Lens Flare and the Media Hype

June 2010 also saw a rather interesting 'thread' in the BETA UFO mailing list. This time it was taken from another thread on one of the country's 'biggest' online forum, Kaskus. A member of the said forum uploaded two photographs allegedly taken on June 12 at the newly built Suramadu bridge, that connect the city of Surabaya with the island of Madura. In the photos, are seen several 'UFO-like' shapes in the sky near the bridge which -according to the photographer- were not seen before the photographs were taken. The original photos themselves were not very clear until another forum member helped to 'emphasize' the objects in question as can be seen below.

The photos has since attracted quite a lot of attention, particularly on the grounds of the photographer's belief that he those objects are indeed UFO, and sparked a lot of discussion both on the original Kaskus forum as well as in BETA UFO's mailing-list. One of the primary conclusion reached in the BETA UFO discussions is that the photo is nothing more than a lens flare effect.

Strangely enough, the photo then sparked the media's ongoing interest and hype over anything 'mysterious' or 'uncanny'. BETA UFO was contacted to state its conclusion on the said photos in August, for a Jakarta-based TV station's afternoon program. Guess what? Not long after that, someone finally came to the Kaskus forum to show, with two very clear photos seen below, that it is INDEED a simple lens flare effect.

I guess the interest on UFO's has indeed grown by leaps and bounds in the country, but the media's 'warped' approach to it all (most interest in the UFO-related phenomena are currently shown by celebrity gossip programs, for crying out loud) hardly promised a better understanding of the phenomena.