Reanimating the 1561 Celestial Phenomenon over Nuremberg

Thanks so much for watching!

Creative notes on animation:

I think first and foremost I should say that’s there’s obviously a good amount of artistic license I’ve had to take in terms of movement but where the document wasn’t clear I tried to strike a balance between movement that could be natural phenomenon and something that’s actually controlling it’s own movement. The white flashes aren’t mentioned, only that there is some period of climax or concluding moment to the combat preceding the wreckage falling to earth, so I thought that struck a nice balance between demonstrating a deliberate edit there and some final clash in the conflict. It also let me hide all the layers I didn’t need and if you hadn’t noticed that was literally my first ever attempt at animating something so I was taking any help I could get. Overall I’d say I tried to balance decisions between religious imagery, the music for example and potentially natural phenomenon, things like shadows, lens flares and halos and then ufo like movement in other areas where it made sense such as the orbs fighting. In the hopes that ultimately these decisions wouldn’t bias it too strongly in any one direction. Really I made it as I saw it after a great length of time studying the document, a mix of natural and artificial phenomenon presented with a heavy religious tilt.

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Chapters

00:00 Intro
02:56 Credits
03:04 The Celestial Phenomenon Over Nuremberg Animation
04:57 Further Discussion

[Conspiratorial]

If you just want the standalone animation for linking/sharing you can find it here:

[ranielyfire]

What’s so interesting are the representations of different ufo shapes we claim to see today. Orbs, rods, and the giant (often called mile long) black “mothership”.

What interests me the most are the downed orbs and the red crescents

[josephgorozdos]

This video was incredibly well done, it deserves way more attention. Great work!

[elJossu]

That was great editing. Its sad to see such great videos get so little attention in the algorithm. I hope youll get more attention. Great video.

[rntnt]

This is brilliantly done. Great video!

[MHGL]

My curiosity is: How did people of that time look at the sun without blinding themselves? Even with my Oakleys on, it's nearly impossible to look at the sun directly for any sustsined period of time beyond a couple of seconds.

[oscartangu]

Wows great quality video, just get into my recommendations, this channel should go boom.

[FromNothing]

Very impressive editing and research with a fair and objective approach. Being skeptical of the skeptics. I just subbed and you definitely deserve more. As a fellow content creator, I know how hard it is to get your initial momentum going. Consistency is key though. I see you haven't uploaded in 2 years. Try to make more time and motivation!

[FavianNarezz]

The sun looks so annoyed by the phenomenon

[neoclassic]

A very similar thing happened again several years later in Switzerland

[GünterPfeiffer-vn]

In our actual time at 14 April 2025 sun will rise at 6:23 am in Nuremberg (Nürnberg, Bavaria, Germany), dawn starts at 4:24 am. I dont think that it rose much earlier in 16th century, so in the first view that story seems to be impossible. On the other hand I think people in the 16th century counted the time in a differnt way than today. Day (sunrise to sundown) an night (sundown to sunrise) both had 12 hours, no matter if winter or summer. I think they ment probably 4-5 ours after sunrise. but hours had a different lenght in this days. Maybe i am wrong but thats what i ve heard a long time ago.
Peace bro, thats still a good video.

[wraithstrongopark]

i really envy smart people. what a great job on this video.

[cliffbowls]

I’m all for scepticism but the sun dog explanation is more ridiculous than the idea of an actual battle as

[lostmojo]

Good job. Well, one thing is a report about some strange creatures in a land far far away, another thing is a report about an event in a well renowned city like Nürnberg. As far as I remember the fallen object was saved in a gallery until not long ago.

[kristimcgowandarkoscellard]

The description at the beginning sounds a lot like plasma formations, as if there was some terrible electrical plasmatic discharge between the sun and other objects, even the tubes with “balls/globes” within it sounds like a plasma discharge formation. The blood red crosses sound like a plasma formation also. However, it is the very last bit that doesn’t. All the objects fading and slowly descending also sounds like plasma but falling to the earth and smoking does not! Also, I know of no plasma formation that looks like a black spear. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Looking up the shapes, colors and behavior of plasma formations is worth taking a look and I think most will find it uncanny how similar they are to what is described here.
Cheers

[darthgzuz]

How people assume that people didn't see Sundog before that day n never again after that day???
Pretty lame excuses making this event just an optical illusion.

[timmytimtim]

I've been watching a lot of videos about this. I wanted to think it was aliens but after thinking about it more, I think it was a flurry of comets that crashed into eachother and into the sun and then fell towards the earth, burning up in the atmosphere in various sized chunks and pieces.

[temporalteleporter]

Interstellar civilization in the 1700s because something they didn't understand, fell to earth. If you showed someone from the 1700s, tech they use it as a hammer. they have no reference point.

[vinnyg]

The German Wikipedia article for the event has a much beefier section on interpretations. I know Wikipedia's not the best source, but it does have some interesting points, the most relevant of which I will share the translations of (corrected for grammar).

"Skeptics and historians, such as Ulrich Magin, first draw attention to two serious inconsistencies in Glaser's woodcut: For example, it is not clear why the famous imperial castle is missing from the depiction of the city, even though it was the landmark of Nuremberg in Glaser's time. On the other hand, the woodcut shows St. Leonhard's Church burning, although it was completely destroyed in a fire in 1508 and was only rebuilt in 1560. According to the Nuremberg city documents, Hans Glaser stayed in the city between 1540 and 1571; He must have been aware of this historical event. [Based on] the historical and chronological discrepancies, according to Magin, the woodcut strengthens the assumption that the Nuremberg leaflet mixes several events and natural celestial phenomena that took place at different times."

"Meteorology also deals with early modern leaflets on which “heavenly miraculous signs” can be seen. The background is the observation that many depictions depict real celestial phenomena of all kinds. The most common of these celestial spectacles include halos, [sundogs], solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, northern lights and shooting stars. According to meteorologists, the famous Nuremberg leaflet from 1561 most likely recorded a morning halo phenomenon including several [sundogs]. According to Frank Johnson, this is supported by both the two "crescent moons", which were probably moved behind the sun for reasons of space, and the fact that, according to the report, the event lasted silently for over an hour. The large black “spearhead” may be due to so-called cloud rays (also called “twilight shadows”). Since Hans Glaser mentions an increase in “heavenly miraculous signs” in “recent times” in his report, it is also conceivable for Johnson that several celestial phenomena perceived at different times were artistically summarized in the painting."

The argument being made in the second quote is that the reason so many things don't fit with meteorological explanations is that it represents multiple in a single drawing. This still doesn't explain the weird balls or why it's unlike anything he depicted before or since, but maybe one of the several phenomenon Glaser might have combined was the plasma thing another commenter mentioned. It'd certainly be rare enough that only one or two historical documents are known of depicting it. Meteors are also another strong contender for inspirational elements with aspects such as the wreckage.

[billcarpenter]

There are modern descriptions of cylinders with spheres coming out of them.