Topic
Civilian, police and airline reports, from single witnesses to mass sightings seen by thousands. 258 events, newest first.
SightingsJun 2020
Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk, held for about 36 hours in December 2018 during the Gatwick drone hunt and never charged, sued Sussex Police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment and were paid 200,000 pounds in compensation and legal costs.
Photo: Andy Mabbett, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings11 May 2020
The U.S. military reported that China's Long March 5B core stage reentered uncontrolled over the Atlantic. Long metal pieces then reported in the villages of Mahounou and N'guinou, Ivory Coast, were attributed by astronomer Jonathan McDowell and others to the rocket; no injuries were reported.
Photo: China News Service, CC BY 4.0
Sightings12 Dec 2019
Astronomer Beatriz Villarroel and colleagues published the first paper of VASCO, a project comparing 1950s sky-survey records with modern surveys to find objects that appear to vanish. A 2021 follow-up reported nine short-lived point sources on one 1950 plate; their cause is debated.
Photo: Beatriz Villarroel et al., CC BY 4.0
SightingsDec 2019
From mid-December 2019 residents and deputies in rural Colorado and Nebraska reported nightly drones flying in patterns. The Air Force and FAA said they were not theirs, a federal and state task force found no operators, and Colorado officials later attributed some reports to planes and stars.
Photo: Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings29 Sep 2019
Security officers at Arizona's Palo Verde nuclear plant reported five or six drones over the site on Sept. 29, 2019, and more the next night. NRC records released under FOIA show the reports went to the NRC, FBI and others; operators were never found and the reports were closed unresolved.
Photo: Cuhlik, Public domain
Sightings27 Sep 2019
Sussex Police ended their inquiry into the December 2018 Gatwick shutdown, saying 109 of 129 drone sightings came from credible witnesses and at least two drones flew. With no realistic lines of enquiry left, no culprit was ever identified.
Photo: Mike McBey, CC BY 2.0
Sightings24 May 2019
A day after SpaceX launched its first 60 Starlink satellites, a Dutch satellite tracker filmed them crossing the sky as a line of lights. The Dutch reporting site UFOmeldpunt got more than 150 reports, an early case of satellite trains being mistaken for UFOs.
Sightings23 Apr 2019
A fireball at about 9:07 pm, recorded by Costa Rican seismological cameras, dropped stones on Aguas Zarcas. One piece punched a grapefruit-sized hole in a house roof and another hit a dog house; the stones were classified as a CM2 carbonaceous chondrite.
Photo: Csavil, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings1 Feb 2019
Residents of Vinales in western Cuba reported a bright flare and explosions, and small black stones fell around the town without causing damage. State media first denied a plane crash, and Cuba's science ministry confirmed a meteorite fall as its geophysics institute sent a team to collect samples.
Photo: James St. John, CC BY 2.0
Sightings22 Jan 2019
The FAA briefly halted arrivals at Newark Liberty International after two incoming flights reported a drone at about 3,500 feet over nearby Teterboro Airport. Operations resumed within the hour and the FAA passed the reports to law enforcement.
Photo: Fan Railer, Public domain
Sightings8 Jan 2019
Heathrow stopped departures for about an hour after the Metropolitan Police received a report of a drone near the airport around 17:05 GMT. It came three weeks after drone sightings shut Gatwick; no drone operator was publicly identified.
Photo: Adrian Pingstone, Public domain
Sightings19 Dec 2018
Reported drone sightings over the runway closed London Gatwick from the night of Dec. 19, 2018 into Dec. 21, disrupting tens of thousands of passengers. Sussex Police called it a deliberate act, and the Defence Secretary confirmed the Army was brought in to support police.
Photo: Chris Sampson, CC BY 2.0
Sightings18 Dec 2018
A roughly 10 m meteor exploded over the Bering Sea off Kamchatka on Dec. 18, 2018. Infrasound stations logged it, but astronomers did not notice until March 2019, when NASA's JPL added it to its fireball database and it drew attention at a planetary science conference.
Photo: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL-Caltech, MISR Team, Public domain
Sightings9 Nov 2018
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic crews told Shannon air traffic control they saw very bright, fast-moving lights off Ireland's southwest coast. Controllers saw nothing on radar. The Irish Aviation Authority opened a confidential occurrence review; one pilot suggested a meteor.
Photo: Rex and Fido, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings3 Jul 2018
Greenpeace activists flew a drone into the no-fly zone of EDF's Bugey nuclear plant in France and crashed it into the wall of the spent-fuel building to show the site's vulnerability. EDF said two drones overflew the site, one was intercepted, and the security of the installations was not affected.
Photo: Spiritrespect, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings2 Jun 2018
The NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey spotted a small asteroid about eight hours before it struck the atmosphere over Botswana as a fireball. Searchers found a meteorite in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve on June 23, one of very few cases of an impact predicted in advance.
Photo: Tomruen, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings24 Feb 2018
A Phoenix Air Learjet pilot and the crew of American Airlines Flight 1095 told Albuquerque Center they saw an object pass high above them over southern Arizona. The FAA released the radio recordings but did not identify the object, saying it had no comment beyond the audio.
Photo: Jerry Gunner from Lincoln, UK, CC BY 2.0
Sightings16 Jan 2018
Hundreds of people saw and filmed a bright flash over southeast Michigan. NASA said a small meteoroid exploded with about 10 tons of TNT energy; NOAA's GOES-16 caught the flash and the ground blast registered like a magnitude 2.0 quake.
Photo: Philipp R. Heck et al., CC BY 4.0
Sightings22 Dec 2017
A Falcon 9 carrying 10 Iridium satellites lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at dusk, leaving a sunlit plume seen across Southern California. Drivers stopped to watch and many people posted UFO fears; the Los Angeles Fire Department said the light came from the rocket launch.
Photo: U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Jim Araos, Public domain
Sightings12 Oct 2017
A drone struck a Skyjet Beechcraft King Air with eight passengers inbound to Quebec City's Jean Lesage airport, causing minor damage. Transport Minister Marc Garneau called it the first drone collision with a commercial aircraft in Canada; the operator was not identified.
Photo: Harfang, CC BY 3.0
