Mrs. Hannah McRoberts (aged 25) of Campbell River, BC, was with her family
at a rest-area some thirty miles to the north of Kelsey Bay on the east coast of Vancouver
Island, from October 10 to 15, 1981. During this five-day period she says she took a
number of pictures of her family and of the local scenery, using her 35 mm Mamiya camera
with a 50-55 mm lens, 125 speed, and ASA 100 film.
At one point during the holiday they observed that one of the mountain peaks was
surmounted by a cloud somewhat suggestive, as they described it, of "a volcano
issuing steam", so Mrs. McRoberts snapped that as well. None of the party noticed
anything else in the air at the time, and the presence of the UFO was therefore only
discovered by them when the prints and negatives came back to them after processing.
The resulting photograph shows an object to
the right of and above the peak and the plume of cloud. This photo came to the attention
of Mr. David A. C. Powell of Vancouver, who is on the staff of the McMilllan Planetarium
in that city, who in turn contacted Bill Allan and provided him with an enlargement, and
also got in contact the APRO of Tucson, Arizona, the respected American UFO investigation
group who claim now to be the oldest in the world.
In the meantime, Mr. W. K. Allan was able to
speak with Mrs. Hannah McRoberts and to interview her on CKOV Kelowna open line radio
programme, in the course of which he formed the opinion that her story was entirely
genuine and that what we have here is therefore a "legitimate classical type UFO
photo."
(The place where Mrs. McRoberts says she
took her photograph lies incidentally, some 450 kms or so to the north-west of Mount
Rainier in the US State of Washington, where, as readers will recall, Kenneth Arnold
claimed on June 24, 1947 to have seen his famous flight of nine saucers moving in
formation at 1,200 mph and at an altitude of 10,000 ft over the Cascade Range.)
THE EXAMINATION OF THE
PRINTS IN UK AND USA
Very wisely indeed, in view of past
experience (what a story there is to be told, one day, about the interceptions of UFO
photos and UFO reports from the public mails - and all over the world!) Mr. Allan had
arranged that the negative of this photograph should remain very firmly in the hands of
Mrs. McRoberts herself.
APRO had meanwhile passed their prints of
the picture to one of their most eminent specialist consultants, Dr. James Harder, who is
the Professor of Engineering in the University of California at Berkeley, and he and APRO
agreed too that the negative should remain where it was.
Here in Britain we passed our copies of the
prints to FSR's photographic consultant Mr. Percy Hennell, who is generally regarded as
the leading expert in this country in all matters where colour photography is concerned.
THE VERDICT ON THE PRINTS
After
careful scrutiny, Mr. Hennell informs us that he would naturally have preferred to have
the actual negative in hand for, as he warns, all kinds of hoaxes are possible, and do
occur. Nevertheless, he says that he finds nothing dubious or suspicious about the
picture, though he does warn us that, if the picture is indeed genuine, then the disc must
have been of enormous size - several hundreds of feet wide - to have shown up so large at
such a distance! (There have indeed been frequent reports, over the years, of discs
estimated to be of such sizes- indeed in some cases of discs believed to be as much as
1000 ft in diameter, as for example in the confidential report which APRO published a good
many years ago, and which they had received direct from the pilot and co-pilot of an
American troop-carrying plane which, while en route from Tokyo to South Vietnam with a
party of American soldiers, encountered two enormous metallic discs that flew on a
parallel course with them for half an hour.)
THE VERDICT OF DR. JAMES
HARDER
We now see, from APRO Bulletin, Vol. 30, No.
12, that Dr. James Harder submitted his report on the photo on November 4, 1982, and they
give their own conclusion, which is as follows:- "All this considered, the photo
presented here appears to be an excellent and probably genuine photo of a classical disc
photographed in daylight. Although unlikely, if further information and clarification is
available, it will be presented in a future issue of the Bulletin."
In view of the obviously very great interest
which this photo will evoke, I take the liberty of quoting in full Dr. Harder's opinion as
given in APRO Bulletin Vol. 30, No. 12 -
"Generally I feel that the best test of
authenticity is in the good reputation of the photographer, insofar as it is impossible to
prove a negative - in this case that there is no possibility of a fraud. However, some of
the indicators of an authentic photograph can help establish likelihood of an authentic
photo. These are -
1. That the negative involved is one of a
sequence of outdoor pictures and that the frame in question is not an isolated one. One
way of producing a hoax is to re-photograph a positive print onto which has pasted an
addition. To do a good job of hoaxing then one would have to re-photograph an entire roll
of negative film.
2. That there are no inconsistencies in the
lighting of the strange object and the rest of he scene. In the subject photo, I note that
the shadows in the lower left of the scene indicate a Sun position nearly behind the
camera. There is a reflection on the forward face of the UFO that is consistent with this
Sun position. There also seems to be a bright spot under the UFO not connected with
external lighting - maybe a light on the UFO.
3. With the right equipment, it is possible
to make certain measurements of negative density of the UFO image and of other images of
objects at estimated distances from the lens. Here the object is to show that the unknown
is not nearby - and thus not a hubcap or other such object thrown into the air. The idea
is to measure, from the image of the object at a known distance, the atmospheric
'extinction coefficient'. On a clear day, with a low value, contrasts between dark
shadowed areas and brightly lit areas retain their distinction over greater distances. On
hazy days, the light and dark areas blend towards a mid-range shade, giving the appearance
that distant mountains have of being one shade of grey. Nearby shadows can show their true
darkness, as opposed to the lighter shade of distant shadows. But in this picture there
are no nearby shadows to serve as a standard, only shadows of trees in the lower left
bottom.
It has been alleged that edges become fuzzy
at greater distances and that this can help distinguish nearby objects from those far
away. I know of no theoretical reason for this based on the optical properties of the
atmosphere, but will ask Jim Lorenzen if we have a consultant who could be more sure of
this. After all, we do take remarkably clear pictures from space with no trouble from
edge-blurring of objects on the ground, and that is through 14.7 lbs per square inch of
air in the path.
So proving authenticity is likely to be
elusive, insofar as there is only the evidence of internal consistency to go on. I wish I
could be more positive, but then there is so much evidence of other sorts for the reality
of UFOs that we shouldn't have to add to it excepting for those who are beyond believing
anyway."
POSTSCRIPT
In a further letter from Mr. W. K. Allan, he
comments on Dr. Harder's reference to the fact that Mrs. McRoberts photo is one of a
sequence of outdoor pictures, and says: "It is unfortunate that the importance of
keeping the individual exposures on the roll unseparated was not fully realized, but when
I saw the negative it was still unseparated from one of the family snaps."
With regard to the lady who took the
photograph of this UFO, Mr. Allan goes on to say: "What is of great importance to me
is the fact that Hannah McRoberts is the niece of one of Canada's leading nuclear
engineers, a man in charge of a multi-billion dollar electrical generating complex, whom I
have known continuously since his attendance in my class at Western Canada High School in
Calgary, Alberta."
Nota Bene:
For further information and analysis of this
photograph, see the paper "A Scientifically Based Analysis of an Alleged UFO
Photograph" by Richard F. Haines, Ph.D., in the MUFON 1986 UFO Symposium Proceedings,
pp. 111-129.
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