Bonsall UFO

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The Bonsall UFO was an incident said to occur at 21.15 on October 5, 2000, in Bonsall in Derbyshire, near Matlock, where a woman named Sharon Rowlands of Slaley claims to have observed a large luminous object, with a shimmering pink colour, hovering and rotating over a nearby field. She captured many minutes of the object on a camcorder. The video shows an out-of-focus ball of light that at one point appears to be made out of concentric circles similar to that of a photographic orb. The video she made is slightly out-of-focus as she tries to zoom in closer to the object. Rowlands reported it to her local newspaper, the Matlock Mercury, which then reported on her story.

The story was quickly picked up by ufologists who recognized Rowland's object as being similar in appearance to an object observed in a video taken as part of the STS-75 Space Shuttle mission in February 1996. This claim has been refuted by a NASA engineer, who explains the object as one of the many occurrences of debris, dust, particles or optical aberrations that are present in "virtually every shuttle mission's video"; a similar explanation is offered on the communications channel banter heard on the video itself. Other analyses, such as by Project P.R.O.V.E. support this conclusion. At least one ufology website, which initially reported the video as showing "hundreds of UFOs", has since retracted their claims.

Ufologists have attempted to analyze the two videos. In particular, they claim that the NASA video shows an object that is rotating and holding its geometric shape as it revolves, which could discount the possibility of a photographic aberration^{[citation needed]}. If the two objects are analysed, there are distinctive features to the circular object that are almost identical. Although both are circular, each has a similar indentation on a section of its outer circumference. The diameters of the inner circular ridges on both structures and at their centres, can be measured and expressed as a percentage of the total diameter. If these two objects represented similarly-shaped, large, three-dimensional objects, then it could be expected that their physical characteristics would be similar. For both objects, the ratio of the outer diameter to the diameters of physical ridges or troughs on both objects are the same, to a closeness of 0.3%. The measurements from the blurred pictures will introduce errors, yet every physical feature of both 'objects are found in exactly the same position to fractions of a percentage point^{[citation needed]}. On the other hand, the similarity in features can equally be explained by similarity in optics and the fact that both cameras were digital and, as such, subject to similar digital aberrations.

[edit] External links

• Film clips
• More information.
• BBC article.
• The STS-75 Mission - Nasa.
• Discussion of the STS-75 film.
• Image analysis
• The Trouble with 'Orbs', an explanation of photographic orbs.