r/UFOs 20d ago

Does anyone know what this is? Spotted in Philly suburbs… Photo

[deleted]

0 Upvotes

u/StatementBot 20d ago

The following submission statement was provided by /u/softsnowfall:


Submission Statement:

Taken today (12/8/24) at 4:35 p.m.

My friend took these… in Bucks County about 20 min from Philly… I researched falling satellites, but the photos I found had a white contrail. This looks almost like the object was smoking. Did anyone else see this? Thoughts?

I’m posting this since it’s about 20 min from West Windsor, NJ, and I wondered if it might be a drone experiencing some sort of failure. If I was wrong, I’m sorry.

Note: My friend did contact the FBI about it on their tips website..


Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1h9vaxv/does_anyone_know_what_this_is_spotted_in_philly/m13uo4r/

6

u/FailureFulcrim 20d ago

There were two F-16's flying in tight formation over Bucks early this afternoon.

Used to see A-10s and other fighter planes almost daily before Willow Grove was shut down. I was surprised to see these today.

27

u/MotownGreek 20d ago

Is it time for r/UFO to recruit new moderators to remove these sorts of posts? There are plenty of drone videos without blinking lights that are understandably UFO's, or the occasional Chine lantern posts. Posting a picture of plane contrails makes this community look comical.

11

u/Luc- 20d ago

Definitely.

People interested in modding should start here!

https://www.ufos.wiki/apply/

10

u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 15d ago

[deleted]

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u/Luc- 20d ago

My apologies. I have not seen your post, even though I'm responding to a comment in your thread, I saw the comment via something called the moderator queue. My comment was meant to encourage people to become moderators and not be a downer about your post.

2

u/MotownGreek 20d ago

Thank you for the response. Feel free to remove my comment if it gets too many reports for you.

Now that election season is over, I'm enjoying the quiet days of being a reddit moderator. I can only imagine the mod queue for this sub right now.

3

u/JessiFletch 20d ago

Instead of being hard on newcomers who aren’t pros at spotting aerial phenomena, let’s focus on getting more people excited about the topic! A bigger, welcoming community means more voices pushing for meaningful legislation. After all, lifting people up works way better than making them feel left out.

8

u/dowwithcrypto89 20d ago

I for once am grateful that people are looking up more than ever. This sub was quiet for a while. Just scroll and move on.

1

u/suburban_smartass 20d ago

This sub has not been quiet since Grusch came forward. This is just useless spam that brings nothing to the table.

1

u/dowwithcrypto89 20d ago

That’s awesome man. Glad to hear that!

3

u/ThatEndingTho 20d ago

Even with 97 mods lol

2

u/MKULTRA_Escapee 20d ago

I'm conflicted about whether I would be for removal of this post because your comment is a great recruiting tool. Historically, I don't think we've removed contrail posts purely because they looked like a contrail. If the OP follows all of the rules, those usually stay up, albeit almost always downvoted to 0, because how do you know this isn't a secret military aircraft producing a contrail, for example? Secret military aircraft are considered to be UFOs by a respectable percentage of UFO buffs.

We definitely don't have enough mods to curate posts in that fashion, and to be honest, nobody should want us to do that because the mods have vastly different opinions on a wide range of things. Posts would start getting removed willy nilly based on whichever moderator is currently on looking at posts and maybe even their mood that moment. It takes too long for volunteer moderators to investigate all posts as they come in for whether or not they remain unidentified after investigation. That is for the userbase to hash out over time, not for people who are not even paid for the task you want them to do.

Exceptions: We do remove the troll posts, such as a super close up photo of an obvious airplane and things like that. We also have a special rule for lens flares. Since it's fairly easy and quick to prove that a particular "orb" is actually a flare, we remove those. That rule also applies to spider webs on ring cameras and similar, but anything that's more debatable should stay up, even if that means you have to scroll past the occasional contrail.

1

u/Sufficient_Menu4018 20d ago

I was thinking almost the same today, but I think it's better if we make a kind of sub-sub where moderators can "promote" just what's really interesting... A kind of selection-sub

1

u/Euphoric_Gur_4674 20d ago

Blinking light drones?

1

u/Life-Celebration-747 20d ago

I have never seen black contrails. If your an expert, why don't you become a mod and delete what you don't like, chill out man. 

-3

u/Generated-Name7736 20d ago

We need new mods. Actual UAP videos are taken down while jokes of a post get thousands of upvotes.

If it’s not disinformation, then it’s just laziness.

1

u/Anne_Star_111 20d ago

Why don’t you do it, since you’re not lazy.

1

u/Generated-Name7736 20d ago

Not at all what I said Anne. Do you have anything to add that’s actually of use?

2

u/Former_Jackfruit_795 20d ago

You got so many naysayers telling you it is a con trail, I feel like I have to at least validate that it does look weird to me. I live in Montgomery County and I know you see tons of con trails, and I also remember the A-10s from Willow Grove another person mentioned. So from that I would think you know what is a con trail and what isn't. But to me it does look like it could be a con trail, maybe lower in the sky than that cloud that is lit up, so it is actually in shadow compared to the cloud. (Actually in regards to that cloud, that almost looks like a remnant of a con trail from a plane that passed earlier, to me, without having seen it and having no sense of scale in the photos). If you'd seen it yourself I've have more questions but yeah anyway looks weird to me, but like something that has an explanation. Weirdest thing I've heard of in the sky here was a fighter firing a flare apparently to warn a smaller plane. I just mention that to say there's a lot of possibilities. But I can see why you would think it is possibly not con trail.

5

u/Reeberom1 20d ago

Plane contrail.

4

u/ToGreatPlanes 20d ago

An airliner and contrail flying away from you. Please don't bother the FBI with reports about airliners.

1

u/Revolutionary-Mud715 20d ago

did it just hit a pocket of air that would cause the exhaust to turn black due to the atmospheric change in temperature? I ask because there isn't a long trail and it seems to be dissipating. Seems more like smoke than temperature.

7

u/ToGreatPlanes 20d ago

It's not black, it's shadow from how the setting sun is hitting the white contrail

2

u/cytex-2020 20d ago

I know it sounds crazy but contrails can appear black if they aren't lit by the sun like the surrounding cloud.

If you were able to see where the sun is in the photo suddenly your brain would immediately make sense of it.

It's just that your brain doesn't know why the cloud above and contrail aren't the same color.

0

u/Revolutionary-Mud715 20d ago

shit im just asking questions and getting down voted lol. Genuinely curious, I suppose its self shadowing because the light source is below it. and the clouds are just so much higher and getting all sorts of light bounce from the atmosphere/sun/SPHERICAL globe everywhere.

1

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1

u/Tasty-Helicopter3340 20d ago

Ah so apparently there is a character minimum to these posts, which is a bit annoying cause I now am filling up this comment with all these useless words. Anyways, das a Fart Copter

1

u/MKULTRA_Escapee 20d ago

Videos of airplane contrails for comparison:

https://youtu.be/1pXoVfO4fMM?si=VhGA5Mldeat49cP7&t=237

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6fI9EGSMrw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl6iR7w7a_Q

Bonus: New York Post promoting a contrail as a UFO, the "Aegean sea UFO": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqi4QNFXu-c

As you can see, contrails can look kinda weird sometimes. They can be big or small, long or short, shaped a big odd sometimes, and everything from black to red to white. You often can't even see the plane creating them.

1

u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 15d ago

[deleted]

1

u/MKULTRA_Escapee 20d ago

To be clear, I'm not trying to say that this is 100 percent a commercial airplane producing a contrail. I'm just putting these up for a comparison. Some people don't know that a contrail can appear to be black if it's in shadow, for example, so I was trying to cover all of the bases.

Do you have the precise time instead of an estimate? The witness has this in their phone if they check the photo. Also, do you have the precise direction they were facing while taking the photo? If you have those two things, you can consult a flight tracker to check whether or not there was an airplane in that approximate location during that exact time. Without doing this first, a lot of people will understandably make the assumption that this is just a regular airplane.

1

u/OneSeaworthiness7768 20d ago

See this similar post. It’s just due to lighting from the time of day (sun going down.)

1

u/ScriptedLazer 20d ago

Thats a plane

-1

u/Lord_OJClark 20d ago

These get submitted every so often, they're so weird! They look like dementors. Was it moving? Was the 'smoke' a trail, did it move like smoke?

0

u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 15d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/SabineRitter 20d ago

Was it moving? How long did they watch it?

3

u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 15d ago

[deleted]

7

u/SabineRitter 20d ago

Thanks. Yeah don't let the plane guys waste your time. They're assuming it's not uap and working backwards from there. Acting like you've never seen a plane before. You know what's normal where you live, and what's anomalous. This is anomalous, no matter how much they want to pretend it's just a normal plane.

3

u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 15d ago

[deleted]

3

u/SabineRitter 20d ago

Thanks for posting! Also you can post on /r/rusted_satellite if you want, we have a few of these over there. I think i posted a similar one earlier today, look for the jellyfish 🪼 in the post title.

1

u/SabineRitter 20d ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1h9wqkj/potential_plane_crash_in_southwestern/

Also take a look at this post, you might have a photo of a,shootdown, I'm thinking.

5

u/Tinderfury 20d ago

The plane guys actively downvote and discredit every post, I’ve never seen a plane leave trails like that zooming in I can’t make any shape that looks like a plane

1

u/SabineRitter 20d ago

The alternative, for them, is people getting the idea that we don't have control of our airspace, I guess. They should just come clean, we can handle it

-3

u/pletheronicus 20d ago

Santa tuning up his sleigh.

-1

u/Shoddy_Suit8563 20d ago

Thats a helicopter obviously

-1

u/Zealousideal-Ad5107 20d ago

YAWN, fun week, I saw planes, balloons, rocks, and cables.... love it

-2

u/shortnix 20d ago

A mark on your window or lens?