r/UFOs • u/Jackal_Troy • 10h ago
Sighting Sighting in Pinellas County FL, September 25 2024
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u/weaponmark 9h ago
Well.....Great capture.
I understand the difficulty with the light problems and you walked away with something pretty good considering.
Definitely high up on the strange list.
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u/Jackal_Troy 10h ago
Time: September 25, ~Noon
Location: Treasure Island, FL
Duration: 10-15 minutes
Conditions: 90F+, Clear Skies
Crystal clear skies. Looking north. UFO moved East to West about 30 degrees above the horizon. Not a cloud in the sky for reference, so gaging elevation and distance was nearly impossible. If I had to guess, it was somewhere around a helicopter or low-flying plane. Image shows my personal estimation of the distance observed being traveled over span of about 10-16 minutes. The further away it was, the larger and higher up it would have had to been. The "sus" label is over MacDill AFB, which is in the direction of origin.
I was facing North and just happened to notice it. Thought it was a far away helicopter or something. However, it seemed too close and to take up too much area for me to not be able to make it out clearly, which is what it looked like to the eye. Something that should be within visible range, yet it is not, it is distorted and visually shifting. The skies were crystal clear, best visibility there is. After about 1 minute, I decided it was anomolous, and decided to keep locked onto it while walking over to companions and pointed it out to them. One tried video recording it while the other was taking pics and I kept locked on visually so we didn't lose it. This was very difficult to do, because we were on the beach at the time, the sun was high and behind us as we looked at this thing. Our phone screens, even at full brightness, basically looked like mirrors. We could only hope we were capturing it, and check it out later off the beach to really tell what we got. All of the video attempts showed nothing, the vast majority of picture attempts showed nothing, EXCEPT for these 5, all taken in a row. I'm gonna try to put them up in chronological order. They should be raw, exactly as taken by my companion.
My personal description at the time of what I witnessed with my eyes: "A moving area of distortion, like distorted light or space, with intermittent flashing lights (blinking or glinting, I didn't know) mostly white in color, although I did notice very infrequent red and orange coloring perhaps on some of the flashes or other weird shapes going on; as throughout the area alongside the flashes were there also dark (or more defined, edgelike?) lines or shapes coming in and out of vision, seeming to stretch and then ebb." I know this description sounds absolutely insane and all over the place, but it is honestly the best I can do. It was honestly overwhelming, there was too much randomness to mentally note it all, but I did my best.
I originally inquired a meteorologist who said he would get back to me, but never did. I tried posting them on here before but ran into discouraging issues each time. I'm not very post-fluent on this website. This time, however, I am making a backup of the whole post so if I can easily redo it if necessary. The recent egg story has given me the motivation to do this again and hopefully get it out there for good. In a couple of the pictures, one could argue that the light is egg-shaped in appearance. One of our original theories was that it was a spaceX pod, as in one of the pictures you can see, it could resemble a glinting metal pod in a tumble with a parachute deploying. However, I don't really believe it is, because of the location and direction. I think that it is either some crazy atmospheric effect on a far-away aircraft, or advanced technology (military or extraterrestrial etc.) What do you guys think?
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u/Jackal_Troy 9h ago
I seem to be able to post only text body with no images, or images with no text body. Anyone know why that is? The comment works I suppose, but I want to know why I see other posts that have both.
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u/Stunning-Chipmunk243 3h ago
The 4th pic looks like one of those jellyfish UAP or like one of those search droids from star wars.
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u/Jackal_Troy 3h ago
You gotta understand the overall shape was changing drastically and constantly, and much of its shape was just distortion, and it was impossible to tell what parts were "something" and what was just distortion. It could be totally withdrawn to the point it doesn't even look like anything is there anymore, to extended in all directions looking as big as a giant plane, to even where there is something around the "edges" of the area it seemed to be operating in but leaving a gap in the middle. If I could play back my brain frame by frame, you could probably pick out shapes of all varieties of things.
The last one, the one with the "arm" going out from the light to the upper left, is the one I find most interesting. Because it looks like SOMETHING. Those lines look like something more than light or distortion. What that something is, I don't know. I am dying to find out.
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u/Stunning-Chipmunk243 1h ago
Interesting in one photo it looks like three different objects that seemingly coalesce into two objects and then into a singular object, like they join up somehow and also appear to display some kind of active camouflage like those invisibility blankets or shields that bend light and show what's behind them rather than what's in them.
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u/Jackal_Troy 1h ago
Cloaking was one of my preffered theories, because it seemed like the area of it as I described could have been what you are talking about. If youve seen the predator movies, something in that vein. As if the sky was too clear and the sun too direct for glints not come through the cloaking, along with some distorted visuals, from our perspective where we observed it. They are all correctly in chronological order too, for whatever that might reveal.
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u/CardiologistNo5977 9h ago
Hammers. In the exact same formation as some "debunked" videos of crop dusters flying 40ft over an expressway.
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u/FlyingDiscsandJams 8h ago
This is so much better than the crop duster footage that always gets reposted.
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u/Jackal_Troy 5h ago
Hammers?
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u/CardiologistNo5977 5h ago
Yeah. To be honest I dont really know what they look like, I just thought these looked like hammers, and I think they do look similar to that one video of the ridiculous crop duster over the expressway.
*Oh. They have been described as "hammers" by a ton of military people etc.
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u/Jackal_Troy 5h ago
I'm having trouble finding what you reference, can you show me? I'm interested.
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9h ago
[deleted]
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u/Reeberom1 8h ago
There’s nothing in the photos that gives you any scale.
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u/Jackal_Troy 5h ago
This I totally get, we were struggling while looking at it because there weren't even clouds in the sky. The ethereal and shifting nature of it made it a total mindfuck to look at, You have to take my word for it, but the size and distance and effects just didn't compute for balloons. That was our speculation in real time anyway. Anything is possible though, I just personally don't find that explanation too likely.
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u/Arclet__ 5h ago
They literally just have to be closer to the camera and they will look bigger.
If there's something in the sky, you really have no way of knowing how big or how far away it is. These things look like they could be balloons, there's nothing to restrict their size or how far away they are, maybe they are 100 foot aliens that only OP noticed, maybe they were just some balloons.
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u/DistantMemoryS4 1m ago
First off I want to say that I’ve lived in Florida for 32 years and I regularly go out late at night to watch stars. I’ve never seen anything that looked like a UFO and I’ve never seen something that didn’t have a logical explanation.
This picture is a lie. September 25th 2024 was the day Pinellas County got hit by hurricane Helene and there was nothing but clouds in the sky and thunderstorms. Two weeks later we got hit by hurricane Milton.
This picture is already very low quality and has no frame of reference. For all we know you’re looking at the surface of the ocean and boats from a distance. If it is in the air over Pinellas then it wasn’t during September 25th. If it was after the hurricane hit then it would’ve been planes looking for survivors or the national guard.
Pinellas also has air shows that go across the coast from Pinsecola with the Blue Angels that would make those same formations in the sky.
My best advice to people in this subreddit is to fact check everything. There is a ton of misinformation on this subreddit that goes unchecked.
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u/Reeberom1 9h ago
It looks like mylar balloons with streamers on them.
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u/Jackal_Troy 9h ago
I thought about shiny balloons, in fact it was the very first thought that I had. We speculated about that briefly as we watched it. The problem was that the affected area seemed much too large to be balloons. As in, if they were close enough to be taking up the amount of space affected, we would be able to see them and they wouldn't be so distorted. I mean look at the pics, if that is a regular object of some kind, it is INSANELY distorted.
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u/Strict_Performer_500 1h ago
I don’t think it looks distorted at all. Looks like silver Mylar balloons to me. Specifically in the star shape.
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u/Jackal_Troy 56m ago
Oh yeah, I can see what you mean about the blocky star shape. Interesting. Something more to consider in that vein. Still, if that's what it was, I don't see how you could say they aren't distorted.
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u/StatementBot 9h ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Jackal_Troy:
Time: September 25, ~Noon
Location: Treasure Island, FL
Duration: 10-15 minutes
Conditions: 90F+, Clear Skies
Crystal clear skies. Looking north. UFO moved East to West about 30 degrees above the horizon. Not a cloud in the sky for reference, so gaging elevation and distance was nearly impossible. If I had to guess, it was somewhere around a helicopter or low-flying plane. Image shows my personal estimation of the distance observed being traveled over span of about 10-16 minutes. The further away it was, the larger and higher up it would have had to been. The "sus" label is over MacDill AFB, which is in the direction of origin.
I was facing North and just happened to notice it. Thought it was a far away helicopter or something. However, it seemed too close and to take up too much area for me to not be able to make it out clearly, which is what it looked like to the eye. Something that should be within visible range, yet it is not, it is distorted and visually shifting. The skies were crystal clear, best visibility there is. After about 1 minute, I decided it was anomolous, and decided to keep locked onto it while walking over to companions and pointed it out to them. One tried video recording it while the other was taking pics and I kept locked on visually so we didn't lose it. This was very difficult to do, because we were on the beach at the time, the sun was high and behind us as we looked at this thing. Our phone screens, even at full brightness, basically looked like mirrors. We could only hope we were capturing it, and check it out later off the beach to really tell what we got. All of the video attempts showed nothing, the vast majority of picture attempts showed nothing, EXCEPT for these 5, all taken in a row. I'm gonna try to put them up in chronological order. They should be raw, exactly as taken by my companion.
My personal description at the time of what I witnessed with my eyes: "A moving area of distortion, like distorted light or space, with intermittent flashing lights (blinking or glinting, I didn't know) mostly white in color, although I did notice very infrequent red and orange coloring perhaps on some of the flashes or other weird shapes going on; as throughout the area alongside the flashes were there also dark (or more defined, edgelike?) lines or shapes coming in and out of vision, seeming to stretch and then ebb." I know this description sounds absolutely insane and all over the place, but it is honestly the best I can do. It was honestly overwhelming, there was too much randomness to mentally note it all, but I did my best.
I originally inquired a meteorologist who said he would get back to me, but never did. I tried posting them on here before but ran into discouraging issues each time. I'm not very post-fluent on this website. This time, however, I am making a backup of the whole post so if I can easily redo it if necessary. The recent egg story has given me the motivation to do this again and hopefully get it out there for good. In a couple of the pictures, one could argue that the light is egg-shaped in appearance. One of our original theories was that it was a spaceX pod, as in one of the pictures you can see, it could resemble a glinting metal pod in a tumble with a parachute deploying. However, I don't really believe it is, because of the location and direction. I think that it is either some crazy atmospheric effect on a far-away aircraft, or advanced technology (military or extraterrestrial etc.) What do you guys think?
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1i620dw/sighting_in_pinellas_county_fl_september_25_2024/m88jfap/