Topic
Civilian, police and airline reports, from single witnesses to mass sightings seen by thousands. 258 events, newest first.
Sightings5 Jan 2009
Red lights over Morris County, New Jersey, drew many UFO reports and national TV attention in early 2009. On April 1 Chris Russo and Joe Rudy revealed they had launched road flares on helium balloons as a social experiment; they were fined $250 each for disorderly conduct.
Photo: Jared Kofsky, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings2009
The Ministry of Defence logged 643 UFO reports by late November 2009, triple its usual yearly count and second only to 1978 among recent years. Released files show many sightings were Chinese lanterns, and the surge fed the decision to close the MoD's UFO desk.
Photo: Moyan Brenn from Italy, CC BY 2.0
Sightings20 Nov 2008
A fireball seen by thousands from Edmonton to Saskatchewan was caught on widely shared video. A University of Calgary team traced it to a field near Lloydminster and recovered more than 100 meteorites, a record-setting Canadian fall.
Photo: Dale Nosko, CC0
Sightings7 Oct 2008
Asteroid 2008 TC3 was found on Oct. 6, 2008 and predicted to hit within hours; it exploded over northern Sudan as forecast. A KLM crew over Chad saw the flash, satellites recorded it, and meteorites were later recovered from the desert, the first impact predicted in advance.
Photo: Peter Jenniskens, Public domain
SightingsJul 2008
MUFON released a 76-page analysis of FAA radar data obtained under FOIA for the Jan. 8, 2008 Stephenville sightings, saying it showed objects flying without transponders. Skeptics said it picked 187 points out of millions of noise returns and that F-16s dropping flares explain the lights.
Photo: CletusDitto, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings8 Jun 2008
A South Wales Police helicopter crew waiting to land at St Athan reported an unusual object that vanished over the Bristol Channel. Police denied tabloid claims of a chase, and a couple later said lanterns released at their nearby wedding were the likely cause.
Photo: Mick Lobb, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings21 Apr 2008
Residents across north Phoenix reported a line of red lights that shifted formation and faded one by one; Luke Air Force Base said no aircraft of its were involved. Two days later a local man told a TV station he had tied road flares to helium balloons, and police declined to investigate.
Photo: Alan Stark, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings19 Jan 2008
Texas MUFON held a public meeting in Dublin, Texas, where investigators took statements from about 50 witnesses to the Stephenville-area lights. The group's journal estimated 200 to 600 attendees and said national media crews crowded in.
Photo: Renegomezphotography, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings8 Jan 2008
Several dozen people around Stephenville, including a county constable, reported a large, quiet, low object with shifting lights, some saying jets chased it. The Air Force Reserve's 301st Fighter Wing first said none of its planes were there, then said 10 F-16s had been training in the area.
Photo: CletusDitto, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings20 Jul 2007
Cameras of Australia's Desert Fireball Network photographed a fireball over the Nullarbor Plain, letting researchers compute its path and orbit. Searchers found the first stones near the predicted spot in October 2008; the rock proved an unusual basaltic meteorite.
Photo: Rmhowie, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings23 Apr 2007
Aurigny captain Ray Bowyer, flying a Trislander from Southampton to Alderney, reported two long, bright yellow objects hovering over the Channel Islands; a Blue Islands pilot reported a similar object. Bowyer filed an incident report, and no official explanation was published.
Photo: G B_NZ, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings2007
Ostfold University College and Italy's Institute of Radio Astronomy reported optical spectra of a Hessdalen light showing silicon, iron, scandium and titanium lines, suggesting ionized gas rather than a solid object. The researchers called the result preliminary.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings7 Nov 2006
United Airlines employees reported a dark, disc-shaped object hovering over gate C17 at O'Hare before shooting up through the clouds. The FAA said radar showed nothing unusual and suggested a weather phenomenon. The Chicago Tribune broke the story in January 2007.
Photo: Payton Chung from Chicago, CC BY 2.0
Sightings28 Mar 2005
ISS commander Leroy Chiao said that during a spacewalk he saw a line of five lights and could not identify them. Amateur analyst James C. Smith later concluded they were most likely lights of a squid-fishing fleet off South America.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Sightings21 Aug 2004
Residents of suburban Tinley Park, Illinois, reported three silent red lights hovering in a triangle for up to half an hour, with similar reports on later nights including Halloween 2004. A resident filmed them; suggested explanations include flares or balloons, and no official cause was given.
Photo: Zarka Khalid, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings10 May 2004
A dozen members of the UT Dallas Society of Physics Students spent May 10-14, 2004 filming the Marfa lights, counting traffic on U.S. 67 and sending a chase car. Their 2005 progress report found all lights reliably observed during the study were car headlights.
Photo: Allison Meier from Brooklyn, United States, CC BY 2.0
Sightings2004
Italian astrophysicist Massimo Teodorani published 'A Long-Term Scientific Survey of the Hessdalen Phenomenon' in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, reviewing instrumented observations of the Norwegian valley lights. Later papers cite it as an early proposal of a geological origin.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings15 Oct 2003
China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, said in a 2016 interview that during his 2003 Shenzhou 5 flight he heard a knocking like a hammer on an iron bucket that ground teams could not reproduce. Later crews reported similar sounds; proposed causes include thermal flexing.
Photo: Dyor, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings26 Mar 2003
Just before midnight a bright flash lit the sky over Chicago's south suburbs and stony meteorites fell through roofs and windows in Park Forest. Field Museum research later tied the stones to an asteroid breakup about 470 million years ago.
Photo: James St. John, CC BY 2.0
SightingsMar 2003
University of Queensland neuroscientist Jack Pettigrew proposed that outback Queensland's Min Min light is an inverted mirage, or Fata Morgana, carrying distant natural or man-made lights over the horizon during temperature inversions, based on his own observations and a field demonstration.
Photo: www.gondwananet.com, CC BY-SA 3.0
