10 April 2009

Beam of Light Over Villamarchante (Valencia, Spain) – by Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos

We welcome this work of investigation, study and analysis of a case done by our colleague and Member of UAPSG-GEFAI, Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos. We are taking this report from Fundación Anomalía, in order to provide our readers in English the knowledge of the basic facts.

A few months ago, some acquaintances told me about a UFO sighting they had had, four of them, during a local trip in my native province of Valencia (Spain). My interest was aroused when I knew that one photograph had been taken. In the last months I have acquired all the basic details of the observation and, as a result of my inquiry into the case; a report (in Spanish) has been prepared and published at this link: http://www.anomalia.org/fotocat/villamarchante.pdf

For the benefit of the non-Spanish speaking readers, I am presenting now a very brief summary of the story. On the evening of April 19, 2008 two couples were travelling in a car near Villamarchante (Valencia) when they saw, some 45º high in the sky, an elongated beam of brilliant silver light which was growing in size from 20º up to some 40º in angular size. During the two to three minutes that the sighting lasted, its color was changing to fuchsia. Then, a ball of fuchsia light with a winding tail (like a “spermatozoid”) separated from the main trail, departed towards a “nearby” cloud and was seen no more. By then, the cloud acquired the same fuchsia-colored tone and the long trail disappeared - or they paid no more attention to it, being attracted by the curious cloud color. Exactly at 20:52 hours (before the ball of light appeared) a photograph was made by Alejandra Bitar, one of the witnesses. Most of the overcast sky began to change to fuchsia as well. They carried on towards their intended destiny, which was a friends’ house. They arrived a few minutes later and went inside.

Our conclusion is that what was photographed was nothing but an airplane’s condensation trail. Comparative ufology shows ample evidence that aircraft contrails produce such colorful shapes during sunsets, even certain atmospheric conditions may allow the sight of the lone plane’s fuselage even with a thin secondary trail. There is also photographic evidence to support this.

Finally, considering an airplane flying at the cruise altitude (h) of 36,000 feet (11,000 m), an angular height of 45º (α), the distance from the witnesses to the airplane (d) would be some 16,000 m (sen α = h/d). If the trail’s maximum angular size was 40º (α), then the trail’s longitude (L) was some 12 km (L = 2 X d X tag α/2). Taking a cruise speed of 800 km/h, during 2.5 minutes an airplane would have produced a trail of some 30 km long, within the order of magnitude of the found results. This would tend to confirm that the phenomenon photographed could be a contrail.

For those interested, a more detailed report lies at the above-mentioned link. Here, I am posting four video clips showing five recordings taken (four in Chile, one in Norway) which display both typical and atypical high-altitude aircraft contrails, for comparison. This graphically complements the series of static pictures included in the above report.











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