Mysterious objects over Bathurst

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UF OH: Studying a photograph he took a year ago, Dave Sanders from Bathurst noticed two strange objects in the sky, and wonders what they are Picture: DAVE SANDERS
UF OH: Studying a photograph he took a year ago, Dave Sanders from Bathurst noticed two strange objects in the sky, and wonders what they are Picture: DAVE SANDERS

DAVE Sanders’ passion is photography, especially landscapes and, while checking an old photograph to determine the depth of field of his camera he noticed two objects he believed were planes, probably from the nearby 43 Air School.

 

“They fly overhead all the time, so I thought it would be a good test if I were able to identify the aircraft,” said Sanders.

So he zoomed into the image on his computer and noticed something peculiar. Neither of the objects seemed to be aeroplanes, at least not of a type Sanders had ever encountered.

Sanders is the son of an officer in the RAF, and so had grown up around planes.

He searched his camera’s SD card and found a similar photograph, taken just over a minute earlier, but there were no objects visible in that photograph.

“The pictures were taken just one minute apart [the first at 7.09.34am and the second at 7.10.56am on April 27 last year] on the same morning. The first photograph didn’t catch the dawn sky properly, so I fiddled with the aperture setting before I took the second shot,” he said.

“The objects don’t appear in the first photograph and, given that they seem to be a long way away, that’s odd. A plane travelling at around 120km/h should not have been able to cover the distance.”

Sanders called 43 Air School to ascertain how many flights were scheduled on that day, but discovered there were over 100 that morning.

“That didn’t help, as I was hoping there were no planes travelling at that area. That would have eliminated the chances that they are just planes photographed in unusual light,” he said.

From what he has determined, the objects look like the base of a truncated cone, with a rectangular section below this and another, slightly smaller inverted truncated cone underneath.

“The closest [largest] object appears to have something under the bottom ‘frying pan’”, he said.

Unfortunately, the photographs were only taken in jpg format, and are therefore too low resolution to zoom in and accurately determine the precise shape of either object. Still, Sanders has asked professional pilots and has received no satisfactory explanation to the phenomenon.

Sanders admits he believes in extraterrestrials

.

“I believe in this vast universe, we cannot be the only intelligent life forms,” he said. “I’m not saying that these are actually UFOs, but I would like to know what they are.”

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