Published Mar 15, 2023 at 11:13 AM EDTUpdated Mar 16, 2023 at 7:48 AM EDT

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Twelve minutes later as the second set flies by, the person said: “That one sounded more like multiple planes, but the other one had a very deep humming, and there’s no base nearby—I don’t know what’s going on.”

UFOs, also known as UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) are aerial objects that cannot be immediately explained. These strange phenomena have captured the imaginations of people around the world for hundreds of years, and are often associated with visiting alien species or government subterfuge.

“The majority of UAPs can be accounted for as balloons, drones, or drifting aerial junk. In some cases, the visual impression is impacted by ‘perspective bias,’ where a slow nearby object looks like a large, rapid, distant object,” Joshua Semeter, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University, previously told Newsweek.

A mocked-up image shows UFO lights in a dark sky. A video of strange lights in the sky above Montreal has gone viral.ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

“That said, there is a small percentage of observations that remain unexplained. These cases generally involve an object that exhibits unusual flight characteristics—for instance, rapid acceleration, rapid velocity, or extreme maneuverability—characteristics that cannot readily be accounted for through known technologies,” said Semeter, who is also a member of NASA’s independent panel to study UAPs.

On Tuesday, the lights were identified by a UFO (unidentified flying object) fact check account named @ufoofinterest as Canadian military helicopters flying in formation.

“Those were military exercise by Royal Canadian Air Force with four Bell CH-146 Griffon,” tweeted @ufoofinterest in response to the viral video.

The Montreal lights come in the wake of several bizarre sightings over the U.S. and Canada earlier this year. On February 1, a Chinese spy balloon was spotted over the U.S. and eventually shot down off the coast of South Carolina, followed by three more unknown objects shot down over Deadhorse, Alaska, on February 10, above the Yukon in Canada on February 11, and above Lake Huron on February 12, respectively.