[OC] Spotted (after the fact) a strange metallic blob over NYC’s High Line in a rapid 3-photo burst. Distance covered in ~38ms likely rules out a balloon. Reflection on nearby building rules out insects. What could it be? Link to DNGs and JPGs included.
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Posted in r/UFOs by u/mark_paterson • 20 points and 5 comments
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The original was posted on /r/ufos by /u/mark_paterson on 2024-10-29 01:27:08+00:00.

Original Title: [OC] Spotted (after the fact) a strange metallic blob over NYC’s High Line in a rapid 3-photo burst. Distance covered in ~38ms likely rules out a balloon. Reflection on nearby building rules out insects. What could it be? Link to DNGs and JPGs included.

The High Line, New York City. October 14, 2024. 4:32pm.

This is a composite of three photos, taken in Exposure Bracketing mode on a Leica Q2 digital camera (28mm lens, f8, 47.3 Megapixel full frame sensor).

Exposure Bracketing takes a rapid burst of three photos at different shutter values (under-exposed, normal, and over-exposed). My intention was to merge the three images into a single HDR image in Adobe Lightroom, ensuring that the shadows are restored and highlights are not blown out.

Notice the UAP moving across the sky, changing position in each photo.

The varying distance between the object is due to differences in shutter speed over the three images (1/50 sec, 1/80 sec, 1/160 sec). By adding these three values together, the total duration of this event is only 38.75 milliseconds (some additional milliseconds could be added to account for camera processing time between shots). For context, the blink of an eye is between 100 to 400 milliseconds. The people on The High Line haven’t completed a single step.

The object’s color and brightness variations are due to how the images are combined – the bottom-most image being 100% opacity, and the middle and top image each being 50% opacity. I believe the true representation of the object is how it appears in the cropped close up. It appears to be metallic, with a reflection of the sky and clouds on the top, and a darker reflection of the city on the underside.

I didn’t notice the object at the time. It was only found when processing the images. It appears to be moving too fast to be a balloon. Had it been slowly floating I’m certain I would have noticed it at the time, and it would likely have appeared on my other photos too. I took dozens of pictures as we walked The High Line, and there’s nothing unusual on any of them except these three.

Each photo has a matching reflection on the building to the right. There is some distortion from the glass, but it is clearly the same object. This rules out insects or anything close to the lens.

Below is a Dropbox link to the three original DNG files direct from my camera, along with JPG versions, a merged version, and the above annotated version.