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Trindade: Doubt, Rumour and Hoax
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In the report
to the project Blue Book on the case of the Island of Trindade, captain M.
Sunderland writes that "It also appears that the object was inverted in
photograph 2 compared to 1 and 3". In spite of the same report finishing with a
famous sarcasm on comfort-loving Martians, it is a simple and objective claim
that if verified and properly denied or even confirmed could cast some new light
in this old case. Even with the naked eye we can see clearly in the first two
photos of the series that the object have a darker stain, called by some "dome",
and it's in fact in the left superior part in the photo 1 and in the right
inferior part in the photo 2.
Recently, Martin Powell
published an analysis, that is also available on-line, where based on scans
of the images of the object in Ronald Story's book, he showed that
there are really notable similarities among the image of the object in the
photo 1 and the inverted image of the object in the photo 2. The implications of
this aspect, if confirmed, are crucial for the case because they are centered on
the only physical evidence.
Alas, as far as I know nobody was interested in investigating the question in a
more professional and definitive way, not only after the article of Powell, but
in all decades after the case. Professional analyses were done on the photos,
but I sincerely do not have knowledge of any of them dealing specifically with
the allegation of inversion by Sunderland. In view of this situation, even as an
amateur with no qualifications on photo analysis, I tried to do something, and
based in scans of the images of the object published in the Brazilian UFO
magazine (which published an article defending the authenticity of the case, and
have first prints of the photos), I made an independent comparison, and it seems
to confirm the results of Powell.
Modifying contrast and brightness values of the images of the object in photos 1
and 2, evident similarities stand out. Using other filters, these similarities
are also shown. It is important to notice that none of these filters were
arbitrary, that is, they were not made retouching manually certain parts of one
image in an arbitrary way to make it look like the other. Instead, filters were
applied on the whole image. They are indeed selective, after all, every image
filter has the objective of making certain information of the image stand out,
and I did adjust the intensity of the filter in a manual way up to where I
thought the similarities where more evident. But what you see is not in any way
product of malicious adulteration. Thus, the similarities are relevant: no
matter how much filters are applied to two different images, if they're
different they should continue reasonably different, unless in a rare
conjunction of circumstances, which in any case doesn't seem plausible here.
In this amateur analysis, I also tried to
compare the image of the object in the photos 3 and 4. I should admit that the
similarities are much less evident. However, I think that in photo 3 the "dome"
can also be identified, and it's in the right inferior part, as in the photo 2.
So, I think that official Sunderland made a mistake on saying that the image of
the object in the photo 2 was inverted in relation to 1 and 3. It seems that
it's the photo 1 that's inverted relative to the images 2 and 3. The photo 4
unfortunately didn't seem to indicate anything to me, not even a "dome".
However, Powell indicated to me that
comparing photos 3 and vertically flipping photo 4, there were some
similarities, as it can be seen in the image above. So, we can suggest that all
four photos are different versions of the same original image, probably never
released to the public for obvious reasons. The first photo is rotated 180
degress in relation to the second and third, and the fourth photo would be a
vertically flipped image, with some resizing. This is not at all very certain,
but I think that at least the similarity between the image of the UFO on photo 1
and the inverted image of it on photo 2 are very remarkable, as can be seen more
clearly on the animation below:
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Above: Flash animation of the image of the UFO on
photo 1 and the rotated image of the UFO in photo 2, both with different
values of the "threshold" filter. No resize or any other modification
was done in relation to the original scans.
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This "analysis" is completely amateur. It
was made based on scans of photos printed on a magazine, and not on direct
copies of the negatives, nor the original negatives that strangely seem to have
disappeared. According to information that still need to be verified, Barauna
apparently sold the negatives to the Brazilian news agency "Meridional" and
bought an apartment with the money. What the agency have done with the negatives
is even more uncertain.
But I expect that this initiative helps to bring more serious interest to deny
or to confirm the information indicated here. I think it's not necessary to
remark to anyone that if all of the four images of the object are in fact too
much similar, including an initial inversion and a final flipping, then the hoax
hypothesis represents not only a plausible one, but a practically certain
conclusion. That should be interesting.
- - -
- A draft of this text, but with more information and images, including the
original image files of the scans of the four images that I used to do my
"analyses", can be read here:
http://www.ceticismoaberto.hpg.ig.com.br/trind/trind_en.htm
In the draft I indicate the software, filters and values that I used to process
the original image files, so everyone can reproduce the results.
(I must warn that the English there is even worse than here: it was
automatically translated, so I must apologize for the inconvenience)
- The Mexican researcher Luis Ruiz Noguez compiled and analyzed vast information
on the case, and his conclusions indicate seriously to fraud even leaving aside
the inversion question approached in this text. On the other hand, it's relevant
that the former roommate of Baraúna apparently stated that he had already seen
the image of the flying saucer of Trindade before the case, which would support
the idea that an image obtained beforehand was imposed in the four photos of the
case. In any case, his excellent work, in Spanish, can be read here:
http://www.ceticismoaberto.hpg.ig.com.br/noguez_trindade00.htm
