Winetka, California - 06-24-11

In the Summer of 2011, I purchased a Sony Digital SLR - SLT A55V. I was experimenting and practicing with the functions on June 24th, 2011.

I was taking my practice pictures in my backyard in Winnetka, CA. The Los Angeles River is the rear boundary to the property.

While taking pictures, the L.A.P.D. began flying low passes over the rear of our and the neighbors’ homes, looking for someone in the LA River area. I decided to take a picture of the helicopter with the blades clearly visible and quickly set up the camera.

I had set the camera to a shutter speed of 1/250sec in an attempt to catch to rotors of the L.A.P.D. helicopter in a stopped motion. I took one photograph, which after seeing the rotor blades nearly stopped; I went about taking other pictures.

I did not load the pictures into my computer right away, about six weeks later. I also did NOT look at or examine the pictures for a YEAR AND A HALF!; not until December of 2012 did I look at the pictures that I took.

When I finally viewed this particular photograph, I noticed and remembered that I wanted to catch the blades motion stopped. I was about to go to the next picture, when my eye caught the small object in the upper right corner.

Since I am a bird watcher and having been raised with birds, I naturally thought it was a bird. But it didn’t look like any bird that I could remember. So I blew up the picture, and could not believe at what I was looking at.

The Object was not visible when I took the picture, I would have seen it. I did not notice the object when I first looked at the picture with the camera screen or when I downloaded the pictures; it is one of a hundred taken over several weeks.

I took classes in photography in college and majored in Planetary Science. I have attempted to try to figure out what it is, but I cannot! Many will say that it is a toy flying saucer, but note the blow up of the object.

If it is a toy, then it would have been caught as a perfectly sharp image, the shutter speed is fast enough to nearly stop the motion of the helicopter blades which spin at many hundreds of miles per hour.

The object has motion blur, however, the telephone pole and the wires are not blurred so there was no camera motion as the shutter cycled.

Again, the object has motion blur while everything else is in sharp focus including the helicopter which was not hovering, but was flying in a circular search pattern. The only other objects with motion blur are the three blades.

I also do not believe that it is a toy because it would be flying very close to the police helicopter.

Whatever this Object is, it was in my opinion, flying at a high rate of speed, fast enough that it is not visible to one’s eyes.

The object, in my opinion, was only caught in the photograph simply because of blind luck. I was pointed in the right direction with the shutter speed fast enough to stop the objects motion.

Camera - Sony SLT-A55V