> These are known to be Paul Villa’s UFO photographs from 1964 and are part of a larger narrative where he claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings. [...]
>
> How these photographs wound up in the Goddard Space Flight Center records collection is unknown.
> Initial observations: narrow focal depth...object sharpness in front of trees implies it's small, around 8 to 12 in.
>
> Vented disc brake rotors were introduced in the 60s, patented in 1929. This looks like a vented disc brake rotor with a domed hubcap on top. Compare the images.
(Click through to either the Twitter thread or the StackExchange quotation-of-the-Twitter-thread to see the images of the original hubcap and the "UFO" side by side.)
It's obviously someone a few feet from the camera tossing the hubcap into the air.
When you focus a SLR camera "to infinity", ie. the maximum settable focus for distant objects, the lens has an actual physical distance at which things will still be focused. Usually it's like 50 feet from the camera. So when the camera lens is focused to infinity, things >= 50 feet away will be in focus.
Because the trees are slightly out of focus, the lens has been set shallower than infinity, which means the UFO is closer to the camera than the physical infinity (50'). It's physically impossible for an object more distant than the trees to be in focus without the trees being in focus.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/57629/whats-the...
> These are known to be Paul Villa’s UFO photographs from 1964 and are part of a larger narrative where he claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings. [...] > > How these photographs wound up in the Goddard Space Flight Center records collection is unknown.
https://xcancel.com/humansareindef1/status/17581524853055121...
> Initial observations: narrow focal depth...object sharpness in front of trees implies it's small, around 8 to 12 in. > > Vented disc brake rotors were introduced in the 60s, patented in 1929. This looks like a vented disc brake rotor with a domed hubcap on top. Compare the images.
(Click through to either the Twitter thread or the StackExchange quotation-of-the-Twitter-thread to see the images of the original hubcap and the "UFO" side by side.)