UFO Now Identified - Texas

One of the astonishing parts of modern life is that cameras are now everywhere, and digital photos can be uploaded to a world-wide network of computers. During the Golden Age of UFOs, the 50s and 60s, any sighting had to be "reported" by a news outlet, most often a newspaper. The iconic pictures of the UFO were shots from Life Magazine, or even a local newspaper or the AP or UPI news services. There was a certain professionalism in the reporting, and definite skepticism often appeared, though practically speaking, the news outlets would not let doubt supersede a good story that would generate circulation. It all balanced out in the end.

But that whole process has been bypassed. And any person can post to their blog a photo of a shiny dot in the sky. And astonishingly, many people don't even see the UFO, they are reporting an image that they see later on a digital photo, which was not visible at the time the photo was taken. Here is some information about a sighting in an area north of the state capital of Texas, Austin in adjoining Williamson County, near Round Rock, a bustling suburb, and the home of Dell Computers.

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Below is an Examiner.com link (with good reporting of UFOs on a frequent basis) with an explanation to an earlier sighting. It turns out that the picture of a shiny disk was a trainer aircraft. We won't reproduce the photo here, because of the owner's claim to "personal copywright" [sic]. But it does show how the unsophisticated observer can create a stir based on a grainy photo of an object and the limits of digital pixel resolution. And her strong response to the image shows how emotional people can get about the topic, which is one of the reasons we publish this blog. The photo taker is a woman in her early 30s:

"who has taken an amazing photo that I'll cherish forever..."

In other words this is her moment of transcendent fame.

And to be fair if a plane were coming at you head on, visible from many miles away, would you see the wings in the bright blue sky? If it were at the right angle, it could look just like a ball or blob of light. You have to give MUFON, the UFO investigator group, some credit for following up on this, since otherwise, this would go into history as another example of a visit from an extraterrestrial.

http://www.examiner.com/x-2363-UFO-Examiner~y2009m7d15-Texas-disc-UFO-turns-out-to-be-converted-T6-trainer

Saudi UFO - a light in the sky

Fragmentary reporting of an object seen in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. There are a couple of pictures of a bright object, no real details of anything discernible, but according the the reports the object made quite a hub-bub.

Some people thought the object crashed, but no one apparently saw it fall from the sky. Some reports of feeling "a large tremor" were the extent of the speculation. It happened 10 days ago:

"On Wednesday 7^th of January after evening prayers a loud noise was heard in the sky followed by the sighting of an intense large light heading from the west above the Al-Qasim region east of Saudi Arabia’s capital city Riyadh."

We checked the map and there are 8 references with variations to Al-Qasim on the map, so that is not very specific as far as we could tell. The second photo looks a lot like the moon, since the full moon was on the 11th of January. The first photo is partially obscured by clouds. And it is a surprise that there are not more photos of an object over a large metropolitan area. But a couple of photos are better than none.

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Giant Pink Jellyfish Flies Over London!

And apparently only one person reported it.

This certainly is a most creative UFO sighting from Merton, UK on January 9th in the form of a pink jellyfish. The article has an artist's rendition of the sight hovering over the Wimbledon Theatre. The map shows that it is close to the tennis match area known round the world. But the article seems to be based on a single observation, perhaps a phone interview. And it brings up an older story that has been causing a stir about a wind turbine being damaged in the vicinity.

There does not seem to be a connection, but that does not seem to be a bar to re-reporting a now-days-old sighting. And you would think that in a densely populated part of Greater London, as the map shows, there would be more observers of such an unusual object. Where were the cell phone photos? Was everyone a little stupefied? The person involved could not find his cell phone in time. It sounds like more than a lights-in-the-sky story, but unfortunately, all we have is a brief description by a "visitor" to the Guardian UK website:

"I looked out my flat window this morning, over towards Merton way, and to my surprise notice a large bright pink jelly-fish looking object surrounded by a pink haze. It appeared to be hovering over or above the pylons in the distance."

The part about the pylons (power lines) is a little intriguing, perhaps the jellyfish creature needed to recharge. But the reportage is nothing more than a cursory repetition of an unknown person's observation. The English papers obviously are busy reporting UFO stories at a fast clip, more than this time last year.

Short Article on Pink Jellyfish UFO with Artist's Rendering

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Too Many Stories

We have been dormant for quite a while. The Stephenville Texas stories in January 2008 were fascinating because they recapitulated nearly all the reactions that people have with anomalous events. The military, reporters, UFO groups, George Noory and his army of Coast-to-Coast AM radio followers all chimed in in classic, almost 1950s fashion.

But nothing really came of it. No new discoveries were made. And the conspiracy talk just kept on growing - the Air Force, the link to nearby (60 something miles) Crawford, Texas where the President spends time. The story grew to incredible proportions, based on a few sightings of lights in the sky. But the speculation grew, and we just threw up our hands and gave up writing hoping to see what happened, how it would conclude, and a year later, it is no closer to be defined than any other sighting in history. But the story has now been discovered by the enthusiasts and breathless professionals, and the legend will now never die for as long as we can tell. People get excited, and they portray any movement of lights in the sky seemingly as the work of an advanced civilization.

There are nearly daily stories on UFOs now. We just have to gasp, or sigh, but they are really mostly lights in the sky stories. Someone spots a small light or a Chinese candle lantern in the UK (they don't have them in the States) as it drifts by, and then there are scores of stories in the paper. We keep hoping for juicier stories, of some kind of encounters, but most of them are just fragmentary photos. We should probably write an entry of the digital cameras that people use, and when they look at the photos later, they discover some shape or light in the sky that they had not seen when they were actually there in real-time. It seems to happen more and more as these cameras become more available.

Some of the reports are sort of skeptical, waiting for the real UFO, which seems pretty elusive right now. Here is a news recap of the lantern stories.

Australian Story about the UK

Some Texas UFO news

Great Britain has been getting the lion's share of sightings the last couple of month's. Here is a story from ABC television affiliate - KLTV in Tyler Texas. A viewer saw "flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture". He said he had been teased by his friends. He had not reported the incident till he saw some similar sightings in a local newspaper the Stephenville Empire-Tribune. Tyler is about half way between Dallas, Texas and Shreveport, Louisiana in East Texas. The actual sighting was in Stephenville Texas, which is a short distance from Dallas.

Here is the TV stations on-line story: Link to KLTV web page

And this is probably the article that got the story going: Empire-Tribune Story

And finally covering the same ground an AP story with some more details and comments by local officials and the fact that one observer used the a rifle scope to view the object:

AP News Story about Stephenville sighting

And for our international readers the location in Texas, United States where the sightings took place:

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Albany UFO - Rod Shaped Aerial Shot

The rods photographed in some video footage have been around since the advent of the digital video camera. There is speculation that they are bugs or birds that get caught in the zone in between the focal distances of close and far away. The automatic focusing mechanisms, using this explanation confuse small objects that are close to the camera, and give them the aspect of a large blurry object at a distance.

The other theory is much wilder, and seems to have a broad emotional appeal based on setting up a logical sequence of ideas. Very often these objects are transient, they are not actually seen until later on. On January 9th the History Channel, a cable show was broadcast "Creatures From The Fourth Dimension" about these objects known colloquially as "rods". The broadcast was part of the "Monster Quest" series and documents a number of sighting of these supposed "creatures". Some other people think they are unknown life forms or even some kind of minuscule weapon that has built in stealth capabilities to keep it out of sight.

We saw a West Coast news show about eight years ago that featured a small boy under a tree with one of these things buzzing around, which was caught on home video, which when played in slow motion, showed one of the rods moving around. And the news broadcasters were completely clueless. The arc of the flight of the thing could have been some kind of bee or large fly from the looks of the video since all the action took place under the tree's leaf canopy, not in open space. The object was only visible at slow motion speeds in a frame by frame view.

We did not watch the entire History channel broadcast, but this article indcates that the video in the link was part of the show. The link below to Kansas/Albany UFO story on video was presumably part of a mainstream NBC affiliate broadcast on KSN TV, where one of the station staffers caught something unusual while shooting on a video while tracking the passing of a passenger jet. The most interesting thing is that he was questioned by both local police and government agents about the tape, and he says he was subjected to a polygraph test. For our British Isles and our other international visitors, we will provide a map of where the video was shot:


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Another U. K. Sighting from December 23

The source of the photo in the Wrexham Evening Leader is an eight year-old. And it is hard to even make out what the photo is - a yellow dot on a blurred gray background. The article mentions an orange light. Sometimes with this type of story, the fact that it is reported in the press is significant, even if the material presented is pretty speculative. The girl, Demi-Lee was "excited" when her mother had read about the other Wrexham area sightings. So she got her camera and showed her mother the picture. There is not enough context in the article or the photo to even know what the picture was - the ground, the sky or something else. But it is part of an ongoing phenomena in the area. So it is of interest from that point of view. People are reporting what they are seeing and are watching the skies.

Mold, United Kingdom photo of something

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