Wouldn't they have been easily observed by now, perhaps even making contact? Unless they are deliberately trying to remain unobserved, in which case being caught on video from an aircraft seems careless.

We should create message bots and probes who basically explore far reaches of space and categorize data, send it back to all other nodes and essentially make as detailed a 'map' of life/discoveries/etc so that not only we could use it benignly but so could other species who come after us. Assuming they could figure out and translate/understand how we categorize it.