A police helicopter in the UK captured footage of a UFO that appeared to be moving at approximately 106 mph and was detectable solely through a thermal camera.
The peculiar video, reminiscent of recent UFO footage recorded by the US military, was released by the police in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. The video seems to show the object traversing the Bristol Channel.
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The video exhibits the object defying the wind as it travels at considerable speed, tracked by the police helicopter’s FLIR thermal camera near St Athan in Wales at around 9 pm on September 17, 2016.
Segments of the video, recorded from a screen, were initially shared by the NPAS team during that time.
However, the complete video of this unusual encounter has now been unveiled after a FOI request made by former police officer turned UFO investigator, Gary Heseltine.
Following a prolonged effort to receive answers to his inquiries, Heseltine has urged the UK government to finally disclose its knowledge about UFOs.
NPAS South West tweeted at the time that the object had not been detected by local air traffic control and was described as “hot” as it moved against the wind, discounting the possibility of it being a balloon or lantern.
The object was flying at an altitude of around 1,000 feet and became visible only when detected by the police through the thermal camera, which they were reportedly testing by aiming it at planes heading toward Cardiff Airport.
The encounter lasted for approximately eight minutes, during which the footage shows adjustments being made to the camera’s settings as the police seemingly attempt to identify the mysterious phenomenon.
In a tweet in 2019, more than three years after the initial release of the short clip, the police stated that “a drone is possible, but they were unable to keep up with it, so it would have to have been very fast.”
Despite Mr. Heseltine’s efforts to acquire audio recordings from inside the police chopper and a map detailing the object’s movements, this information was not provided in response to the FOI request.
“This is authenticated police helicopter FLIR footage capturing an object imperceptible to the naked eye but clearly visible in the infrared spectrum. Its movement against the wind rules out the possibility of a balloon, and the absence of any heat signature indicates a propulsion system,” he informed The Sun Online.
NOTE:
Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras, typically used on military and civilian aircraft, use a thermographic camera that senses infrared radiation.[1]
The sensors installed in forward-looking infrared cameras, as well as those of other thermal imaging cameras, use detection of infrared radiation, typically emitted from a heat source (thermal radiation), to create an image assembled for video output.
They can be used to help pilots and drivers steer their vehicles at night and in fog, or to detect warm objects against a cooler background. The wavelength of infrared that thermal imaging cameras detect is 3 to 12 μm and differs significantly from that of night vision, which operates in the visible light and near-infrared ranges (0.4 to 1.0 μm).
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Infrared light falls into two basic ranges: long-wave and medium-wave. Long-wave infrared (LWIR) cameras, sometimes called “far-infrared”, operate at 8 to 12 μm and can see heat sources, such as hot engine parts or human body heat, several kilometers away. Longer-distance viewing is made more difficult with LWIR because the infrared light is absorbed, scattered, and refracted by air and by water vapor.
Some long-wave cameras require their detector to be cryogenically cooled, typically for several minutes before use, although some moderately sensitive infrared cameras do not require this. Many thermal imagers, including some forward-looking infrared cameras (such as some LWIR enhanced vision systems (EVS)) are also uncooled.
Medium-wave (MWIR) cameras operate in the 3–5 μm range. These can see almost as well, since those frequencies are less affected by water-vapor absorption, but generally require a more expensive sensor array, along with cryogenic cooling.
Many camera systems use digital image processing to improve the image quality. Infrared imaging sensor arrays often have wildly inconsistent sensitivities from pixel to pixel, due to limitations in the manufacturing process. To remedy this, the response of each pixel is measured at the factory, and a transform, most often linear, maps the measured input signal to an output level.
Some companies offer advanced “fusion” technologies that blend a visible-spectrum image with an infrared-spectrum image to produce better results than a single-spectrum image alone.[2]
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