Reminder: I’m doing a live video chat today at 3:00 Mountain time.
Another day, another grainy, out-of-focus, weird UFO picture trumpeted by the media. Well, not so much the media as The Sun.
The headline screams, "Tourist snaps UFO in Croydon" and is accompanied by what one guesses is the best of the series of pix.
The object is reported as "speeding through the sky" and the photographer, Anastasiya Gavrilenko (which, I must say, is an awesome name), said,
It was quite large and moving really fast. It was size of a plane but did not look like one – it looked more like a big mushroom.
I’m not saying it was a mushroom — that’s as likely as it being an actual spaceship — but it’s resemblance to a hat being blown across the sky by the wind is perhaps more a clue of its origin.
…then again, we’re talking Croydon here. Maybe it’s the Fourth Doctor’s hat. Call Sarah Jane!
Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to Fark, as usual, and I note that they now have a Sarah Jane joke in the comments as well, but I was first.
April 27th, 2008 at 10:08 am
“Anastasiya Gavrilenko ”
*sigh*
.
April 27th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Ah.. The Sun – one of the UK’s least reputable tabloids.. it really will print anything.
A dodgy photo, no other witnesses and little else. The site doesn’t even have the original photo in order to give context.
BA – the resemblance to Tom Bakers hat is uncanny
April 27th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Oh yes, definitely a hat.
April 27th, 2008 at 10:43 am
It’s still not quite as bad as those photos where the witness says they didn’t notice a “ufo” until they processed the picture. You look at it and it’s obviously dirt or something on the lens or sensor, and you feel like an idiot for looking at it.
April 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am
To be a UFO it only needs to meet two essential criteria.
1) It flies
2) It’s unidentified
It may well be a flying chunk of turf from a nearby golfing green. It doesn’t need to be an alien space ship. Just as long as it’s flying and you don’t know what it is, in my book, that’s a UFO.
April 27th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I’m from the Great Lakes area, and we all know a Zebra Mussel when we see one.
April 27th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Interesting. We have:
A photo that’s obviously an enlargement.
Said photo cropped to where we have no sense of scale.
Despite the claim of more than one photo, we have only see one.
If this is a hat – and I think it’s very likely – I have one like it. It’s a straw hat intended for beach goers, but it’s really nice for a bit of shade on a hot day. It’s also very light. And while I haven’t lost it in a breeze yet, it has become dislodged. Or it could be a plain, old fashioned hoax consisting of a hat tossed in front of a camera.
Minor gripe: It’s irksome seeing UFO = Flying Saucer. Yes, that’s been in the vernacular going back at least to the 1960s and possibly the 1950s. Just about everyone uses the term in that sense. But there have been some rather interesting unidentified objects in the air that turned out to be new weather phenomena. I’m specifically thinking about the discovery of red sprites and blue jets. Besides, if we knew they were flying saucers, they wouldn’t be unidentified anymore.
April 27th, 2008 at 11:32 am
People are missing the bigger picture here, THERE WAS A TOURIST IN CROYDON!!!!!!
April 27th, 2008 at 11:35 am
This reply is not about this story, nor is it a comment about social life, politics, religion or indeed astronomy. This is merely a simple, great big thank you to the BA for continuing to provide an interesting and intelligent blog in a sea of internet flotsam.
April 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am
It looks like it’s flying, or at least in the air, and I can’t identify it, so it must be a UFO by definition.
April 27th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Within 10 seconds I knew what this was:
It’s Rusty’s beret being tossed off of the Eiffel tower in “National Lampoon’s European vacation”… it’s just been zoomed in to the point of being barely recognizable.
If we could see the footage, I bet you’d see a little dog fly across the screen just after it…
April 27th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
it’s a penguin, duh
April 27th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Soyuz capsule on re-entry??
April 27th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
It looks like a flying turd to me.
April 27th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
That would tie in well with it being seen in Croydon…
April 27th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Doesn’t anyone see the Virgin Mary holding Jesus on that flying piece of toast?
April 27th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
While walking in the park one day,
(which park it was, I will not say)
I launched a mushroom in the air.
It landed in my mouth. I swear!
My band of friends, with cams in hand,
Took snapshots of the fungus and
Uploaded them with panicked haste
Whilst I was left to purge the taste.
My brain took flight! It was quite fun.
(Meanwhile the pics went to The Sun).
I sored! I flew up with the birds!
(I’d tell you more but “no swear words”)
In short, I’m having quite a trip.
The pics were sent, the woo-woo’s trip.
Most people see what they will see.
That’s all for now. I have to (EDITTED)
April 27th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Blast that stupid wind; now I need to find something else to cover my head! If that idiot hadn’t been standing there with a camera, I would have chased after it of course.
Do you have any idea how unacceptable it is in my completely hair-covered species to be bald? For years I made do with spanish moss but the little sasquats kept making fun of me, and nobody wanted me along when we went to torment the scout camp-outs.
Anyone on this board know where I can get another oversized novelty hat in the dark of night without leaving any positive evidence?
April 27th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Arg! That should have been “flipped” in stanza 4, line 2.
My identical twin, alternate personality is kicking me in the pituitary gland for that one.
April 27th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I can only see one good reason to go to Croydon, and that is a certain Swedish furniture store.
April 27th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
That should be “chapeaux”, with an “x”.
April 27th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
It’s probably a weather balloon.
http://i29.tinypic.com/v2r9jm.png
April 27th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Bloody Martin Smith. That’s probably his hat.
April 27th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
What ever this is or isn’t …
There are many celestials of many different sect â?¦ each traveling of their own Designed FLOATS â?¦ Flyers Levitating Of Advanced Technology â?¦. The only celestial aliens that exist are those that travel from abroad through distance space who are unrelated to the many sect already associated with this planet â?¦.then of course, there are those earthen aliens traveling abroad from other earthen countries â?¦.celestials have been secretly apart of this planetâ??s activities since early surface evolution â?¦ I am just an Old Soul passing through, with something important to say â?¦
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April 27th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Re: Kol’s poem —
It’s ironic that “EDITTED” needs to be edited . . .
April 27th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
it’s a baby bella mushroom!!
Yummy
And ofcourse they fly. Every farmer knows that.
April 27th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
an eyeball!
April 27th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
http://www.strandbeest.com/ufo.html
Maybe it is time that this stunt from Theo Jansen (you should really see his current works, its absolutely amazing), its almost 30 years (1979) but i still remember the reactions, the public being questioned for television about this ufo.
April 28th, 2008 at 2:34 am
It’s a UFO thats for sure.
The most probable explanations are.
1. A plastic bag blowing in the wind.
2. A bird very close to the camera.
3. A bug very close to camera.
April 28th, 2008 at 6:56 am
It’s a bit like the Floridians who in time will display their ‘I Believe’ car license plates. PZ Myers said:
“Look at it this way: the stupid people in Florida are going to be conveniently self-labeling themselves with the Mark of the Buffoon”.
So it is with ‘The Sun’. You see someone carry it, you know where they’re coming from. It’s a dead give away. That and the grazed knuckles. They demand woo fodder and the Sun gives it to them, cover to cover. ‘Nuff said.
Bob(Big)
April 28th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Maybe it’s not a mushroom, maybe the photographer ate a mushroom.
April 28th, 2008 at 7:41 am
run!!! it’s the invasion of the brain-eating space hats! they attacked The Sun’s building and obviously they’re still hungry!!!
April 28th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Harold said:
“Bloody Martin Smith. That’s probably his hat.”
It must have arrived through eddies in the space-time continuum. Either that or it’s something to do with the thriving second-hand biro business of Zaphod Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse V.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Sir Eccles said:
“People are missing the bigger picture here, THERE WAS A TOURIST IN CROYDON!!!!!!”
Good point, sir! I suspect the tourist simply got lost on their way somewhere else. You know, Staines or somewhere.
BTW, Eccles, why are you here?
April 28th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I love the Doctor who reference this early in the morning. =D
Also, I love how tabloids blow everything out of proportion or just plain make up nonsense. If I took a picture of a UFO, and really believed it was an unusual phenomena, the last person I would want to give the photo to would be a tabloid.
I once read from a tabloid cats lived on Neptune. Neptunian cats.
Well…as far as I know Neptune is gaseous and doesn’t have a rocky surface for cats to walk on. xD So they’d be floating around?
April 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Live in croydon and saw no giant mushrooms…
April 29th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Look at it a different way, if you think of the middle of the ‘object’ as see through and not as a reflective solid, it actually just looks like a poop smear on the lense :S
April 29th, 2008 at 11:38 am
@ Ronn Blankenship
Aw, man! If only someone else could claim that edit…
I mispledded by axitent.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:45 am
I’m surprise that no one noticed that the poem suggested that I got lesions.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Sort of related: Early one dark winter morning headed east on the 10 freeway paralleling LAX I saw a shiny flying object high up and to the extreme east of my position. Hoping for a flying saucer (my first) I realized it was a jet reflecting the sun coming up behind it. But then a miracle happened (well, OK, if you study physics it seemed miraculous) it instantaneously disappeared! It had flown westward into the earth’s shadow! Simple explanation, but impressive to see happen!