Cases and themes
Photographs, films and videos, from the 1950s to the Navy infrared footage. 185 events, newest first.
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
Media16 Dec 2017
The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had run a little-known Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, funded with about $22 million from 2008 to 2011. The story ran with two Navy videos and said Luis Elizondo had led the program.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
Media1 Sep 2017
Sony Pictures marked the 40th anniversary of Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a 4K restoration from the original camera negative and a one-week U.S. and Canadian theatrical run of the Director's Cut starting September 1, 2017.
Photo: Owen Byrne from Mountain View, USA, CC BY 2.0
Media21 Apr 2017
Cinelou Films released Phoenix Forgotten, a found-footage horror film imagining teenagers who vanish while filming a search for the source of the 1997 Phoenix Lights. Ridley Scott was among its producers. The story is fiction.
Media14 Mar 2017
To The Stars Academy's 2017 SEC offering filing lists physicist Harold Puthoff, known for SRI remote viewing research, as a director from 14 March 2017 and its vice president for science and technology. The company later released Navy UAP videos.
Media26 Feb 2017
At the 89th Academy Awards, Arrival, Denis Villeneuve's film about linguists decoding visiting aliens, won for sound editing. It had eight nominations, including Best Picture, directing and adapted screenplay.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
MediaNov 2016
Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, a first-contact story centered on a linguist trying to communicate with visiting aliens, opened in November 2016. It grossed more than $200 million worldwide and earned eight Academy Award nominations, winning for sound editing.
Photo: Paramount Pictures, Public domain
Sightings27 Nov 2015
Ten Desert Fireball Network cameras recorded a fireball over South Australia. An aircraft spotted a 60 cm mark in the mud of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre South near the predicted fall line, and on Dec. 31, 2015 a team dug the meteorite out from 42 cm down, the digital network's first recovered fall.
Photo: Rmhowie, CC BY-SA 4.0
Military7 Nov 2015
On the evening of Nov. 7, 2015, a bright, spreading light was seen and filmed from California to Nevada and Arizona, prompting UFO speculation online. The Navy and Pentagon said it was a scheduled, unarmed Trident II (D5) test missile fired from the submarine USS Kentucky off the coast.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
Sightings7 Sep 2015
A bright fireball crossed the sky over Bangkok around 8:40 am and was filmed by many dashboard cameras, prompting rumors of a downed aircraft. A Thai observatory astronomer said it was a meteor burning up, and officials in Nakhon Ratchasima called off a crash search.
Sightings2 Sep 2015
A night fireball filmed over Bingol province broke up and rained stones on the village of Saricicek. Scientists documented 343 stones, the first recorded fall of a howardite, a meteorite type linked to the asteroid Vesta.
Sightings10 Aug 2015
A volunteer group, the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, released an analysis of the 2013 Aguadilla infrared video arguing a wind-borne object could not explain it. In 2025 AARO assessed with moderate confidence that the objects were sky lanterns.
Photo: Miguelpr91 at English Wikipedia, Public domain
Media15 May 2015
Six years after filming, Paramount gave Oren Peli's found-footage film Area 51, about friends who break into the Nevada base, a one-weekend run at 16 Alamo Drafthouse theaters alongside a video-on-demand release. Reviews were poor.
MilitaryJan 2015
Navy F/A-18 crews training off the U.S. East Coast recorded the infrared videos later known as Gimbal and GoFast. Pilots in the squadron, including Ryan Graves, have said they saw unidentified objects repeatedly in 2014 and 2015.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
WhistleblowersJan 2015
Retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet testified in 2024 that in January 2015, during a pre-deployment exercise, Fleet Forces Command emailed commanders about near-midair collisions with unknown objects, attaching the 'Go Fast' video. He said the email vanished the next day.
Photo: United States Department of Commerce, Public domain
Media19 Dec 2014
Rajkumar Hirani's Hindi film PK opened, with Aamir Khan as an alien stranded in the Rajasthan desert after his ship's remote is stolen. His questions about human religious customs drive the satire. Disney-UTV released it on a record number of screens.
Photo: Bollywood Hungama, CC BY 3.0
Military11 Nov 2014
A Chilean Navy helicopter crew on coastal patrol west of Santiago filmed an object with an infrared camera for about 10 minutes. Chile's CEFAA studied the footage for two years and called it unidentified; skeptics later argued it was an airliner leaving contrails.
Government8 Apr 2014
Bright spots in Curiosity Navigation Camera images from April 2-3, 2014 drew online claims of a light on Mars. NASA said the likely causes were cosmic-ray hits on the detector or sunlight glinting off rock, noting such spots appear nearly every week.
Media4 Apr 2014
IFC released Alien Abduction, a found-footage horror film directed by Matty Beckerman about a family who encounter aliens while camping. Its story is inspired by the Brown Mountain Lights reported in western North Carolina.
Photo: Thomson200, CC0
Sightings25 Apr 2013
An infrared camera on a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft over Rafael Hernandez Airport filmed objects that seemed to race and enter the sea. Private analysts argued it was anomalous; in 2025 AARO said the objects likely were two sky lanterns drifting with the wind over land.
Photo: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Erniefr&action=edit, Public domain
Media22 Apr 2013
Sirius, a film built around ufologist Steven Greer's claims, premiered in Hollywood. It promoted a six-inch specimen found in Chile's Atacama Desert as a possible non-human being and argued UFO secrecy protects energy interests. Its origin was unresolved when the film came out.
Media22 Feb 2013
Dimension Films released Dark Skies, written and directed by Scott Stewart, in which a suburban family comes to believe aliens are targeting them for abduction. Reviewers called it a familiar riff on earlier abduction stories such as Communion.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Whistleblowers2013
In the 2013 documentary Mirage Men, former Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Richard Doty admitted infiltrating UFO circles. The film says Doty and colleagues fed false material to researchers, notably New Mexico businessman Paul Bennewitz.
Photo: The Evening Times, Public domain
Sightings25 Oct 2012
A Televisa camera clip showing a long luminous object dropping toward the Popocatepetl crater went viral as a UFO. Mexico's disaster agency CENAPRED said it was most likely a bolide from the Taurid meteor shower, noting no impact or tremor was recorded at the volcano.
Photo: Luisalvaz, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media11 Mar 2011
Sony's alien-invasion film Battle: Los Angeles opened with marketing tied to the real February 1942 air raid false alarm over Los Angeles, when anti-aircraft guns fired at unidentified objects. The studio's press junket even included a UFO panel.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
