Think you’ve seen a UFO in the sky? Consider the following possibilities…

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Published: September 8, 2022 at 3:05 pm

Thousands of people across the world have reported unidentified objects in the night sky, many under the impression that they have witnessed a visiting alien spacecraft.

Reports often feature lights zipping across the sky, changing direction in manoeuvres that seem to defy the laws of physics, not to mention huge shapes that move silently overhead and strange objects that suddenly explode.

We’ve all heard the stories of the Roswell UFO incident, or the supposed alien species that many ‘believers’ think inhabits a star orbiting Zeta Reticuli.

The term ‘flying saucer’ has now entered our common vocabulary. Credit: KTSDesign / Science Photo Library
UFO sightings have a long history. In 1950, the UK Ministry of Defence opened an official desk to investigate every flying saucer report in the UK.

Rather than looking for little green men, however, it was tasked with investigating possible hostile aircraft that may have secretly entered UK airspace.

The desk was closed in November 2009 and after nearly 60 years of reports, not one resulted in a genuine threat to the UK.

But rather than uncovering an extra-terrestrial conspiracy, the last batch of files released by the National Archives revealed that at the time of the closure the MoD had “no opinion” on the existence of extra-terrestrial beings, and seemed a little fed up by the hundreds of reported UFO sightings that they were receiving each year.

The reports do make interesting reading, and can all be accessed online at the National Archive UFO webpage.

But the truth is that the vast majority of UFO sightings have Earthly origins – optical illusions and rare weather among them. Here we’ll look at some of the most likely suspects.

So, the next time you see something in the sky and you think it might be a UFO, consider the following possibilities.

1

Military aircraft
Lockheed’s F-117A Nighthawk © Wikimedia Commons
Top secret spyplanes like the Blackbird (Lockheed SR-71) were often taken to be UFOs during the Cold War.

In recent years, the triangular-shaped stealth fighter (F-117A Nighthawk) and bomber probably have been, too.

Who knows how many new sightings are down to top-secret craft we don’t even know about – perhaps even saucer-shaped ones?

2

Meteor fireballs
Meteor fireballs over the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile © Wikimedia Commons
A yellow-ish object appears out of nowhere, flying fast and silent across the sky and leaving a glowing trail behind it.

The object suddenly breaks into smaller pieces before vanishing into thin air – all in under a minute.

Over-anxious witnesses might run screaming to the media, but astronomers will be content to have seen a spectacular meteor fireball.

3

Lens flare
If you’ve been observing for a long time you’ll be all too aware that light sometimes bounces off the lens elements in your camera, binoculars or telescope, causing a lens flare.

Some flares can look like solid objects and, if they’re accidentally framed in the right place, a newbie might well mistake them for an unworldly spacecraft.

4

The Moon
Credit: Dan Fleetwood, Rugby, Warwickshire, 27 July 2020.
Sometimes all rational thought seems to go out of the window.

In 2007, a woman phoned South Wales Police to report a ‘bright stationary object’ that had been floating in the air for 30 minutes.

Later that evening, the police control room radioed to check what an officer had found.

The officer replied: “It’s the Moon. Over.”