NASA STS-75: The Tether Incident

Hi Jenni,

I can sure see why you would draw the conclusion that these objects are not just debris. They really looked like UFOs to me, too. I have to agree with your coworkers on this though.

There was an episode of "UFO Hunters" recently that had an expert explain this. It turns out there are several things that contribute to the appearance of these objects. The main one I remember is that the cameras they use have a big donut-shaped parabolic relector on them to gather light to the lense. Because of that, the objects are recorded on the film in the shape of the reflector. There is also something about the lighting situation that makes the objects apear to glow and flash, but I do not remember the particulars. The expert set up demonstrations of all the different effects using duplicate equipment, so you could see how it worked. He was able to make all the effects happen with ease. Kudos to the show's producers on this one for digging to the truth and not just sensationalizing a bit of mysterious looking film.

This is a really good example of how difficult it is to correctly interperet images on film & video without having an in-depth knowledge of the subject. I think anyone that looked at these images might think they are seeing an alien craft, but it is really a simple, normal object. I guess there is no such thing as "common sense" when analizing evidence like this.

Canis