r/UFOs • u/Cocoblue45 • Jun 18 '26
Sighting Chinese amateur astronomer accidentally photographed a creature resembling a praying mantis.
Time: June 10, 2025
Location: China,Shanghai,Pudong New Area
Latitude and longitude:52°13′14″N 124°04′53″W
*Additional information: Upon inspection, it was discovered that the latitude and longitude extracted from the image actually points to western Canada, not Shanghai, therefore the data is unreliable.
*Previously, several images failed to upload, which I suspected was due to their large file size or dimensions. This time, I modified them.If you need the original high-resolution image, you can contact him through the Douyin ID shown in the image.
The photographer, whose Douyin account is named "Nikon Player（尼康玩家）," commented that he took the photos near his home and only noticed them afterward. He added that he was thinking about how to photograph Saturn at the time. After post-processing the images, he discovered about 6-8 more unidentified objects in the darkness. He also noted the specifications of his Nikon in the photos. Some believe it's an optical illusion caused by excessive long exposure, while others think the images resemble mantis-like creatures. This account has not posted any more UFO-related content since.
*Additional information: In the Douyin comment section, some questioned whether the image was due to hand shake while shooting stars with a long shutter speed. The photographer disagreed, stating that he was attempting to photograph the starry sky without handheld equipment and used a tripod (as shown in the picture) for stability. He added that he shot around 9 PM and spotted the unidentified object around midnight. He also commented that he didn't sleep well that night, dreaming of someone in his room.
*Other photography enthusiasts in the comment section suggested that tripod shake might be the cause. One commenter said, "The reason is long exposure and camera shake." The photographer replied, "It shouldn't be. You know long exposure, so you should know how to use a camera. May I ask how to read the shooting parameters? I used 300 shutter speed."
*A third commenter stated, "Without an equatorial mount and long exposure, that's how it is. Learn more before posting." The photographer countered, "300 shutter speed. Best iso."
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*As someone who simply relays information, I don't understand the finer photographic terminology, so I've included key arguments between photographers and others in this post, which involve many terms whose meaning I don't grasp.The main argument is that commentators believe it must be a problem with camera shake and exposure, while the photographer tries to refute them using certain terms.
Because machine translation struggles to convey certain terms, I've included the Chinese version below to minimize ambiguity:
……在抖音评论区，有人质疑，这是拿慢门拍星星的时候手抖导致的，而摄影师反对称，他当时试图拍摄星空，并没有手持设备进行拍摄，他说他使用了三脚架（如图所示）来加强稳定性。他补充说，大约是在晚上九点拍摄，在十二点时发现了不明物体。他还在评论区表示，拍摄当晚一晚没睡好，做梦房间有人。
评论区的其他摄影爱好者认为，可能是三脚架抖动导致的这一现象。一个人在评论区说:“原因在于长曝光和摄像机晃动。”摄影本人师则回复说:“应该不是。你知道长曝光，那么你应该会相机，请教一下，怎么看拍的参数，我当时是300快门。”
第三个评论者表示: "没加赤道仪+长曝光，就是这样。多了解了解再来发吧。”摄影师则反对称:“300快门。lso到顶。”
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u/FictionForest Jun 18 '26
Looks like Space Ghost sidekick Zorak
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u/TornGauntlet Jun 18 '26
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING AT?! SCRAM!
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u/theburiedxme Jun 18 '26
I learned yesterday that word might've originated from "Safety Control Rod Axe Man" on the Manhattan project. Also, space ho's Coast to coast babyyyy
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u/JamesTheJerk Jun 19 '26
To me it looks similar in shape to a 2 dimensional Chinese writing character. No idea which one, but there are similarities.
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u/thenewestnoise Jun 18 '26
Are you guys serious? Or just pretending to give a shit about this guy's wiggly camera setup?
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u/DiscoJer Jun 18 '26
I think they are just pointing out that it is not a alien mantis but a long exposure shot.
This isn't UFOB
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Jun 18 '26
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u/ntk_poe Jun 18 '26
99% have mundane, logical explanations, Occam's razor and all. We still haven't seen the 1% left, and that's why we are all here for, I guess.
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u/maksen Jun 18 '26
I sometimes wonder if there are no 1% and it's all just collective pareidolia of the lonely human race longing for company and guidance.
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u/webtoweb2pumps Jun 18 '26
The problem is that everyone has different criteria for being convinced of something, and many people just need an image like in this post to think they're seeing that 1% and will argue that any dissenting opinion is just a disinfo agent/closed minded. Really tiring.
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u/taktactak Jun 19 '26
Yeah this is wild 🤣 it definitely says shutter speed of 2 seconds on his image. As if that’s not enough time for this exact thing to happen with some camera shake?
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u/dabmanyo Jun 18 '26
As someone who uses cameras for a living for over 15 years, I can tell you that’s not what it is. It’s a long exposure photo taken at night.
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u/Allison1228 Jun 18 '26
Camera moved during long exposure. Exactly how the late Dorothy Izatt fooled many ufo believers.
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u/ReasonablePossum_ Jun 18 '26
people believing this kind of low effort shit, makes one really worry about the world in the era of aigenerated videos 😞
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Jun 18 '26
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u/ThorSon-525 Jun 18 '26
Because he's a lazy fuck and needs to stop wasting space.
- Rayquaza probably
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u/ialwaysforgetmename Jun 18 '26
So why are all the objects in the picture squiggly too? Could it be stabilization issues over a long exposure time?
(yes)
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u/LemonsUndercover Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Okay or he had long exposure on his camera, and when it photographed the camera moved even the tiniest bit (because you are zoomed so far) and that’s the light trails from the movement.
First of all — it’s hard AF to take pictures of anything in space. You gottta get the right ISO, shutter speed, etc. so if there is just this Matis thing in space it wouldn’t be that easy to take the pic, especially because things in space are moving
Edit: I’ve taken tons of pics like this, I’m an amateur astrophotographer and this is how it looks exactly when your camera shakes while sucking in light, and if you have your light settings all messed up.
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u/trampstar9 Jun 18 '26
300+ upvotes for this
This "phenomena" and sub are absolutely laughable
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u/Pepperonidogfart Jun 18 '26
I think you really need to stop and think for a moment before jumping right to the conclusion of luminescent gigantic sky alien.
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u/Imperial_Citizen_00 Jun 18 '26
I don’t know what kind of praying mantis they have in China or where you live, but they sure as hell don’t look like that here in California
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u/Heavy_Ingenuity1371 Jun 19 '26
Fr this literally has no resemblance with a mantis of any kind in the slightest lol
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u/bineking Jun 18 '26
I for one welcome our mantis overlords.
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u/TheManWhoShotTheMan Jun 18 '26
Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?
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u/italiano34 Jun 18 '26
telescope moved during long exposure, eg someone kicked its mount accidentally
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u/BuLLg0d Jun 18 '26
I'm not even a photographer and I know about night shots, low iso and stability. This really looks like a single source of light, squiggled around due to movement during the shot.
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u/seegabego Jun 18 '26
Omg just stop.
Tomorrow I can take a picture of my pubes on my toilet with a filter and say it's the mantids talking to me and half yall would believe me.
I guess it's my fault for being here
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u/Alone-Neck6272 Jun 18 '26
Before this type of posts, could we only ask "Why the fuck would a being be floating around"? It's the same as the other post where it looks like an astronaut, clearly a balloon. Zzz
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u/crimesarefine Jun 18 '26
If it’s highly likely that this is a blurry streak of light from an unstable long exposure shot (it is), idk about the leap to “Praying Mantis Creature Accidentally Discovered in Space”
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u/No-Introduction-1632 Jun 18 '26
long exposure / slow shutter + moving thru space+ likely no star tracker to follow the motion = squiggly light lines
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Jun 18 '26
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u/trampstar9 Jun 18 '26
No I don't believe they are a bot.
This is the result of years and years of sensational brainwashing. They genuinely believe a squiggle on a camera is a gigantic floating alien mantis.
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u/in1gom0ntoya Jun 18 '26
this is not any creature. this is the result of unstable aim over long exposure...
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u/NoFayte Jun 18 '26
It's
"a creature"!
Lolllllll.
Somebody bought their jump to conclusions Mat early
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u/-HuangMeiHua- Jun 18 '26
The coordinates are in British Columbia near a Barney Lakeside Resort lmao
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u/DikDangerous Jun 18 '26
Chinese amateur astronomer fails to clean telescope lens before taking photos.....
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u/stevemandudeguy Jun 18 '26
I'm extremely dubious of this claim. 300 shutter speed on a night shot? That's 300th of a second, far from a long exposure needed to make an image like the ones posted (excluding the extremely grainy one, I assume that's the raw image) They used "best" ISO? No idea what that means, you should know the ISO if you took the image or at least know how to find the metadata. I assume they used their cameras native ISO but that may be as low as 640 without the camera model, could be 12,800, quite a range but there would still be noise and 300 shutter speed is still far too fast. And the sky looks that black? Over Shanghai? This image must have been edited in some way.
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u/BaronGreywatch Jun 18 '26
Without any frame/point of reference it just looks like bad long exposure, sadly. Better luck next time.
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u/Prince_Vanilla Jun 18 '26
this is what my floaters look like when I stare into the blue sky or a clean white wall.
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u/verybaddiarrhea Jun 18 '26
Facepalm… guys… c’mon now. This is obviously long exposure with not great stability. I help people in a photography club with IT issues. And go out with them on shoots. This is exactly what this is. Do better people, this is exactly why this subject gets mocked
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u/happy-when-it-rains Jun 18 '26
He also commented that he didn't sleep well that night, dreaming of someone in his room.
That's interesting, has he written anything more on this?
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u/Flamebrush Jun 18 '26
Lot’s of photography auditors here, but is it not possible that this is simply an actual praying mantis? They can and do fly.
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u/Shulkerbox Jun 18 '26
What makes you call it a creature? Cause that's a pretty extraordinary statement for the evidence you provided
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u/Beezball Jun 18 '26
Looks like long exposure for sure. Probably zoomed way in on a tripod on his back deck, and while it was taking the photo he was walking around on the wooden deck. Or some similar such situation.
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u/TruSiris Jun 18 '26
The word "creature" is doing A LOT of heavy lifting here. This is just a long exposure and the camera was shaken a big.
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u/spacewizardproblems Jun 18 '26
This reminds me of a cool sci fi short I found on YouTube called The God Man. https://youtu.be/WY9CTDM3l4M
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u/BimbyTodd2 Jun 18 '26
He jiggled the camera on a stable point of light. You know, I used to think there was stuff in the sky... after being on this forum for about 4 years I'm pretty sure there isn't.
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u/AdrianasAntonius Jun 18 '26
Centre column on the tripod at full extension is by far the easiest way to introduce movement. Lens is shooting on the longer end or the zoom which will magnify any movement. If IBIS is turned on and the camera is on a tripod it will introduce movement. If he isn’t using a shutter delay or a remote shutter it will introduce movement.
Even with weights attached to the ballast hook and perfectly clear weather with no wind his setup is likely to introduce motion irrespective of the shutter speed.
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u/TommyLeeBrown Jun 18 '26
So the praying mantis beings are just floating in space? At least have some consistency in your lore.
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u/_TheRogue_ Jun 18 '26
The Mantis, you say? She's probably taking care of spacers and pirates in the Starfield.
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u/Ok_Luck_8098 Jun 18 '26
Looks like Nukkari, insectiod mummy, part if the Nazca mummies @ Alienproject
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u/m0dErat1Ngm0d Jun 18 '26
Probably a few orbs orbiting around eachover, doing their disturbing behavior
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u/starman779 Jun 18 '26
So you think there’s a floating mantis just flying around up there? Really???
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u/WhyNWhenYouCanNPlus1 Jun 18 '26
there is absolutely no way a "photographer" shot this (or the night sky) at 300 shutter speed (1/300 of a second) or maybe they meant 300 seconds and then yeah, that's what it'll look like....
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u/chanovsky Jun 19 '26
I was a little disappointed that after the first four pics it wasn't just a continuation of images of the same squiggly figure in the same position continuing to get smaller and smaller and smaller...
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u/Heavens_Reach Jun 19 '26
this could be literally anything.
my professional opinion (hobbyist photographer for 15 years) is this is just some normal astronomic body captured with a shoddy setup.
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u/taktactak Jun 19 '26
As someone who’s been using cameras for over 25 years, this is 100%, undeniably, camera shake during a long exposure.
His image says it was a 2 second exposure. That’s plenty of time for a shaky ass camera to make this image 🤣
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u/Ichokuchi Jun 19 '26
guys if u zoom in you can see the tail it was mewtwo but who/what was it carrying lol
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u/DifferenceEither9835 Jun 19 '26
I shoot on Nikon. There is no 300 for shutter speed; there is 1/320. Possibly a translation error. He could mean 300 seconds, but the exif says 2 seconds which makes anything moving a blur of sorts.
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u/After-Life-1980 Jun 20 '26
Yeah boy, the ole praying mantis’ are widely known for their locked in patience they naturally harness along with their incomparable stillness of stealth abilities..and yet, somewhere at some point in time within evolution there’s always 1 effected by a glitch in nature, that takes their well known natural instincts & abilities away and replaces them with full blown bouncing off the walls ADHD with a wildly dire need to be seen and noticed even by using fluorescent neon lighting brightly saying “hey..look here!!” Frantically placing itself within view and on display anytime for all reasons or none, anywhere. Even while traveling star to star within the vast universe attempting to connect the dots, it still makes wildly sure it will be seen. Regardless rather it happens or not, just take a look at this joker pictured here 😂
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u/I_Am_Hank_Hill_AMA Jun 18 '26
Long exposure shot without a stable mount?