Explained and disputed
Reports later explained as balloons, rockets, satellites, planets, aircraft or other ordinary causes. 122 events, newest first.
Government6 May 2011
Argentina's air force set up CEFAe, a commission of military and civilian experts, to study reported aerial phenomena. Press accounts say it examined few cases at first; in 2019 it was restructured as the CIAE, which reports that the cases it analyzed were identified as ordinary objects.
Sightings14 Jan 2011
Over the mid-Atlantic, the first officer on an Air Canada Boeing 767 first took Venus for an aircraft, then misjudged real oncoming traffic and pushed the nose down. Canada's Transportation Safety Board found 14 passengers and 2 flight attendants were injured.
Photo: Jean-Philippe Boulet, CC BY 3.0
Sightings13 Oct 2010
Crowds and TV cameras watched shiny objects over Chelsea in Manhattan on October 13, 2010, prompting calls to police and the FAA. A Mount Vernon school said they were balloons that blew away from a teacher's engagement party about an hour before.
MediaOct 2009
A Colorado couple said their 6-year-old son had floated away in a homemade saucer-shaped helium balloon, setting off a chase and search costing at least $62,000. The boy was found at home; the parents pleaded guilty to charges over the staged stunt and were sentenced.
Photo: Sgt. Benjamin Crane, Public domain
Close encountersSep 2009
As Yukio Hatoyama prepared to become Japan's prime minister, wide press coverage noted that his wife Miyuki had written in a 2008 book that her soul rode a triangular UFO to Venus while she slept. She said a former husband had called it a dream.
Photo: Lawrence Jackson, White House photographer, Public domain
GovernmentMar 2009
The UK National Archives opened a third batch of Ministry of Defence UFO files, mostly late-1980s and early-1990s reports. Highlights included the Calvine photographs, Tornado crews' 1990 report later traced to Soviet rocket debris, and a 1992 advertising airship mistaken for a UFO.
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
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
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
WhistleblowersMar 2007
Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who mocked the 1997 Phoenix Lights at a staged news conference, said he had seen a large craft that night and believed it was not of this world. An astronomer quoted by AP traced sightings that night to flares dropped by A-10 aircraft.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Whistleblowers2007
Jesse Marcel Jr., son of Roswell intelligence officer Jesse Marcel Sr., published The Roswell Legacy, describing how as a 10-year-old he was shown debris his father brought home in 1947. The military has said the debris came from a balloon; his account rests on childhood memory.
Photo: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Public domain
GovernmentMay 2006
After a Freedom of Information request, Britain's Ministry of Defence released Project Condign, a Defence Intelligence Staff study of UFO reports completed in December 2000. It said sightings could be explained by natural causes such as meteors and unusual atmospheric conditions.
Photo: ArildV, CC BY-SA 3.0
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
Military5 Mar 2004
A Mexican Air Force surveillance plane on a drug patrol recorded up to 11 lights visible only in infrared over Campeche. The Defense Ministry gave the video to a UFO researcher, and it aired in May 2004; a later analysis argued the lights were distant oil-platform flares.
Photo: Zahpo75, Public domain
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
Government24 Jun 1997
Days before Roswell's 50th anniversary, the Air Force released a 231-page report by Capt. James McAndrew. It said accounts of alien bodies likely stemmed from anthropomorphic test dummies dropped from high-altitude balloons in the 1950s, plus a 1956 crash and a 1959 balloon mishap.
Photo: James McAndrew, Public domain
Sightings13 Mar 1997
Many people across Arizona reported and videotaped bright lights in the night sky. In July 1997 the Maryland Air National Guard said its A-10 jets had dropped flares over a range southwest of Phoenix, though that does not account for every report. Former Gov. Fife Symington said in 2007 he saw it.
Sightings22 Jan 1997
A spent Delta II second stage reentered over Texas and Oklahoma before dawn on January 22, 1997, and parts survived to the ground in Texas. In Tulsa, Lottie Williams saw a bright streak and was then lightly hit by a small fragment that NASA linked to the rocket.
Photo: NASA/Regina Mitchell-Ryall & Jerry Cannon, Public domain
Media1996
Astronomer Carl Sagan's book on scientific skepticism used UFO and alien abduction claims as central case studies, attributing reported encounters to hallucination, misidentification, hoaxes and therapists' influence, and comparing abduction stories with older demon lore.
Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government28 Jul 1995
Answering Rep. Steven Schiff, the General Accounting Office reported finding only two 1947 records on the Roswell crash, an FBI teletype describing a balloon with a radar reflector and a base history. It found Roswell base outgoing messages from 1946-49 destroyed, with no record of who approved it.
Photo: Congressional Pictorial Directory, Public domain
Close encounters16 Sep 1994
About 60 children at the Ariel School outside Harare said they saw a craft land near the playground and figures beside it. A BBC crew filmed interviews days later, and Harvard psychiatrist John Mack interviewed pupils. Skeptics cite mass suggestion after a rocket re-entry fireball days earlier.
Government8 Sep 1994
Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall released a records search, prompted by a GAO inquiry requested by Rep. Steven Schiff, concluding the 1947 Roswell debris most likely came from Project Mogul, a then-secret balloon program to detect Soviet nuclear tests. It found no evidence of a crashed spacecraft.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
MediaApr 1994
Aerospace historian Curtis Peebles published 'Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth' with the Smithsonian Institution Press, a skeptical history arguing UFO reports stem from misidentifications, hoaxes and an evolving cultural myth.
Sightings28 Jan 1994
The crew of an Air France A320 flying Nice to London reported a large dark disk that changed shape and vanished near Coulommiers, while a military radar logged an unidentified 50-second track. GEIPAN ruled out a weather balloon and classes the case unexplained (D).
Photo: Aero Icarus from Zurich, Switzerland, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government1994
The Royal Australian Air Force stopped investigating UFO sightings in 1994. According to the National Archives of Australia, it reasoned that only about 3 percent of reports could not be explained by natural phenomena and that these posed little or no security threat.
Photo: Nick Dowling at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
