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This Project Blue Book file, released through The Black Vault, collects US Air Force records from 1950 to 1959 on the movie film Nicholas Mariana shot at Great Falls, Montana on 15 August 1950. It includes the OSI interview report, letters about borrowing and copying the film, and a 1956 Douglas Aircraft analysis. Blue Book's own findings were not consistent: one letter lists the cause as unknown, while later memos conclude the objects were probably two F-94 jets.
“Los Angeles Times”2 pages
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## APPENDIX II
The image of any brilliant light source as seen by either the eye or a camera can appear much larger than the luminous object. An extreme example of this effect is shown in figure 8(a) which is a blown up 16 mm frame showing the image of a 1 1/4" plane mirror at 180 feet reflecting the sun directly into the 1" lens of a camera. The mirror's true size is exaggerated some 15 times. This fact has obvious bearing on the analysis of UFO films. It therefore motivated a photogrammetric experiment conducted by the author on December 10, 11, 1955. The experiment was devised in order to obtain empirical information on the effect of distance, lens focal length, iris stop, frame speed, etc. on the photographic images of various small bright sources of reflected sunlight (cf. figure 8(b)). One hundred and nineteen combinations of these parameters were examined. The tests included still, as well as 16 mm and 8 mm movie pictures and shots of actual airplane reflections also were taken.
The most pertinent facts gleaned from this experiment involved the analysis of optimal specular sun reflections $ \ast $ from a chrome plated Model DC-6 (cf. figure 8(c)) and a bright cylindrical reflector (cf. figure 9(a)). Both these objects show a magnification in the size of the image photographed over that of the actual object. Figure 8(c) shows a DC-6 model photographed from a distance that would give the same size picture as the full scale airplane from about two miles; the bright images are of dimension corresponding to 0.004 x 0.002 radians. $ \ast $ Figure 9(a) shows reflection (at optimal angle) from a cyclinder roughly corresponding in geometry to a fifty-foot airplane at a distance of about two miles, the bright image's angular diameter was 0.0015 radians. $ \ast $ Figure 9(b) is a blown up frame taken from the Montana film. The image's angular diameter was 0.0014 radians. The UFO image intensity appears to be slightly less than that of the experimental picture but variation in development techniques would not allow quantitative analysis in this regard. Figure 9(c) shows optimal sun reflections from four jet planes; estimated distance was two and one half miles; the angular diameter of the bright image was 0.0014 x 0.0006 radians. The reflection from these jets lasted about $ 5^{0} $ Figure 10(a) shows optimal reflection from a commercial plane (100 foot) in a landing pattern over the Los Angeles International Airport. Its estimated distance was 12 miles and the angular image diameter was 0.0003 radians. (The reflection in this case lasted about $ 10^{0} $ Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 114 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.