I woke up this morning with plans to shoot the sunrise as the pending rain had me thinking we might get a decent one. Headed down to Preston beach with some ideas in mind and set to work shooting the dawn. I had noticed a small white dot in the sky away from the sun but didn’t think much of it at the time. Got home and loaded the photos on my computer. As I went through them one by one, I noticed that white dot again. It was shaped like an eye and stayed in the same spot in the sky for 3 seconds then seemed to take off in a hurry. The photos I took weren’t meant to be for this part of the sky so I grabbed 10 frames in a row and adjusted their exposures. Each image was exposed for 1/2 to 1 second on average. I cropped each image to show the right upper corner and put those 10 frames into a timelapse and extended the time of each image to 1/2 second to get close to real-time viewing. There were 4 more frames from just before but they were taken at a different angle so I left them out.
What do you think???
Mystery Solved!
Two years later and Andrew Hansford has put together an incredibly detailed and meticulously researched account of this morning. He has identified the UFO but you’ll have to read this blog post to figure out the answer: READ MORE
Received this very interesting comment by email:
Good morning!
I’m writing in response to your sighting over Preston Beach. I began this in your comment space on your website, but it became so long and rambling (typical of me!) that I thought it might be best to write you this way. I hope you don’t mind.
This is my first visit to your site–led here by your UFO posting. I grew up in Marblehead during the 50’s and 60’s, and I know the town well. Your photographs are breathtaking! There is nothing more ethereal than first morning light and you have caught those moments with your great talent and obvious great affection for the town. They evoke some powerful memories. I thank you for sharing your vision with me.
Tuesday evening, the night before your sighting, I had an interesting experience. I live now in Kittery, Maine which is very close to Pease International Airport, formerly an Air Force Base, and where huge airshows are held. During the days leading up to a show, the Blue Angels fly directly overhead during their practice, so I am very familiar with the sound of fighter planes, jets, directly overhead. Kittery is also directly north of Marblehead, about 40 or so miles, on the coast.
Sometime around 8 or 9 pm, I heard a deep, low rumbling. There is no traffic at that time of night, this is a small, self-contained community. I had the thought that it was a plane but it was such a low hum that I could ‘feel’ it and it was far too sustained. It went on long enough for me to say to my son “Do you hear that? What ‘is’ that?”and have a short conversation on what we thought it was, then decide to go outside to see. He got outside a few seconds ahead of me. He saw clearly, and I saw far off through trees, three fighters flying low, coming from the direction of Pease, first in a single line, then go into a triangular formation. The rumbling had continued, was of course louder and clearer outside. The sound of the fighters was superimposed over the rumbling–and ended before the last of the rumbles.
The sound was something I had never heard before, even during all of the airshows I had been directly in the flight path of at home, or had attended in person, not even while standing at the flightline.
It was rather unsettling; the sound was so very chest-thumpingly deep and had sounded so low to the ground from inside. Everything vibrated. (I have also lived for 12 years in the Mojave Desert, in the test flight path of many experimental planes from Edwards AFB, and including the SR-71, which flew VERY low and slow overhead. I’ve heard lots of unusual sounds from lots of unusual aircraft.)
We talked about the possibility of some sort of terrorist activity somewhere to explain the appearance of the fighters, or some war related action. Then we talked about UFO’s….to the extent that I came back into the house and went online to see if there had been some sort of sighting, but of course it would have been far too soon to that, most likely. So we had teasingly ended the conversation with “Well, if there’s a sighting reported in the morning, we’ll know what we heard!
Wednesday morning when I went to my FaceBook page, TWO people from Marblehead had posted your video; one was my own brother!! I was floored, absolutely speechless (which is something I am ‘never’!!!)
So, there you have it. I am quite certain that what I heard and what you photographed are related: the same fantastic vehicle.
I’d like to know what ‘you’ think!
Thank you again for your beautiful photographs: I’ll be returning to your site to go through your archives–a perfect activity for a rain, chill morning like this (and with a much-delayed cup of coffee in hand!)
Karen Welch
Very interesting photos. I was driving back from Logan Airport on Wednesday morning and witnessed the same silver object in the sky as I was driving toward Marblehead from Lynn. Initially I thought it was a possible corporate aircraft on departure but I can see by your photo’s that it was not.
Did anyone else also witness the object?
Jim
Very interesting. I was trying to find the anchor on Google maps but I could not spot it. Bing has better aerial view but it was high tide. I’m guessing that your vantage point is near where Beach Bluff Ave meets Preston Beach at Atlantic Ave. Would you say the island in the photo is just south of East? What direction from your vantage point is the object? South East? I just can’t tell the angle from the photo. Could you possibly post or make available the un-cropped photos in the series?
The anchor photo is great. I hope that it came out how you intended.
Based on the picture and comments on Dawn over Preston Beach I estimated that the photo was taken from lat 42.478313 long -70.880418
On Oct 26 sunrise at this location from from NOAA Colar Calculator at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/ was
07:09 Solar Declination -12.4degrees
The photo of the anchor has a 06:58:20EDT timestamp and a 2 second exposure obtained by looking at the EXIF information with this tool: http://regex.info/exif.cgi
That is the photo was taken about 10 minutes before local sunrise and the sun was 12.4 degrees south of east at sunrise.
Note on the photo at https://wednesdaysinmhd.com/2011/10/27/dawn-over-preston-beach/ there are clouds in the area but a break on the horizon. Actually the artist notes that this was the reason to head to the beach for a photo opportunity. The photograph shows the sun illuminating the bottom of the clouds.
How high are the clouds? From the KBOS METAR (airport weather report for Logan) on Oct 26 2011
KBOS 261054Z 29007KT 10SM OVC070 09/01 A2994
^^^^^^^^^^
Translated it means that at 7:54EDT Boston was reporting overcast sky with ceiling at 7000 feet. Therefore the object is below 7000ft.
Remember since there are not clouds on the horizon the sunlight is coming in from the sun UNDER the clouds. This could account for the brightness of the object especially on the long exposure shots.
In the first couple of frames the object appears to move little then it seems to move off to the right at higher speed. This is difficult to tell because not knowing how long each exposure is.
I don’t know how closely the camera is set to UTC but looking at the Radar air traffic for that time at http://www4.passur.com/bos.html (you can watch live of a replay of a time in the past) we can see that planes are over Massachusetts Bay lining up for landing on Runway 27.
If you look at the 40 mile wide view you can see a plane heading towards the northwest almost directly toward Marblehead. Clicking on the plane you can see it is Jet Blue Flight 1250 from Washington Dulles to Boston Logan.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/JBU1250/history/20111026/1000Z/KIAD/KBOS
Picture of the plane: http://www.airliners.net/photo/JetBlue-Airways/Embraer-ERJ-190-100IGW-190AR/2005731/L/&sid=126aa4ea406a51c8011bd3029d8e12d6
You can also see that the plane is at 4000ft (below the clouds at 7000 ft) and in about the part of the sky you would expect in the photograph. If you let the Radar play you see that the plan turns to its left for final approach. This matches the movement in the photo series with the object appearing to move slowly at first (like a plane coming toward you) then turning and moving to the right rapidly (like a plane turning and moving across the field of view).
Why is the object so bright? The plane is white, in the sun, on a long exposure and with a highly contrasting background. The circumstance is unusual (a plane BELOW the clouds lit up by the sun) and interesting but, I think, rather mundane in the end.
Thanks Andrew for the detailed analysis. Let me see if I can help with any additional details.
Exact location: 42.478733, -70.879779
Camera is seven seconds slow (just adjusted it for end of DST)
Object first appears in a photo at 6:58:36 and turns at 7:00:35
Assuming we are now looking at that Jet Blue plane coming toward the camera with a wingspan of 28.72m, I can convert the ruler measurements in Photoshop to estimate its speed after the turn. Over four consecutive frames of 0.5-4 second exposures, the object travels at a rate of 265km/h. The cruising speed of the E-190 is listed as 815 km/h. I’m not sure how much it slows on approach or if such a speed makes sense for this type of jet. Note that the speed is entirely based on the possible size of the object. If it were any smaller or larger, the calculation would be different.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts.