In this article, we digress from our investigation of ancient sites on Earth to examine a new video posted in late March that shows what appear to be three very large UFOs flying around the moon.

The video was taken by a French Canadian astronomer with a telescope viewing a crescent moon in daylight through thin clouds. Click here to view the original video. A magnified version of the video is shown below. Three objects rise up over the limb of the moon, fly across the lunar surface, and disappear into the moon’s shadow.

The following is a motion stabilized and sharpened version of the video that I created to better visualize the event.

What is immediately evident is that the UFOs in the video are large enough and close enough to the moon to be able to cast noticeable shadows. On seeing this I was immediately inspired to analyze the video in greater detail to attempt to answer four key questions:

• How close are these objects to the moon?
• How large are they?
• How fast are they moving?
• What are they?

Measuring Distances

Using the arc or limb of the moon as a starting point, since the size of the moon is known we can estimate the physical length of the portion of the limb that is seen through the telescope. From this, it is possible to compute a scale factor that gives the physical distance between two points at the distance of the moon from the distance between two points in the image. According to Francis Ridge, who leads the Lunascan Project, the large crater in the image is Endymion. Using a computed scale factor of 107 miles/inch (see figure below), the crater’s length measured north-south in the image is 0.55 inches and so its physical diameter is about 59 miles, which is close to the measured diameter of 62 miles using Google Moon.

How close are these objects to the moon?

Object measurements were made in magnified versions of the video. Using Endymion as a reference, the scale factor in the magnified video frames is 34 miles/inch. The images below give altitudes of the three objects (U1-U3) estimated from the highest points in their paths as they rise up from behind the moon.

How large are they?

The fact that these objects are so clearly resolvable in the video immediately suggested that they are quite large. As it turns out they are enormous. A measurement of U1 as it flies over Endymion is between 5 and 15 miles in length and roughly 1 to 3 miles in width. The other two objects appear to be about the same size.

As shown below, as U1 moves across the moon we see the bright sunlit side when the background is dark and the dark shadowed side when the background is bright. Putting the two together suggests that U1 and the other objects have an elliptical or ellipsoidal shape.

How fast are they moving?

If we can measure physical distances then we can estimate speed. By measuring its displacement between video frames, U1 appears to be moving about 31 miles/sec. Objects in a circular orbit near the moon move at a speed of about 1 mile per second. Thus U1 is moving more than 30x faster than it would were it in lunar orbit.

In an analysis of video imagery of UFOs taken by the Space Shuttle in 1991, it was determined that certain objects, which appeared to be traveling around the Earth, were moving at speeds in excess of 20 miles per second. Although such speeds are not in themselves that remarkable since meteorites can move up to 45 miles per second that they were moving around the Earth in curved trajectories suggested that they were not meteorites or space debris. Similar behaviors are evident in this video.

What are they?

A recently posted CGI video recreation that attempts to prove the original video is a fake actually proves the opposite. In the side by side comparison shown below the CGI version predicts the general appearance of the event quite well and so validates the underlying sun-moon-UFO geometry. However, it fails to accurately model the appearance of the UFOs themselves. In particular, a thin border around the objects indicates that they were inserted or composited into the frame. There is no such border around the objects in the original video.

Atmospheric turbulence, which causes long-range images to dance or shimmer in a random manner, provides another subtle clue attesting to the authenticity of the original video. As shown below as it moves across Endymion U1 “dances” along with its local background. In the CGI version, this motion appears to have been mimicked by simply adding in frame-to-frame jitter.

Ultimately, it is impossible to prove that this (or any other) video is authentic. But what if it is?

In the midst of political turmoil, global warming, and a worldwide pandemic, could it also be time for something completely different – time for three enormous objects that have been flying around the moon to land on Earth.

Could it be time for us to open our minds up to yet another reality – one that is almost literally looming on the horizon?

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Francis Ridge, Ananda Sirisena, and David Eccott for their contributions.

The picture at the top of this article, which is from the front cover of an early printing of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End, depicts what one of these objects might look like hovering over a major city.