Over the last couple of days various media reports have surfaced, regarding a UFO sighting in India, specifically over Uttar Pradesh. The reports, and photos, claim a "flying saucer" was floating above Gorakhpur, that the pictures are being studied by experts at the local university, and that the local populace is terrified.
And to that I say....hogwash. Let's be real, the first question you should ask yourself when you see an image like this is not "Is it photoshopped?", but "How was it photoshopped?". And despite what news reports with a chronic lack of Googling effort might say, there's absolutely no need for even the remotest bit of panic. Now, I'm not basing this judgement on a (clearly stated) prejudice against UFO photos online, the facts are a very strong backbone here. So let's run through them.
Firstly, let's ignore the fact that an alien mothership of that size, flying at cloud level, would be visible to surrounding cities as well and not just Gorakhpur. But take the second and third images, below. Notice how, despite the picture being taken at a very odd angle, the UFO you see is still subjectively horizontal? Yeah, that doesn't seem like very stable flight to me. But that's minor, so let's move on.
A reverse Google search does not throw up any direct results, but a keyword one does. The thing is, this "UFO" is most certainly a hoax, with an image that has already been used to fake photos reportedly taken in Brazil, South Africa, and China. So, that doesn't mean they're all fake; at least one of those is the real deal right? Wrong.
A helpful blog post by Isaac Koi, can point you to the source image. It turns out that the spaceship in the faked photo is fan art created by Jukka Korhonen from Finland back in 2006. See, he was a huge fan of the television show V based on (surprise) aliens, and made a tribute.
But even more interesting, as Koi points out, the reason this particular UFO shows up in so many fake pictures is not coincidence. It's because of an app. You see Camera360, a photo editing app for Androi, iOS and Windows Phone, launched an "EndWar" campaign last month. That involved adding UFO, Giant Monster and Mechas in the app's object library and making easier for users to add them into existing shots ad edit them to perfection.
But honestly, no one should be falling for this kind of hoax, especially not the media. It took me all of 10 minutes of searching to find this. And honestly, I'm still trying to figure out where the reports of "panicked residents" originated from.
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 "dnaTechScience, UFO, hoax, Gorakhpur")
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