Published: 12:48 PM 9/1/2009

Washington 06-27-09

I didn't even realize I had captured anything unusual on film the day this happened. I was at Paine Field in Everett photographing some fly-bys of historic aircraft that are kept at the airfield there.

I was going back through my photos yesterday when a cigar-shaped object caught my eye in my images. I enlarged the images considerably to get a better look, and I simply cannot explain them or their cigar-like appearance. The easiest explanation would be that its an aircraft at high altitude, but there are no contrails evident.

In these two shots I was panning the camera to follow the aircraft as it flew parallel to the runway at Paine field from south to north. I was viewing the aircraft while looking towards the west. Both images were shot at 1/250th of a second using a Canon 70-200 F4 "L" lens.

The aperture was set to F13. The focal length was racked all the way out at 200mm. The type of camera used was a Canon Eos 50D. I took images in both .jpg and Canon RAW format.

I have no idea what I caught on my camera, but I have an open mind about these matters, and wanted to share what I had with you folks to see if you could make heads or tails of it.