2005/03/27 (EN)

FOTOCAT case # status

Physically, FOTOCAT is an Excel file of UFO and IFO cases where an image has been obtained on photo, film or video. It contains various data columns to register the date, location and country, explanation (if one exists), photographer’s name, special photographic features, references, etc. When completed, the full catalog will be posted in internet , for an indiscriminate access to the worldwide UFO community.

The number of events cataloged at the time of writing is: 5,135

International Assistance

This section reports contributions received from new collaborators (or from regular ones which most recent contribution is considered outstanding). In addition to the new names cited here, many others are regularly contributing to the enlargement of FOTOCAT.

• Loren E. Gross is to be commended by adding two news booklets to his long series “UFOs: A History”. Loren has just edited two volumes covering the year 1960, with some 270 pages of text and newspaper and magazine facsimiles centered on UFO events occurred that year.



• Heriberto Janosh González, an Argentinian psychologist living in Spain, for clues about sources for UFO photos in the internet.



• French long-time UFO researcher Dominique Caudron, on the August 12, 1883 Zacatecas (Mexico) UFO photograph by astronomer José Bonilla: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/oncle.dom/paranormal/ovni/cas/zacatecas/zacat.htm



• Thanks go to Juan Carlos Vergara (Panama City, Panama), a witnesses who has reported his own photo sighting directly to us. Carl Barron, of Dorset (United Kingdom) alerted me on a weird image that appeared on a picture he took. Max Burns submitted a puzzling picture he obtained in UK on October 19, 2004. Junji Numakawa, from Japan, submitted a video tape showing three events he recorded in Tokyo in the years 1994, 1995 and 2000.



• Collaboration is being extremely useful by Mauricio Pessino, an electronic engineer from Buenos Aires (Argentina) who took a video of a strange aerial phenomenon in July 2002 in the province of Cordoba. Case is presently under inquiry.



• Coworker and long-standing UFO researcher Carlos León , from Asturias (Spain), has procured a video recording obtained by a local lady on April 1st, 2004.



• Also from Argentina, ufologist Carlos Ferguson from the Red Argentina de Ovnilogía (RAO) is precisely a specialist in photographic cases, having produced a catalog of 184 such cases in his country (FOTOCAT records 270 cases). Cooperation may refine and enlarge the FOTOCAT content for Argentina.

Photo example

This section will display one instance of UFO sighting directly reported to FOTOCAT, where the images that were achieved have no explanation at this stage.

 (Click to enlarge)

Enlargements via image-processing of the above (courtesy Ray Stanford):

The FOTOCAT mail box has received two photographs (of three) taken in Panama City (Panama) on December 19, 2004 with a Canon Digital G5 camera, at 5 pm by Juan Carlos Vergara and wife, from a 4th floor near Panama Bay. Object was first sighted flying toward the witness place and it came as near as 300 or 400 metres of distance, according to the photographer, a video-producer by profession. The sighting lasted some 3 minutes, during which the object first remained hovering and motionless but it flew away rapidly by the time the photos were taken, by moving along a curve to disappear in a straight line then. Zoom was used in taking the photos because the object was already far away. It had the shape of a helmet or cask with its superior portion rolling, it was like 4 thin layers or sheets and it was reflecting the Sun rays. The object size has been compared to four 4-door Landcruiser. No sound was heard. I am presenting here one of the original photos I was sent, directly discharged from the camera, un-cropped. The witness reports he and his wife had another UFO sighting 3 weeks before. He adds that "last week" (writing on January 3, 2005) a local newspaper published the photo of a UFO taken 5 kilometres from his location. Photographer says he was sceptic of UFOs before.

Comments from readers will be appreciated. Any local researcher who is willing to develop a personal inquiry is welcome to contact FOTOCAT, to be supplied with personal information on witness.

Catalog Tally

Some basic statistics derived from FOTOCAT.

I have listed the number and percentage of FOTOCAT cases (as of 5,057 entries) by decade, and this is what we can observe:

Decade	Number	Percent	Cases per Year
1900-1909	8	0,2%	1
1910-1919	6	0,1%	1
1920-1929	4	0,1%	0
1930-1939	8	0,2%	1
1940-1949	94	1,9%	9
1950-1959	544	10,7%	54
1960-1969	803	15,8%	80
1970-1979	1146	22,6%	115
1980-1989	465	9,2%	47
1990-1999	1062	20,9%	106
2000-2005	937	18,5%	187
TOTAL	5077

Since the forties (actually, from 1947) the number of UFO photographs start to climb in an in crescendo trend until the eighties, where cases down under one-half of the prior period. Whether this is an actual reporting trend or just a mirage due to the collection process, we still do not know.

In the nineties the case rate increases again and in the five first years of the 21st century the case input has beaten any historical record. Obviously, this is due to the advent of internet.

Do the general catalogues show a similar temporal distribution?

Looking for an Unknown Photographer

The following series of snapshot appeared in the book Últimas investigaciones OVNI, by Gabriel Gomis Martín, published by ECU (Alicante, Spain), 2003, pages 243 to 253. The cameraman is said to be a brigade of the Spanish Air Force, who had been destined in Morón de la Frontera (Sevilla) air force base between 1988 and 1995 working in aircraft maintenance. Event happened five kilometers from the base when photos were taken “on a Thursday of end of May or early June”.

Ten pages in the book are devoted to describe a number of stories narrated by the alleged military, whose identity is hidden under the name “Arturo D.S.” However, the date of the case is carefully not reported. All we can do is to estimate that year could be 1995. By not very clear reasons to us, the book author is not willing to collaborate in a follow-up research.

Therefore, FOTOCAT is in the process of disseminating these photographs in Spain in an effort driven to try to collect further testimonies from witnesses of the object flight, or word from someone who knows the origin of the balloon-like object, or the identity of the photographer himself. With this aim this image is also included here.

If you want to offer your collaboration to FOTOCAT Project, write to ballesterolmos@yahoo.es

Or use the following postal address:

Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos
Apartado de Correos 12140
46080 Valencia
SPAIN