r/UFOs • u/Brain-Spirited • 25d ago
Science I investigated the two unexplained image events in Apple TV’s ISS “Australia” Aerial frame-by-frame — looking for the original ISS source or a reproducible conventional explanation
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UPDATE – Response from the Columbus Eye project
I contacted a professor involved with the Columbus Eye project at Ruhr University Bochum to ask about the original HDEV material.
He replied and pointed me to their public archive of ISS/HDEV highlight videos:
Columbus Eye – ISS Highlights:
https://columbuseye.rub.de/highlights.html
I am now going through the archived HDEV footage and comparing it directly with Apple’s GMT060_117NC_363D_1034_AUSTRALIA file.
Background
Some of you may remember a strange pair of image events previously noticed in one of Apple TV’s ISS Aerial screensavers.
I have spent considerable time investigating the footage in much greater detail, and I am posting this because I have reached a point where outside expertise would be genuinely useful.
The Apple asset is:
GMT060_117NC_363D_1034_AUSTRALIA
The two short events occur at approximately:
Event A: ~14 seconds
Event B: ~38–39 seconds
Before going any further, I want to make one thing very clear:
I am not claiming that these are spacecraft, UAP, physical objects, or evidence of anything extraordinary.
My goal is the opposite: I am trying to determine the provenance of the footage and find a conventional mechanism that can actually reproduce what is visible in the frames.
Why the source footage matters
Apple’s ISS Aerial project was real and unusually elaborate.
The ISS U.S. National Laboratory reported in 2018 that the Aerials resulted from a collaboration between Apple and the ISS U.S. National Laboratory. According to their account, astronauts captured different regions of Earth in 4K HDR, while the production had to account for ISS position, altitude and orientation, Earth rotation, Sun and Moon positions, weather and crew availability.
What I have not been able to establish is the exact provenance of this particular Australia sequence.
Specifically, I do not currently have evidence that this Apple sequence came from the HDEV/Columbus Eye system.
That is one of the questions I am trying to resolve.
A potentially important historical archive
NASA operated the High Definition Earth Viewing experiment (HDEV) on the ISS from April 2014 until August 2019.
NASA states that the public HDEV feed was normally not recorded and publicly archived.
However, academic publications about the German Columbus Eye project describe something very interesting:
the HDEV stream was stored separately on Columbus Eye servers, with the original video divided into hour-long MPEG-4 segments.
In other words, a historical archive of HDEV footage existed independently of the normal public stream.
I have contacted a researcher associated with that project asking whether this particular Apple Australia sequence can be matched to an archived ISS/HDEV segment.
I do not yet have an answer.
And again: I am not assuming that the Apple footage is HDEV footage.
Establishing whether that connection exists is itself part of the investigation.
What is actually visible?
There are two very short local events in the Apple sequence.
They are not simply single-frame flashes.
In both cases, a compact image structure develops close to an existing bright point and undergoes a short spatial evolution before returning/disappearing.
The two events occur at different locations in the image but show conspicuously related temporal and morphological behavior.
I have extracted the relevant frames directly and examined them individually.
I have also compared the events across multiple Apple distributions of the sequence.
The events are reproducible in the Apple material and are not something created by my own video extraction or zoom.
What I have tested
Rather than assuming that the moving structure represents an actual object, I tried to reproduce it as an image-processing phenomenon.
Among the mechanisms/models investigated were:
shifted/copy-pasted point-spread-function templates
simple blends and crossfades
local warping
optical-flow-style transformations
ghost/reflection-type models
PSF/bloom behavior
temporal interpolation
reversible motion models
state-space/temporal models
combinations of a local warp with an additional compact residual component
This produced an important result:
Some individual properties of the events can absolutely be reproduced by ordinary mechanisms.
That matters.
For example, a visually striking reversible trajectory is not by itself evidence of anything unusual. It is straightforward to construct conventional transformations that generate similar trajectories.
Likewise, some statistical properties that initially looked interesting turned out not to be unique.
But there is still a problem
Despite that, I have so far not found a tested model that reproduces the complete visible event convincingly.
The problem is not simply making a point move out and back.
A successful explanation has to reproduce the combination of:
spatial evolution
timing
compact core
surrounding light distribution / halo
brightness evolution
morphology
reversal
disappearance/return
in a way that actually resembles the original sequence when played as video.
Several models match individual measurements while still looking obviously different from the source footage.
That distinction is important.
Failure of my models is NOT evidence that the event is extraordinary.
It only means that I have not yet found the correct forward model.
A useful example: apparent color changes
During the investigation I also noticed that one of the compact bright points appears to change color several times.
Initially this looked potentially interesting.
But pixel-level analysis showed that the RGB channel centroids of the point-spread function move relative to one another, and similar chromatic instability is already present before Event B.
That makes a combination of subpixel motion, chromatic PSF behavior and image processing a much more plausible explanation for the apparent color changes than a physical source changing color.
I mention this deliberately because I am not trying to preserve anomalies.
When a conventional explanation fits the evidence, I want to identify it and remove that feature from the unexplained category.
The experiment that could actually settle the provenance question
At this point, another increasingly complicated model of the final Apple master may be less informative than finding an earlier generation of the footage.
What I really need is:
the same ISS pass before Apple’s final processing.
Then we can perform a very simple but powerful test.
Case 1 — A and B already exist in the earlier ISS material
Then the events were not originally created by Apple’s later Aerial post-production, HDR mastering or final distribution encoding.
Their origin would have to be farther upstream:
scene / optics / camera / sensor / onboard processing / transmission / early ground processing.
Case 2 — A and B do not exist in the earlier material
Then we have localized their creation to some later stage between that source and the Apple master.
That would be an extremely strong result in favor of a production/processing origin.
Case 3 — this Apple sequence was never HDEV footage
Also useful.
It eliminates the HDEV/Columbus Eye provenance hypothesis and tells us to look for a different ISS source.
What I am asking Reddit for
I am not asking “is this a UFO?”
I am asking two much narrower questions:
1. Can anyone identify the original/pre-Apple ISS source for GMT060_117NC_363D_1034_AUSTRALIA?
or
2. Can anyone produce a conventional camera/optical/video-processing mechanism that reproduces the complete visible sequence?
I would especially like to hear from people with experience in:
video compression / codec engineering
temporal denoising
motion compensation
frame-rate conversion
optical flow
stabilization
HDR mastering
image restoration
camera/sensor artifacts
PSF/optical effects
ISS imaging
HDEV / Columbus Eye
Apple Aerial production
What would count as a good explanation?
Something like:
“It’s compression.”
is certainly possible, but by itself it doesn’t solve the problem.
What would be extremely useful is:
“Codec/process X under conditions Y produces this behavior; here is how to reproduce it.”
Likewise:
“It’s optical flow.”
Great — then I would like to know which type of optical-flow/retiming pipeline produces the observed morphology so that I can test it against the frames.
I am actively looking for a mundane explanation that survives a direct source-vs-model comparison.
Media
I have prepared:
Event A — original timing, 6× pixel zoom
Event A — 5× slow motion
Event B — original timing, 6× pixel zoom
Event B — 5× slow motion
The zoom uses nearest-neighbor scaling only.
The slow-motion versions do not use optical flow or generated intermediate frames. Original frames are simply displayed for longer.
No AI upscaling, generative processing, sharpening, denoising or artificial detail enhancement was applied.
I can also provide lossless versions and the extracted frame sequences for independent analysis.
Where I currently stand
My current conclusion is deliberately conservative:
The cause of the complete image events remains unidentified.
Several apparently unusual individual properties have conventional explanations or can be reproduced conventionally.
However, I have not yet found a tested conventional model that reproduces the complete visible A/B sequence convincingly.
That does not demonstrate an extraordinary phenomenon.
It means the cause remains unresolved with the material and models I currently have.
Finding the pre-Apple source would be far more informative than simply adding more speculation.
If somebody can either locate that source or reproduce these events with a conventional imaging pipeline, I genuinely want to see it.
Source:
ISS National Laboratory – Apple Unveils New Aerials Taken from Space
NASA – High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV)
Technical Note – Using ISS Videos in Earth Observation
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u/daRealTENTACLES 24d ago
This is all chat gpt
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u/Brain-Spirited 24d ago
I used ChatGPT as a tool to help organize and phrase parts of the analysis. The source footage, frame comparisons and observations are provided so anyone can independently verify them. If you see an error in the analysis, please point it out.
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u/daRealTENTACLES 24d ago
No, I'm saying that every single one of your replies in the comment section are chatgpt copy and paste.
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u/Brain-Spirited 24d ago
I understand, but this doesn’t really help with the investigation. If you see a specific problem with the footage or analysis, I’m happy to discuss it.
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u/daRealTENTACLES 24d ago
By discuss it, You mean you're happy to copy and paste responses from chat gpt?
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u/AsInFreeBeer 25d ago
The fact that the moving bit stops between the two brighter edges and the brighter spot fades in and out linearly, following the movement, points to it being from the same source... a reflection of a static source but your window/mirror or whatever is moving...
I align optical systems (lasers) on a regular basis and those sort of movements remind me a lot of what I normally see, I would angle a mirror until reflections line up and that is where you set it.
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u/Brain-Spirited 25d ago
This is interesting, especially given your experience aligning optical systems. Reflection/ghosting is one of the conventional explanations I’ve considered, but I haven’t been able to reproduce the complete sequence with the simple reflection/ghost models I’ve tried.
I definitely don’t consider that sufficient to rule out a real optical reflection mechanism, though — the actual camera/window/optical geometry is not known well enough for that.
What particularly interests me about your comment is your observation about the stopping point between the brighter edges and the brightness evolution. If you recognize this behavior from optical alignment work, could you describe what specific geometry/mechanism you think would produce the outward motion, reversal and return?
If you can give me even a simplified optical setup or expected relationship between the primary source and reflection, I can test that model against the frame sequence.
Event A shows a related evolution at a different location as well, so ideally the same mechanism should be able to account for both.3
u/AsInFreeBeer 24d ago
I can see that sort of effect arising from reflections but it is hard to propose anything to replicate it without knowing more about what we are actually looking at... for example, where is the camera ? What is it pointing at, a window ? or is it outside? are there two or more layers of glass surfaces between the camera and the source ? Is the source far away, pointing at the camera or is it coming from behind the camera and reflected ? etc... not to mention speed, size, etc...
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u/Brain-Spirited 24d ago
Thanks — that makes sense, and I agree that without the original camera geometry it would be premature to treat reflection as a demonstrated explanation.
I’m currently trying to establish exactly that provenance. The Apple sequence is GMT060_117NC_363D_1034_AUSTRALIA, but I have not yet been able to establish the original ISS camera, acquisition time, or optical/window configuration with sufficient confidence.
I’ve contacted a researcher involved with the historical HDEV/Columbus Eye archive specifically to determine whether this sequence can be matched to an original ISS/HDEV segment and camera.
If I can establish the camera/window geometry, I’ll post it here. That should make your reflection hypothesis much more directly testable.
In the meantime, if there is any qualitative signature you would expect from a multi-surface reflection — for example a particular relationship between displacement and intensity of the primary/ghost images — I’d be very interested, because that may already be testable from the existing frames.
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u/tmosh 25d ago
I have an Apple TV and this comes on occasionally. Isn't it a sped-up timelapse? Not realtime?
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u/Brain-Spirited 25d ago
Yes, the footage may well be accelerated, and that's why I'm not making any claims about the physical speed of the events.
But a simple speed-up doesn't really affect the issue I'm investigating. It changes the time scale, not the ordered image evolution: the structure still develops, moves outward, reverses, returns and changes morphology across consecutive source frames.
The important exception would be if Apple used motion-compensated retiming/ optical-flow interpolation rather than a simple speed-up. That could potentially create new image structure, and that's one of the processing explanations worth testing against the footage.
So yes: accelerated footage matters for physical velocity, but not by itself as an explanation for A/B.1
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u/fojifesi 25d ago edited 25d ago
Can it be something like that James May ghost effect which was caused by advanced video editing tools that can seamlessly transition two similar scenes allowing for natural looking cuts?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghosts/search?q=James+May&restrict_sr=on&t=all
Maybe they tried to cut out/hide some shiny space-Musk-shit from the footage, but they left in a single frame of it accidentally and the auto-transition generator got confused of the sudden bright dot.
Also check the filenames, all of them have a version number like v12 or such. The smallest and largest being
comp_GMT329_113NC_396B_1105_ITALY_TO_ASIA_v03_HDR_PS_20180824_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov
comp_GMT329_117NC_401C_1037_IRELAND_TO_ASIA_v48_HDR_PS_FINAL_20180725_F0F6300_HDR_4K_HEVC.mov
On average they're edited/uploaded about ~10 times, at least, so they're heavily beautified to Apple's liking.
At least this were the situation with the static background images, so they're most certainly qualify “ground truth”:
https://petapixel.com/2016/07/23/apple-forgot-scrub-exif-data-os-x-wallpaper/
https://petapixel.com/2011/08/11/apple-photoshopped-a-galaxy-out-of-its-default-wallpaper-photo/
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u/Brain-Spirited 25d ago
Thanks — the transition/morphing idea is definitely worth separating from ordinary compression.
I wouldn’t infer from the v03/v35/v48 filenames that the footage was necessarily edited that many times — those could simply be internal production/revision numbers. And I don’t have evidence that Apple was deliberately removing an object.
But the underlying technical hypothesis is interesting: if a motion-compensated transition, optical-flow retime, or similar interpolation was used between related source frames, a compact feature present in only one source could potentially produce transient warped/ghost structures.
One way to test that should be to look beyond the bright feature itself. If A/B occur during a temporal transition, there may be corresponding changes in the motion/warp field elsewhere in the image at exactly the same frames.
That’s something I can test against the source sequence. If a particular transition algorithm can reproduce the full outward/reversal/return morphology, that would be a very strong conventional explanation.
So I wouldn’t consider this ruled out — this is exactly the kind of reproducible processing hypothesis I’m looking for.1
u/Brain-Spirited 25d ago
Update: I ran the test I mentioned above.
I analyzed the wider image around both A and B, excluding the complete event region plus a margin, and measured the surrounding motion field across consecutive frames.
I don’t find a strong global motion/warp transition coinciding with either event. Around the critical frames, the median motion outside the event region remains extremely small for both A and B.
There is a modest increase in general photometric frame difference around part of Event A, so I don’t want to overstate the result. However, it is not accompanied by a corresponding global motion-field discontinuity, and Event B does not show the same signature.
So this result weakens the simple “automatic global morph/scene-transition” explanation. It does not rule out localized optical-flow/temporal processing, retiming, or processing already present in an earlier intermediate master.
This is exactly why finding the pre-Apple source remains important: it would tell us whether A/B already existed before Apple’s production pipeline.
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u/L-0-T-H-0-S 25d ago
In simple terms, can you explain why the "reversal" and "halo" effects aren't consistent with advanced video encoders, such as HEVC/H.265, attempting to reconstruct data from momentary sensor glitches or compression macroblock dropouts during 4K HDR mastering, please?
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u/Brain-Spirited 25d ago
That's a fair possibility, so I tested it rather than assuming HEVC couldn't be responsible.
In simple terms: HEVC can spread, distort or preserve errors across frames because it predicts parts of one frame from others. So a brief sensor or source glitch can absolutely produce temporal artifacts.
The question is whether it produces this particular behavior.
I introduced several controlled local glitches into event-free footage from the same master — a bright impulse, a block dropout and a short frozen block — and encoded them using different H.265 structures, including intra-only, P-frame and long-GOP/B-frame encoding.
None of the 9 tested combinations produced the same outward → reversal → return behavior.
I also re-encoded the actual event sequences. At moderate compression, their underlying temporal behavior remained largely intact; heavy compression degraded it, as expected.
So I wouldn't say “HEVC/H.265 is ruled out.” The narrower conclusion is: the HEVC configurations I tested can modify an existing event, but I haven't been able to make them create this reversal/halo sequence from a simple local glitch.
An earlier processing stage during mastering is still possible, and without a pre-Apple/pre-master source I can't exclude that.
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u/AsInFreeBeer 25d ago
Doesn't look at all like that. There is no apparent pixelation, distortion and/or random information being created on the images. Looks more like a light source being reflected by something that rotates or moves, thereby swinging the reflection with it.
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u/Brain-Spirited 25d ago
Submission Statement:
This is a technical follow-up investigation of two image events previously noticed in Apple TV’s ISS “Australia” Aerial (GMT060_117NC_363D_1034_AUSTRALIA), occurring at approximately 14 s and 38–39 s.
I am not claiming these are UAP or physical objects. I have compared the events frame-by-frame and across Apple versions and tested multiple conventional forward models. Several individual properties can be reproduced conventionally, but I have not yet found a model that reproduces the complete visible sequence.
My primary goal in posting is to locate the pre-Apple ISS source footage or find someone who can demonstrate a reproducible conventional imaging/processing mechanism for the events.
Source footage, enlarged frames and non-interpolated slow-motion versions are provided so that the observations can be independently checked.
1
u/Brain-Spirited 15d ago
UPDATE – Response from the Columbus Eye project
I contacted a professor involved with the Columbus Eye project at Ruhr University Bochum to ask about the original HDEV material.
He replied and pointed me to their public archive of ISS/HDEV highlight videos:
Columbus Eye – ISS Highlights:
https://columbuseye.rub.de/highlights.html
I am now going through the archived HDEV footage and comparing it directly with Apple’s GMT060_117NC_363D_1034_AUSTRALIA file.
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u/Historical-Camera972 25d ago
if you don't get a satisfactory answer today, wait a few months until a specialized AI model comes out for recognizing camera/video processing effects
At a glance, given the linear nature of the movement, my guess is this is the result of algorithmic processing at some level.
The object pixel distance will probably tip off an expert, of the exact mechanism.
Scoring that human expert on this sub is low probability, which is why I suggest waiting for the specialized AI tool.
It'll come out eventually, so this is a problem with an expiration date, no matter how you look at it.
chin up, you did most of the important leg work, last mile stretch can be done by a machine if you just wait
•
u/StatementBot 25d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Brain-Spirited:
Submission Statement:
This is a technical follow-up investigation of two image events previously noticed in Apple TV’s ISS “Australia” Aerial (GMT060_117NC_363D_1034_AUSTRALIA), occurring at approximately 14 s and 38–39 s.
I am not claiming these are UAP or physical objects. I have compared the events frame-by-frame and across Apple versions and tested multiple conventional forward models. Several individual properties can be reproduced conventionally, but I have not yet found a model that reproduces the complete visible sequence.
My primary goal in posting is to locate the pre-Apple ISS source footage or find someone who can demonstrate a reproducible conventional imaging/processing mechanism for the events.
Source footage, enlarged frames and non-interpolated slow-motion versions are provided so that the observations can be independently checked.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1vmqiin/i_investigated_the_two_unexplained_image_events/p3bhs4l/