Within Parallax
Aguadilla Parallax
The 2013 Aguadilla infrared video is a particularly useful example of how parallax can turn slow motion into apparently extraordinary speed. The footage, recorded from a moving US Customs and Border Protection aircraft near Rafael Hernández Airport in Puerto Rico, seems at first glance to show an object racing across roads, buildings and coastline.
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Introduction
The 2013 Aguadilla infrared video is a particularly useful example of how parallax can turn slow motion into apparently extraordinary speed. The footage, recorded from a moving US Customs and Border Protection aircraft near Rafael Hernández Airport in Puerto Rico, seems at first glance to show an object racing across roads, buildings and coastline. An influential Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) analysis interpreted that imagery as motion approaching 100 mph.[Zenodo]zenodo.org2013 Aguadilla Puerto Rico UAP: The detailed analysis of an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon captured by the Department of Homelan…
A later reconstruction by the US All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) reached a radically different result. By combining the aircraft’s position with the infrared sensor’s changing viewing direction, it reconstructed two objects drifting southwest in a straight line at about 3.6 metres per second (8 mph) — close to the measured wind speed of 4.4 metres per second (9.8 mph). AARO concluded that the dramatic terrain-crossing speed was primarily an effect of motion parallax, magnified by sensor zoom and the aircraft’s changing position.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
That makes Aguadilla a valuable case study because the landscape does not eliminate the parallax problem. In this instance, the visible landscape helped create it.
Why the objects appeared to cross the landscape rapidly
The intuitive interpretation of the Aguadilla footage is straightforward: the infrared target remains conspicuous while recognisable terrain passes behind it, so the target seems to be travelling rapidly across Puerto Rico. Roads, buildings, vegetation and eventually what looks like coastline give the eye plenty of apparent reference points. Unlike a featureless sky or ocean video, the sequence therefore seems to offer a direct visual measure of movement.
But those background features establish a line of sight, not automatically the target’s position on that line.
The distinction is crucial. Imagine the aircraft, a small drifting object and a building on the ground arranged along approximately the same viewing direction. The camera records the object projected against the building. A moment later, the aircraft has moved substantially while the object has moved only slightly. The new line of sight may now put the same object against a road or a patch of vegetation hundreds of metres from the first background feature.
Watching only the stabilised camera image encourages the viewer to interpret the sequence as:
building → fast-moving object → road → fast-moving object → trees
Yet in three dimensions it can instead be:
fast-moving aircraft → slowly drifting object → rapidly changing projected background.
That is motion parallax. AARO describes it as an optical effect in which a stationary or slow-moving object appears to move much faster when observed from a moving frame of reference. Its Aguadilla analysis specifically attributes the perceived speed to the aircraft’s velocity, sensor zoom and changing relative positions of aircraft and targets.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
The effect is especially deceptive here because the infrared sensor is tracking the objects. The target therefore remains comparatively stable within the frame while the ground appears to stream behind it. Human perception tends to treat the tracked target as the actor and the terrain as the fixed reference, even though the camera carrying that reference frame is itself moving through the sky.
This explains why simply measuring how rapidly the target seems to traverse landmarks can give a badly inflated speed. Those landmarks are much farther down the camera’s line of sight than the target in AARO’s reconstruction. Their apparent passage behind the target is consequently not equivalent to the target physically travelling from one landmark to another.
How the aircraft changed the projection
The Aguadilla sequence was not filmed from a stationary observation point. AARO’s reconstruction shows the CBP aircraft flying an arc around Rafael Hernández Airport while climbing. During the encounter it gained about 1,725 feet, ultimately reaching approximately 3,600 feet before sensor contact was lost. The range between aircraft and objects also nearly tripled.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
Those changes matter because the geometry was continually being rearranged. AARO’s Systems Toolkit reconstruction combined the aircraft’s known position with sensor parameters including elevation, azimuth and slant angle. Instead of assuming that the apparent motion against the ground represented the target’s ground track, the reconstruction projected the sensor’s changing lines of sight into three-dimensional space.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
The result reverses the impression given by the raw footage. AARO placed the objects initially at about 200 metres (656 feet) altitude, near the north-eastern side of the airport. From there they drifted southwest rather than executing the rapid terrain-hugging route suggested by a straightforward reading of the imagery. The reconstructed path remained over land.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
This changing geometry also offers an explanation for another visually dramatic feature: what appears to be one object eventually becoming two. AARO found that two objects could already be distinguished several times during the first minute, at approximately 00:29.56, 00:40.76 and 00:47.00. As the aircraft climbed, its view changed from relatively side-on towards a steeper, more top-down angle, making their separation increasingly obvious.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
In other words, the later separation need not represent a physical object dividing. Two nearby objects that overlap along one line of sight can look like a single infrared source; a sufficiently different viewing angle can resolve them.
That point reinforces the speed lesson. The Aguadilla video is not simply a record of an object moving while everything else remains geometrically fixed. The aircraft position, viewing angle, magnification, target range and projection onto the background are all changing simultaneously.
What the reconstructed trajectory implied about true speed
The sharpest disagreement over Aguadilla concerns the translation from apparent movement to physical velocity.
The SCU report, originally published in 2015 and subsequently made available through Zenodo, interpreted the video as showing an object travelling through an urban area at speeds approaching 100 mph, sometimes at very low altitude. It also interpreted later portions as showing the object entering the sea, emerging again and eventually splitting into two.[Zenodo]zenodo.org2013 Aguadilla Puerto Rico UAP: The detailed analysis of an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon captured by the Department of Homelan…
AARO’s 2025 reconstruction produced an order-of-magnitude smaller speed: approximately 8 mph. More importantly, that value closely matched the reported 9.8 mph east/north-easterly wind. The reconstructed objects followed a straight south-westerly track rather than manoeuvring rapidly around terrain.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
That combination is more informative than the 8 mph figure alone. A slowly moving object could conceivably travel in almost any direction. Two small objects moving together in a straight line, in approximately the wind direction and at approximately wind speed, instead describe the behaviour expected from windborne objects.
AARO therefore assessed with high confidence that the objects showed no anomalous speed or performance and with moderate, rather than high, confidence that they were a pair of sky lanterns. Its attribution drew partly on their estimated size of less than one metre, changing thermal signatures and information that sky lantern releases were used for celebrations by hospitality businesses in the area. The poor video quality prevented AARO from claiming a categorical identification.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
The distinction between those confidence levels is important. The parallax reconstruction does not require proving that the objects were sky lanterns. The narrower speed question is whether the imagery requires an object travelling at extraordinary velocity. AARO’s answer is no: a slow, wind-driven trajectory can reproduce the changing lines of sight without anomalous acceleration or high-speed flight.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
Why the coastline did not provide a speed check
One of the most persuasive parts of the original visual interpretation is the apparent approach to the sea. If an object really races across known terrain and then crosses the shoreline, the coastline seems to supply a fixed geographical reference that should settle both its position and speed.
AARO’s reconstruction instead concluded that the objects never crossed the coastline at all. They remained over land while the sensor’s line of sight projected them against increasingly distant backgrounds, including the ocean.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
This is the same parallax problem in a particularly convincing form. Seeing an airborne target against water does not establish that the target is over water. A camera, target and patch of ocean separated by kilometres can occupy the same line of sight.
That geometric distinction also changes the interpretation of the apparent disappearance and reappearance near the water. AARO argues that the infrared targets became difficult to distinguish because their thermal contrast approached that of the background. The observation occurred at about 9:22 pm, after a 7:48 pm sunset, within the period in which AARO says post-sunset thermal crossover can affect infrared contrast. At the same time, aircraft-to-target range was increasing substantially and the aircraft encountered scattered cloud near 3,000 feet.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
Those infrared effects are separate from parallax itself, but they matter to the speed interpretation because the supposed water entry was one of the landmarks used to construct an extraordinary physical trajectory. If the object was merely projected against the ocean rather than reaching it, that trajectory — and the speed inferred from traversing it — disappears.
The competing interpretation has not vanished
The AARO reconstruction is now the strongest official challenge to the high-speed interpretation, but the case has a documented analytical dispute behind it.
The SCU analysis had treated the imagery very differently. Its published description says the object travelled through the urban environment at speeds approaching 100 mph and interpreted the later imagery as actual entry into and exit from the water.[Zenodo]zenodo.org2013 Aguadilla Puerto Rico UAP: The detailed analysis of an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon captured by the Department of Homelan… Earlier independent sceptical work had already challenged such interpretations and argued that parallax was being mishandled in proposed high-speed trajectories.[Metabunk]metabunk.orgAguadilla Infrared Footage of 'UFOsAguadilla Infrared Footage of 'UFOs' - Probably Hot Air Wedding Lanterns | Metabunk…
After AARO published its full case resolution in March 2025, SCU did not simply accept the sky-lantern attribution. In April it said that it had submitted technical questions to AARO concerning the lantern hypothesis and specific claims in the report. According to SCU, AARO acknowledged the questions but was not then prepared to answer them and might address them in a later report.[The SCU]explorescu.orgThe SCUSCU Announcement on the AARO Investigation of the Aguadilla VideoApril 28, 2025…
That continuing disagreement is worth preserving, but it should not obscure what has changed in the speed debate. The extraordinary-speed reading requires a particular assumption about where the infrared target lies along each line of sight. AARO’s reconstruction supplies a different three-dimensional solution in which the same apparent sweeps across the landscape arise while two objects move slowly and almost linearly with the wind.
The official identification as sky lanterns therefore remains somewhat less certain than the geometrical conclusion. AARO explicitly rates the lantern attribution at moderate confidence while rating the absence of anomalous speed at high confidence.[AARO]aaro.milPuerto Rico UAP Case ResolutionAARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution…
What Aguadilla demonstrates about apparent UFO speed
Aguadilla is unusually instructive because it undermines an appealing rule of thumb: that visible terrain automatically makes speed estimates reliable.
It does not.
Roads, buildings and coastlines can establish where the camera’s line of sight intersects the background without establishing where an airborne target sits along that line. When the observer is travelling rapidly and changing altitude and viewing angle, a slowly drifting foreground object can successively appear against widely separated pieces of terrain. Sensor tracking and magnification can make that projected movement look even more dramatic.
The contrast between the two published interpretations captures the practical consequence. One reconstruction produced a target apparently travelling at close to 100 mph through the landscape; AARO’s later reconstruction produced two objects moving at about 8 mph on a straight, wind-consistent path.[Zenodo]zenodo.org2013 Aguadilla Puerto Rico UAP: The detailed analysis of an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon captured by the Department of Homelan…
For UFO and UAP footage, that is the central lesson of Aguadilla. Apparent terrain-crossing speed is not itself a measurement of physical speed. Before extraordinary performance can be inferred, investigators need to reconstruct the moving observer, sensor orientation, target range and three-dimensional line-of-sight geometry. In Aguadilla, doing so transformed what looked like a fast, low-flying object into a model of two objects drifting roughly at the speed of the wind.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: zenodo.org
Link:https://zenodo.org/records/7844175
Source snippet
2013 Aguadilla Puerto Rico UAP: The detailed analysis of an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon captured by the Department of Homelan...
2.
Source: aaro.mil
Title: Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution
Link:https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/case_resolution_reports/AARO_Puerto_Rico_UAP_Case_Resolution.pdf
Source snippet
AARO Puerto Rico UAP Case Resolution...
3.
Source: metabunk.org
Title: Aguadilla Infrared Footage of ‘UFOs’
Link:https://www.metabunk.org/threads/aguadilla-infrared-footage-of-ufos-probably-hot-air-wedding-lanterns.8952/
Source snippet
Aguadilla Infrared Footage of 'UFOs' - Probably Hot Air Wedding Lanterns | Metabunk...
4.
Source: aaro.mil
Link:https://www.aaro.mil/Next-AARO-Home-redesign/Next-Parent/Next-AARO-UAP-Imagery-Acc-Table/
5.
Source: metabunk.org
Title: P R051
Link:https://www.metabunk.org/threads/pr051-syria-uap-2021-apparent-instantaneous-acceleration.14733/
6.
Source: metabunk.org
Title: Aguadilla Infrared Footage of ‘UFOs’
Link:https://www.metabunk.org/threads/aguadilla-infrared-footage-of-ufos-probably-hot-air-wedding-lanterns.8952/page-2
7.
Source: metabunk.org
Title: Aguadilla Infrared Footage of ‘UFOs’
Link:https://www.metabunk.org/threads/aguadilla-infrared-footage-of-ufos-hot-air-wedding-lanterns.8952/
8.
Source: metabunk.org
Title: Aguadilla Infrared Footage of ‘UFOs’
Link:https://www.metabunk.org/threads/aguadilla-infrared-footage-of-ufos-probably-hot-air-wedding-lanterns.8952/page-3
9.
Source: aaro.mil
Link:https://www.aaro.mil/UAP-Cases/Official-UAP-Imagery/4/
10.
Source: aaro.mil
Link:https://www.aaro.mil/Next-AARO-Home-redesign/Next-Parent/Next-AARO-UAP-Imagery-Fixed-Table/
11.
Source: aaro.mil
Link:https://www.aaro.mil/UAP-Cases/Official-UAP-Imagery/
12.
Source: aaro.mil
Link:https://www.aaro.mil/UAP-Cases/UAP-Case-Resolution-Reports/
13.
Source: space.com
Title: pentagon ufo chief tells senate very anomalous objects need careful study video
Link:https://www.space.com/space-exploration/search-for-life/pentagon-ufo-chief-tells-senate-very-anomalous-objects-need-careful-study-video
14.
Source: dvidshub.net
Link:https://www.dvidshub.net/video/955936/2013-puerto-rico-object-reconstruction
Source snippet
Video - 2013 Puerto Rico Object Reconstruction...
15.
Source: explorescu.org
Title: The SCUSCU Announcement on the AARO Investigation of the Aguadilla Video
Link:https://www.explorescu.org/post/scu-announcement-on-the-aaro-investigation-of-the-aguadilla-video
Source snippet
April 28, 2025...
Published: April 28, 2025
16.
Source: explorescu.org
Title: 2013 aguadilla puerto rico uap incident report a detailed analysis
Link:https://www.explorescu.org/post/2013-aguadilla-puerto-rico-uap-incident-report-a-detailed-analysis
17.
Source: explore.openaire.eu
Link:https://explore.openaire.eu/search/result?pid=10.5281%2Fzenodo.7844175
18.
Source: ufotransparency.com
Link:https://ufotransparency.com/topics/aaro
19.
Source: ufotransparency.com
Link:https://ufotransparency.com/takeaways/all
Additional References
20.
Source: uapobservatory.com
Title: UAP Observatory · A graded, sourced record of unidentified anomalous phenomena
Link:https://www.uapobservatory.com/
Source snippet
July 24, 2026 — In-depthRead full reportCopy link 2013[ Apr 25 ]Aguadilla thermal video (Puerto Rico)Contested▸ A Customs and Border Prot...
Published: July 24, 2026
21.
Source: aatip.com
Title: UAP Case Files & Official Reports | AATIP.com
Link:https://www.aatip.com/inpage/case-files/
Source snippet
Eight widely discussed incidents, checked against official imagery, resolution reports and primary government records. What was reported...
22.
Source: youtube.com
Title: The “Windfarm UFO”
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkgTajUDORs
Source snippet
Limina Symposium: Mick West Analysis of Aguadilla UFO Parallax This video provides a line-of-sight presentation demonstrating how camera...
23.
Source: youtube.com
Title: The SHOCKING Math Error Behind Viral UFO Videos | Mick West
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypfbhfEXnBo
Source snippet
UFO FILES: FOIA VIDEO RELEASE of the 'Aguadilla UAP' in Puerto Rico...
24.
Source: youtube.com
Title: UFO FILES: FOIA VIDEO RELEASE of the ‘Aguadilla UAP’ in Puerto Rico
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuSZDrBDgb8
Source snippet
AARO UAP Historical Report | Rich Hoffman...
25.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Limina Inaugural Symposium Day 3
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BahEq46t3Uo
Source snippet
The SHOCKING Math Error Behind Viral UFO Videos | Mick West...
26.
Source: newsflare.com
Link:https://www.newsflare.com/video/697248/ufo-seen-flying-over-puerto-rico-was-not-extraterrestrial-claims-us-intelligence
27.
Source: instagram.com
Link:https://www.instagram.com/p/DQUqKMsgfld/
28.
Source: newspaceeconomy.ca
Link:https://newspaceeconomy.ca/2025/06/29/an-objective-analysis-of-unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-characteristics/
29.
Source: uaprad.org
Link:https://uaprad.org/witnesses/cbp-flight-crew/?return=%2Fwitnesses%2F