Topic
Civilian, police and airline reports, from single witnesses to mass sightings seen by thousands. 305 events, newest first.
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
Sightings10 May 2007
A brilliant fireball moving north across Spain shortly before 6 p.m. local time was tracked by the Spanish Fireball Network. Pieces of the meteorite, a brecciated eucrite, were recovered in olive groves near Puerto Lapice in Ciudad Real province.
Photo: PePeEfe, CC BY-SA 3.0
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
Sightings11 Apr 2006
The Planetary Society and Harvard dedicated a 72-inch telescope at Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts, built only to look for brief laser-like flashes that could come from other civilizations. Physicist Paul Horowitz led the project, which surveyed the northern Milky Way.
Photo: Daderot, Public domain
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
Sightings12 Jun 2004
A 1.3 kg stone came through the roof of the Archer family's home in the Auckland suburb of Ellerslie and bounced off a couch, with no one hurt. It was confirmed as a meteorite, one of only nine found in New Zealand, and was later bought by Auckland Museum.
Photo: Auckland Museum, CC BY 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
Sightings4 Jan 2004
A daylight fireball seen by thousands across northern Spain at about 16:46 UTC exploded roughly 30 km above Palencia province. The Spanish Fireball Network used photos and video to reconstruct its path, ruled out a satellite reentry, and meteorite fragments were recovered in the following weeks.
Photo: Valdavia, CC BY-SA 4.0
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
Sightings25 Sep 2002
A bright bolide exploded about 30 km above the Vitim River near Bodaybo, seen by residents and detected by U.S. satellites. Russian Academy of Sciences expeditions found felled trees and tiny spherules but no craters or meteorite fragments.
Photo: Serj Kras, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings25 Jul 2001
Red and other coloured rain fell over parts of Kerala for weeks from late July 2001, and the state's Centre for Earth Science Studies investigated. Physicist Godfrey Louis later argued the red particles were cells from a comet, a claim most researchers rejected.
Sightings14 Jul 2001
Just after midnight, drivers pulled off the New Jersey Turnpike to watch orange and gold lights in a V formation over the Arthur Kill near Carteret. A Carteret police lieutenant counted 16 lights. Newark Airport and the Weather Service had nothing to explain them; no official cause was found.
Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings5 Apr 2001
Richard Haines and Dominique Weinstein of the civilian group NARCAP reviewed about 1,300 pilot reports and found 57 alleging electromagnetic effects, mostly radio and compass trouble, when UAP were nearby. They framed the reports as a possible flight-safety issue deserving study.
Sightings23 Mar 2001
Russia deliberately deorbited the Mir space station into the South Pacific. Witnesses in Fiji described white fireballs streaking across the sky and sonic booms, a planned reentry that produced a vivid light show rather than an unexplained event.
Photo: GW (Wikimedia Commons user), Public domain
