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ALSACAT:

ALSACAT is my comprehensive catalog of UFO sighting reports in Alsace, the region is the North-East of France, whether they are "explained" or "unexplained".

The ALSACAT catalog is made of case files with a case number, summary, quantitative information (date, location, number of witnesses...), classifications, all sources mentioning the case with their references, a discussion of the case in order to evaluate its causes, and a history of the changes made to the file. A general index and thematic sub-catalogs give access to these Alsatian case files.

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Case of Bourbach-le-Haut, February 28, 2010:

Case number:

ALSACAT-2010-02-28-BOURBACHLEHAUT-1

Summary:

Someone published non-anonymously in November 2010 his video on Youtube with the headline "UFO Bourbach 02/28/10", taken near Bourbach-le-Haut in the Haut-Rhin on February 28, 2010, in the afternoon, explaining that he had been filming unwittingly in the sky with his Canon EOS 7D camera a possible UFO.

The persons think this is a possible UFO because planes he saw over there were not like what he now sees on the video; the wings and fuselage of the airliners were visible whereas they are not visible on the thing on video.

On the video, the thing does not move or only slightly moves during the 15 seconds of shooting. The filmmaker added slow motion sequences and enlargements.

Data:

Temporal data:

Date: February 28, 2010
Time: Afternoon.
Duration: 15 seconds
First known report date: November 2, 2010
Reporting delay: 9 months.

Geographical data:

Department: Haut-Rhin
City: Bourbach-le-Haut
Place: Outside, UFO in the sky seen only later on video.
Latitude: 47.799
Longitude: 7.031
Uncertainty radius: 5 km

Witnesses data:

Number of alleged witnesses: 1
Number of known witnesses: 1
Number of named witnesses: 1
Witness(es) ages: Teenager or adult,
Witness(es) types: Male.

Ufology data:

Reporting channel: Video with comment published on Youtube.
Type of location: Outside in mountain, UFO seen later on video.
Visibility conditions: Day
UFO observed: No
UFO arrival observed: N/A
UFO departure observed: N/A
Entities: No
Photographs: Yes.
Sketch(s) by witness(es): No.
Sketch(es) approved by witness(es): No.
Witness(es) feelings: ?
Witnesses interpretation: Mot a plane, possible UFO.

Classifications:

Hynek: BLURFO
ALSACAT: Probable plane.

Sources:

[Ref. you1:] SUR "YOUTUBE":

UFO Bourbach 02:28:10.mov

Published on Nov. 2 2010

During the Xynthia storm late in the afternoon I filmed without noticing it an oval shaped object in the sky (CANON EOS 7D)

UFO? Possibly... I had then observed airliners pass roughly at the same distance, and they were recognizable, one could clearly distinguish their wings and fuselage.

Scan.

The video on Youtube:

The video was commented once on Youtube:

Francois Bultingaire 5 months ago

Unbelievable a dot!

[Ref. era1:] BLOG "AREA 51":

One "Era", on his "Area 51" blog, republished the video and the text from Youtube ([you1], above), with the headline "Ufo filmed during the Xynthia storm in Alsace".

[Ref. spa1:] UFOLOGY GROUP "SPICA":

City Date and hour of observation General shape
Identification
General color
Hypothesis
Conclusion
BOURBACH Sunday 28 February 2010 saucer, rugby balloon (3D)
Unidentified
white
None
Unsolved -lack of info

Discussion:

map.

The Xynthia storm occurred between February 26, 2010, and March 1, 2010. That does not mean it really hit Alsace or has anything to do with this video...

What appears on the video is very uninpressive: something white, slightly elongated. This could be a distant plane, a short contrail facing the camera, or some little cloud.

In short, as with the many "surprise photographs" in which the "witness" did not actually see anything, discovering something he thinks abnormal only by viewing his picture on a screen afterwards, we also get from time to time "surprise video".

The enlargements shown are unintentionally misleading, adding a fictitious precision that does not exist in the original images, due to "pixel smoothing" performed by the editing software. Without smoothing, the enlargement actually showing the existing pixels in the video in a larger size, the thing is like this:

Photo.

(If we take the "thing" in the sequence titled "slow motion and enlargement", there are obviously more pixels and more contrasted pixels, but this is obviously due to the enlargement process. One should take the object in the original part of the video to determine the actual resolution because in the edited parts, our six poor pixels obviously take the look of a nice flying saucer with a metallic reflections...)

In short, there are only 6 pixels for this "UFO", this does not permit to say what it really is.

The "witness" who has actually seen nothing at the time, said he had seen airliners there and their wings and fuselage were visible. This proves the presence of airliners at a time when he was there. He believes that these planes were "at the same distance," but this makes no sense, there obviously no possibility to measure the distance of the 6 pixels for the camera on the video.

And it is clear that with the 6 pixels of the video, there is obviously no way to determine if there are wings or no wings.

The most likely scenario is:

On site, the person noticed with the naked eye some airliners in the sky, recognizable as such. At one time, he puts his eye onto the camera viewer or looked at its screen to film the landscape, and could no longer see if there are planes or not.

Months later, he looked at his video, saw the small white dot of 6 pixels, enlarged it with pixel smoothing; which changed the 6 pixels to a UFO, with some lengthening caused by camera movement, and mistakenly thought it could not be a plane because there, with the naked eye, the airliners were recognizable as such. He then asked if this could be a UFO.

Finally, note that the Canon EOS 7D take videos in 1080p "HD" standard, a high resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels that the publication on "Youtube" changed to a lower maximum resolution of 853 by 482 pixels. So maybe the original show a little more pixels - yet surely not enough do make an airliner distinct enough.

Evaluation:

Probable plane.

Sources references:

* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.

File history:

Authoring:

Main author: Patrick Gross
Contributors: None
Reviewers: None
Editeur: Patrick Gross

Changes history:

Version: Create/changed by: Date: Description:
0.1 Patrick Gross May 12, 2015 Creation, [you1], [era1], [spa1].
1.0 Patrick Gross May 12, 2015 First published.

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This page was last updated on May 12, 2015.