Description

People keep treating this frame like it’s the literal silhouette of some impossible craft, but what you’re seeing is very likely a known optical artifact from the FLIR system itself.

The “cross” or “orb-with-spikes” shape is consistent with a saturation/blooming effect that happens when an extremely bright heat source is centered in-frame on certain infrared targeting cameras. Because the polarity of the feed is inverted, hotter objects appear darker instead of brighter, so the glare artifact shows up as a black geometric form instead of a glowing white one.

A few things that support this interpretation:
\-The shape stays aligned with the camera system rather than behaving like a structured craft would
\-Similar FLIR bloom artifacts can be reproduced with bright aircraft exhaust, stars, and even streetlights in some systems
\-The apparent “arms” resemble diffraction/sensor blooming patterns rather than physical surfaces
\-The object’s actual body may only be a tiny bright point buried inside the saturated image
\-When tracking systems sharpen contrast aggressively, artifacts become even more dramatic

The inversion detail matters a lot too. In white-hot mode, hot objects appear white. In black-hot mode, they appear dark. Flip the polarity and suddenly a flare artifact looks like a matte-black alien geometry hovering in the sky.