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Famous Belgian UFO Photo A Fake

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dorkbot

Skilled Investigator
Petit-Rechain

Not sure if this was mentioned previously but I saw over on the ufoupdates list a link to the best copy of the famous Petit-Rechain photo I have yet seen:

TRIANGLESPECIAL.jpg


They say the image is from slide film...i'm guessing 35mm. The Why Files site has a nice collect of BT info: http://www.thewhyfiles.net/triangle.htm
 
Petit-Rechain

That is the best copy I've seen on the net. Maybe in person too. Thanks for posting it.

Is there a recent thread on BTs over at updates? I was just there and didn't see it. But I can't recall if I checked the recent posts. That might be why.

Debunkers claim the photo is a hoax (they have to in order to keep their belief) but I haven't seen the details they base their conclusions on. Anyone know if there is evidence this photo is a hoax? I just vaguely recall some saying that the blurring is a sign of a hoax.
 
Petit-Rechain

it would appear that there are multiple lights on at least 2 corners. maybe a large light and a few smaller ones next to it? do these things have lights on the sides?
 
Petit-Rechain

pixelsmith said:
it would appear that there are multiple lights on at least 2 corners. maybe a large light and a few smaller ones next to it? do these things have lights on the sides?

That photo, "has been investigated by the military (*) resulting in some stunning conclusions. One conclusion was that the light source in each corners consisted of many smaller light sources moving independently in relation with the movement of the "craft" itself (during exposure)."

(*) professeur Marc Acheroy de l'Ecole Royale Militaire, à Bruxelles

[copied from www.thewhyfiles.net/triangle.htm]
 
Petit-Rechain

After the last developpements on fakers in ufology on the paracast, here's an new one but this time from Belgium. The famous picture of "Petit Rechain", emblematic of the ufo wave of Belgium in 1989 and which has been extensively studied by diverse organisms (even the NASA) and widely publicized has just been recognized as being a hoax by his perpetrator. :mad:

He admitted to have faked the picture with a frigolite model. I believe that's another blow which will contribute to sully some more ufology even if I think it doesn't question many of the other testimonies in this wave. That's really the kind of thing that prevent the field of being seriously investigated by real scientists. Who would risk their reputation in such a polluted field. Maybe that prank was fun on the moment, but in respect of everyone, he should have admitted not long after instead of leaving it being believed as a legitimate picture for 20 years.

I begin to understand how some can feel after having entered the field with real and legitimate interest but have constantly encountered frauds and pranksters for decades. At the end, It may just makes you more disgusted when you see the trustworthiness you might have place on some people being blowed away.

here's the link on a belgium media which reports that information : Petit Rechain picture Hoax (radio RTL) (just in french sorry)
 
Petit-Rechain

Wow, another photo that is held up as absolute proof has been discredited by the person that put it forward. It's important that these things come to light. Thanks for the video.
 
Petit-Rechain

The video seemed legit Ron, but we can never be sure I guess.
In case anyone asks, yes I understand and speak French, almost as well as I speak English. I live in Quebec.
 
Petit-Rechain

As for as I am aware nobody does know for sure who took that photograph? This guy Patrick claims himself and few of his-co workers hoaxed this eighteen years ago. Well some evidence to prove that claim that would be nice.

Anyway's that photograph was always troublesome by the fact nobody has ever claimed ownership to that famous UFO photograph until now that is.


But I put more stock in this UFO photograph been legit, anyways.


walloniabelgium.jpgwalloniabelgium.jpg
 
Petit-Rechain

Wow, another photo that is held up as absolute proof has been discredited by the person that put it forward. It's important that these things come to light. Thanks for the video.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that this photo was held as an absolute proof, which I think is a bit exagerated. It is however true that it has been widely exposed and studied by some recognized organisms/specialists who couldn't expose any fixing in the picture.
For myself, I find there's really something nice to this picture, the view point from which it was taken, the different shapes of the lights and how their motion has been captured, the tinges in the colours of the lights, but in the end it's just another hoax...:frown:

Are we absolutely sure that he is the person that put it forward in the first place. I'm in the mood to vet just about everything these days.

Yes, this was the same personn that has declared to have taken the picture. One scientist who has studied the picture (Auguste Meessen) and who apparently knew the man (the right initials of his name and his professionnal position were already given in one of his analysis report) went to meet him after this disclosure to question him about it. It was still hard for him to believe that it was a just a model with simple lamps.

A.Meesen analysis of the picture (but still in french!)

As for as I am aware nobody does know for sure who took that photograph? This guy Patrick claims himself and few of his-co workers hoaxed this eighteen years ago. Well some evidence to prove that claim that would be nice.

Anyway's that photograph was always troublesome by the fact nobody has ever claimed ownership to that famous UFO photograph until now that is.

I don't think so, his testimony has apparently been recorded and he has talked with the one scientist I mentionned and have been interviewed by members of the belgium association SOBEPS (who collaborated with the belgium army during the belgium wave). So his identity was known by the local people but I guess was not divulge upon his request.

I wonder what he had done of the model, I'd be quite surprised if he had thrown it... Maybe it would still be interesting that he show how he'd proceed to make this hoax, though he might have made many people who trusted him angry.
 
Petit-Rechain

I always thought that the photographer was anonymous so I was a little bit surprised when I saw 2 year ago in James Fox documentary - I KNOW WHAT I SAW - in the part where Belgium photo was showed over the screen, that it was titled as:

"Original photograph
By Guy Mossay
SOFAM BELGIUM 1990"

In this latest revelation, author of the photograph is named as Patrick (last name not given). Guy Mossay is referenced on many websites in connection with different pictures so my first thought was that he (Guy) is maybe a journalist or professional photographer who in fact only published original photo in newspapers at the time or something like that.

User Nablar from Reality Uncovered has stated this on July 27, 2011:
Source: http://tinyurl.com/42rkmwq

"The hoaxer sold the rights to a professional photographer (M. Mossay) in (or before?) august 1990. I don't know how much it influenced witnesses and standardized the mythical Belgian triangle. Actually people were reporting many different types of UFOs during the Belgian wave."
--- end of quote ---

If that info is correct, it explains the discrepancy between the names (Guy vs. Patrick).

Also, it seems that Patrick Ferryn (not the same Patrick mentioned above), president of COBEPS, stated that this admission resolves origin of photo but can't affect the integrity of Belgium UFO wave itself.
http://tinyurl.com/3sfuw2n

Anyway, RTL has added another video today - 16 minute feature about the whole story. Guests in the studio were Auguste Meessen and Pierre Magarain.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/345410.aspx

If anyone can paraphrase (from French) what was said on that last 16 minute video that would be great.

Here is the complete video and article set from RTL that I was able to compile and archive so far:

ARTICLES:

July 26, 2011
The Mystery of a famous UFO A hoax
http://tinyurl.com/3jhhg5o
English translation (Google):
http://tinyurl.com/3fz5v5o

July 26, 2011
Patrick Ferryn, president of COBEPS: this admission resolves origin of photo but can't affect the integrity of Belgium UFO wave itself
http://tinyurl.com/3rzknbv
English translation:
http://tinyurl.com/3sfuw2n

July 27, 2011
UFO hoax: meeting between the expert and the hoaxer
http://tinyurl.com/3frkbk5
English translation:
http://tinyurl.com/3ndya8b

VIDEOS:

July 26, 2011
Mea Culpa - author of the fake UFO photo of Petit Rechain.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/344607.aspx

July 26, 2011
The Mystery of a UFO 20 years After
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/344626.aspx

July 26, 2011
Mea Culpa - author of the fake UFO photo of Petit Rechain.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/344699.aspx

July 26, 2011
UFOs were seen everywhere in Belgium 20 years ago.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/344700.aspx

July 27, 2011
UFO hoax confession: a physicist does not believe in cheating.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/344986.aspx

July 27, 2011
UFO hoax: the expert does not believe
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/344996.aspx

July 27, 2011
UFO hoax confession: a physicist does not believe in cheating.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/345116.aspx

July 27, 2011 16 minutes feature
UFOs - RTL + attempts to answer all your questions with specialists.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/345410.aspx

Other videos from RTL archives about Belgium UFO Wave
November 29, 2009
UFO Wave in Belgium - 20 years ago
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/95939.aspx

November 29, 2009
UFOs UFO wave created turmoil in 20 years ago
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/95962.aspx

November 29, 2009
UFOs in Belgium - wave of excitement 20 years ago
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/96060.aspx

Best Wishes
 
Petit-Rechain

Does anyone else find it interesting how easy it is to manipulate opinions around this subject matter? One person here, a photo, a retraction, a scientist there: it's as if the subject matter hardly even matters and it's more about the distraction.

So why in the hell are we so attracted to this distraction?
 
Petit-Rechain

In this latest revelation, author of the photograph is named as Patrick (last name not given). Guy Mossay is referenced on many websites in connection with different pictures so my first thought was that he (Guy) is maybe a journalist or professional photographer who in fact only published original photo in newspapers at the time or something like that.

User Nablar from Reality Uncovered has stated this on July 27, 2011:
Source: http://tinyurl.com/42rkmwq
"The hoaxer sold the rights to a professional photographer (M. Mossay) in (or before?) august 1990. I don't know how much it influenced witnesses and standardized the mythical Belgian triangle. Actually people were reporting many different types of UFOs during the Belgian wave."
--- end of quote ---

If that info is correct, it explains the discrepancy between the names (Guy vs. Patrick).

That's what I also read elsewhere. Guy Mossay was the journalist that got the right from the author (Patrick M.) to use the picture in the medias.


Thanks for sharing the videos (I already saw a few ones). :)

Anyway, RTL has added another video today - 16 minute feature about the whole story. Guests in the studio were Auguste Meessen and Pierre Magarain.
http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/345410.aspx

If anyone can paraphrase (from French) what was said on that last 16 minute video that would be great.

Actually, there's not much to be learned on the subject that interest us here, but I'd made a summary here, if nobody precedes me (Angel of Ioren also speaks french here).
 
Petit-Rechain

Anyway, RTL has added another video today - 16 minute feature about the whole story. Guests in the studio were Auguste Meessen and Pierre Magarain.



http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/345410.aspx







If anyone can paraphrase (from French) what was said on that last 16 minute video that would be great.








Here's a transcript of the first 7 min of the interview :

J is the journalist, AM is August Meessen (on the right) and P.M is Pierre Magain (on the left)

J : for 20 years some has believed that we had been visited by ETs while in fact it was hoax with a picture of a model. Nonetheless, the UFOs remain unidentified objects that still beg an explanation. To talk about it we receive PM, you are astrophysicist and professor at the ULG, next to you AM, hello, you are physicist and emeritus professor at the UCL. [to AM] This picture, you have dedicated part of your life, today you seem to be skeptical faced with the confession of this person.

AM: I'm not skeptical, I want to understand. So when I got this news I went there to ask him how he had done. And this is a technical problem and that interests me. That the picture is a hoax is secondary and we have to relativize, because a "tree shouldn't mask the forest" and the "forest" is the ufo phenomenon.

J: but this picture, still, I was looking in the news coverage we diffused in the 19 PM journal , you were really asking some explanations to this person, you said you didn't understand some technical details and that for you it couldn't be possible that it was a hoax.

AM : I'm going to tell you immediately what the problem is. you see the picture...presents...you have big lights, and the witness says he used a frigolite model with 4 small lamps from a small torch and how can this make these effects? you see it from the object[showing the 1stpicture]...in the blue sensible layer [showing the 2nd blue picture], and you see, everyone who studied the picture found the same effects. So there's here a technical problem. I continue my investigation, I found another witness. There were only two people to be aware. I found the other witness, I continue my investigation and there may be a track that may explain and that may be done further in time.

J: PM, you, this picture, did you believe at a moment that it was genuine?

PM: when the picture was published, with a colleague of the observatory, I analyzed it, and I noticed at once that there were some incoherences between the picture and the testimony

J : which incoherences?

PM: for instance the witness describes the lights as points whereas when we look at the size of picture on the film roll and when we listen to his description of the size of the object, it's clear that each light had the minimum size of the full moon. So if you have an object with the size of the full moon you don't say that it's a point. Moreover, the two witnesses had slightly contradictory versions on the departure of the object. One was saying that the object has disappeared suddenly, the other that it went by slowly. So there were some incoherences between the testimonies that made us already suspect that it was a hoax.

J: AM, the documents in question had also been analyzed by the NASA, it went very far, what did the NASA think about it?

AM: for myself, I don't know anything about the NASA, but there are 4 or 5 photography experts that examined it. It's true that my colleague [referring to PM] made a trial to reproduce something similar, others also, but each time we could see very quickly that it was a fake but not for the original. So now for the problem you raised, I know now that there were small lamps which made him speaks of luminous points and that it was photographed, now I know, at 1,5 m of distance.

J: So you have the technical details that you needed.

AM: I must search as for the ufo phenomenon, because if there's an enigma we must try to resolve it.

J: PM, the NASA leaned over the phenomenon? what were their conclusions?

PM: I'm not aware of an official extensive analysis by the NASA, it was a hearsay. My staff, who is in astrophysics and image treatment, we analyzed this picture without the original but nonetheless with a copy. We confronted it to the testimony. I think the main error that was made by many labs who analyzed the picture is that they looked at the picture outside its context. We can't, on the solely basis of a picture, unless it is an evident hoax, determine if it is a hoax, in taking it outside of the context in which it was captured. We must compare it with the testimony of the photographer, with the testimony of his girlfriend, and that's here that on one part we saw it was very easy to reproduce the object with a model, so we could not exclude the idea of a hoax and on another part we noticed some incoherences. It was not a document that could be considered as genuine.

the journalist continue with questions of some telespectator (I will post the rest later)
 
Petit-Rechain

Does anyone else find it interesting how easy it is to manipulate opinions around this subject matter? One person here, a photo, a retraction, a scientist there: it's as if the subject matter hardly even matters and it's more about the distraction

Bingo! There is a recurrent pattern here. A very credible incident involving high level witnesses winds up discredited in the public mind by the exposition of a few admitted hoaxes.
 
Petit-Rechain

Here's a transcript of the first 7 min of the interview :

J is the journalist, AM is August Meessen (on the right) and P.M is Pierre Magain (on the left)

J : for 20 years some has believed that we had been visited by ETs while in fact it was hoax with a picture of a model. Nonetheless, the UFOs remain unidentified objects that still beg an explanation. To talk about it we receive PM, you are astrophysicist and professor at the ULG, next to you AM, hello, you are physicist and emeritus professor at the UCL. [to AM] This picture, you have dedicated part of your life, today you seem to be skeptical faced with the confession of this person.

---snip---

Wow chikane.
Thank you so muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh for the part one. 1000 times THANKS.
Are you making transcript over online video or did you first downloaded video or audio internaly on your hard drive and then browsing it back and forward? If you are doing that online I know how hard it can be. Let me now if I can help in any way - in that case I can upload you physical copy of the video which you can then easily browse with VLC player every 10 seconds back and forth.
 
Petit-Rechain

Wow chikane.
Thank you so muchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh for the part one. 1000 times THANKS.
Are you making transcript over online video or did you first downloaded video or audio internaly on your hard drive and then browsing it back and forward? If you are doing that online I know how hard it can be. Let me now if I can help in any way - in that case I can upload you physical copy of the video which you can then easily browse with VLC player every 10 seconds back and forth.

you're welcome ;), actually I listen to the video online but I can pause each time I need to write with the online media player (too difficult for me to translate online!), so I don't need a copy of the video, but thanks for your help. :)

so here's the other part of the interview. If you don't mind I'd stop at 11 min where the discussion leaves the case and goes on to speak about many other things as the recent discovery of exoplanets, the possibility of life on them, the possibility of travel of speed of light (but very briefly for each topic so there's really not much to be learned), things that don't specifically adress the topic.

-----------

J [reading the telespectator question]: the picture may be a hoax, it remains that in the early 90's, a lot of witnesses in whom were police and military officers witness these events. The belgium air army observered on their radar screens one of the luminous points accelerate vertically abruptly at a speed that no human could withstand. Until now, no explanation could have been brought forward. [To AM] the observations at the time, AM, what were there giving ? Military people did indeed see phenomena that they weren't able to explain.

AM : it's less important, what is important is that there have been observations the area of Benne [not sure of the name] which I investigated, there were very serious witnesses and all that is coherent. This a first point, the second point is now the air force intervention with two F16. we found through this, because I had the occasion to recover the informations from the three ground-based radars, one national, the 2 others military ones, the recordings of the F16s, and I analyzed all that. And I discovered a meteorological phenomenon which is rare, that the radar operators didn't know about, and finally after a lot of research, been able to explain what happened for the F16s.

J : so what was the explanation, briefly and clearly because everybody don't have your background

AM : there was a meteorological phenomenon and explaining this with the high performance of the F16s radars was troublesome, but during this intervention there was another observation detected simutaneously by the 2 military radars and this one has not been explained. I'm also sure that the ufos of the belgium wave were difficultly detected on radars, sometimes it works and sometimes not.

PM : to be completly clear I want to say first that in the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] book of the SOBEPS, following an analysis done by AM, the SOBEPS had concluded that an object had been observed which had extraordinary accelerations that couldn't be withstand by any human. But in a second time, followings some reanalysis, the intervention of military experts, we understood that the radars had detected an atmospheric phenomenon, that there were no accelerations, it was air masses of different humidity rates that reflected the waves and gave the impression that it was an object but in fact the radars didn't detect any objects, truly speaking.

J: most of the time there's an explanation from this sort, in how many cases is it possible to conclude it is a meteorological phenomenon.

PM : we have a lot of observations, testimonies, the large majority of them, around 95% can be explained, there remains a small proportion of cases that can't be explained and most of the time they can't be explained because the observations are so vague that it could be everything. Each case that has been thoroughly examined by an expert, with a skeptical touch, a critical mindset, has finally been explained.

here the discussion leaves the case ot speak about more general things in ufology.
 
Petit-Rechain

you're welcome ;), actually I listen to the video online but I can pause each time I need to write with the online media player (too difficult for me to translate online!), so I don't need a copy of the video, but thanks for your help. :)

---snip---

Fantastic contribution Chikane. Thank you so much for your efforts. If I only could send you 100 thanks points on your post :)

On the same note, here is another video that was also translated on english:
http://www.wat.tv/video/eng-sub-fake-belgian-ufo-picture-3xzkf_3xzit_.html
 
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