Mars shines above thunderclouds at its
close approach in 2003 August. Bright planets are frequently
reported as UFOs, and feature in some of the best-known cases.
Photograph by Till Credner and Sven Kohle, AlltheSky.com.
Surprising as it may seem,
astronomical objects are the most common
cause of
mistaken UFO reports, including close
encounters.
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Approaching
Manchester airport, England, on the evening of 1995 January 6,
a British Airways Boeing 737 with 60 passengers on board was
buzzed by a bright, fast-moving UFO. The first officer ducked
instinctively as it flashed past. The conversation between the
pilot and Manchester air traffic control was as follows:
Pilot: “We
just had something go down the right hand side just above us
very fast”
Manchester: “Well,
there’s nothing seen on radar. Was it an
aircraft?”
Pilot: “Well,
it had lights, it went down the starboard side very
quick”
Manchester: “And
above you?”
Pilot: “Just
slightly above us, yeah”.
At the time of the incident, which occurred
at 18.48 pm, the Boeing was descending through 4,000 ft
altitude about nine miles southeast of Manchester. Visibility
was over 10 km, it was dark and the Boeing was flying in clear
air above cumulus cloud on a northerly heading. The UFO was
moving in the opposite direction and was visible for about two
seconds. There was no apparent sound or wake. No other pilots
reported it,
nor was it seen from the ground, presumably
because of the intervening cloud.
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The incident was considered so unusual that
the pilots submitted a report which was investigated by the
Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) Independent Joint
Airmiss Working Group. Their findings were published in
February 1996.
In his report to the CAA the pilot
described the object as having a number of small white lights,
like a Christmas tree. While he was convinced that the object
itself was lit, the co-pilot differed, describing it as a dark
wedge-shaped object with what could have been a black stripe
down the side, and thought that it was illuminated by the
Boeing 737’s landing lights. (In fact this is unlikely,
since the object was above and to the side of the Boeing). The
co-pilot was convinced that it was not a meteorological
phenomenon, balloon, or any other craft they were familiar
with, including a Stealth aircraft.
In its investigation the CAA considered the
possibility that the UFO could have been another aircraft
ranging from a hang glider or microlight to a military flight,
but found no evidence to support such suggestions. The CAA
investigators did not consider other
possible causes since they were outside their remit of air
safety, but remarked that “almost all unusual sightings
can be attributed to a wide range of well-known natural
phenomena”. They concluded that the incident
“remains unresolved”.
Had the CAA chosen to consider astronomical
explanations, a likely answer would not have been difficult to
find. From the captain’s description, the object sounds
like a bright fireball, and in view of the lack of a radar
return or a wake there is no good reason to suppose that it was
anything else. Such a misidentification by experienced pilots
is not unusual, as we shall see from what follows. In fact,
another British Airways pilot and two RAF Tornado pilots had
described a satellite re-entry in similar terms in 1990 (for
details, see here and here). But, in the annals of UFOlogy, the Manchester case
has gone down as a UFO officially endorsed by the Civil
Aviation Authority.
* * * * * * * *
Amateur astronomers know more about the
causes of UFO sightings than most so-called UFO researchers.
Arthur C. Clarke, not a man with a closed mind, once said:
”If you’ve never seen a UFO, you’re not very
observant. And if you’ve seen as many as I have, you
won’t believe in them.”
To see what he meant, we need to look at
some statistics. Astronomical objects are by far the main
causes of mistaken UFO reports. In a classic analysis of 1,300
UFO reports made to the Center for UFO Studies in the US,
published by Allan Hendry in The
UFO Handbook (Sphere, 1980),
just over half of all identified nocturnal lights were
accounted for by astronomical causes: stars, planets, meteors,
the Moon, artificial satellites, and satellite re-entries.
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Why should simple lights in the sky cause
such confusion? As amateur astronomers know, most people are
totally unfamiliar with the sky. Highly credible witnesses such
as teachers, policemen and pilots (yes, and astronomers) can
still be surprised by the unexpected appearance of a bright
star, planet, meteor, or satellite.
Usually, a description such as “it
seemed to hover for an hour” is diagnostic of a star or
planet (people get fed up watching after about an hour, or the
object sets). Often there are other descriptions such as
“flashing coloured lights” or “it appeared to
be rotating” which is how bright stars appear when they
are twinkling, notably Sirius on a cold, frosty night.
Binoculars do not always help identification if they happen to
be cheap and with optical defects that produce spurious colours
and shapes.
Additional information such as “it
wasn’t there before” or “it appeared to move
slowly” or “it dodged around” are still
consistent with characteristics of stars and planets. Many
people don’t realize that stars rise and set during the
night. Thin clouds can make stars appear to dim and brighten,
as though they were receding or approaching. And, when seen
between scudding clouds, stars really do appear to dodge
around.
A more subtle effect is known technically
as the autokinetic effect. In this, natural movements of the eye make a
stationary object appear to move irregularly, sometimes zooming
up and down or swinging from side to side in a movement
sometimes described as like a “falling leaf”.
Autokinetic motion can be uncanny when watching artificial
satellites, which often appear to zig zag or even make
deviations around stars in their path.
Another shortcoming of human perception is
that it is impossible to judge the distances of lights in the
sky. A planet millions of miles away, an aircraft several
thousand feet away, or a torch bulb a few dozen yards away all
appear much the same size and brightness at night. The examples
in this article show the tendency of witnesses to grossly
underestimate the distance of nocturnal lights.
Let’s start by looking at some
instructive examples involving the planet Venus, the biggest
UFO culprit of all, popularly known as the “evening
star” (although it can also appear in the morning sky as
the “morning star”). As amateur astronomers know,
Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon
and can dazzle the eye, sometimes appearing cross-shaped. Back
in 1967, there was a famous case in which two policemen in
Devon, England, reported Venus as a UFO shaped like a “flying cross”
and chased it in their car at speeds up to 90 mile/h.
Perhaps the most celebrated UFO witness of
all time was the governor of the US state of Georgia, a former
American naval officer trained in celestial navigation and
nuclear physics, who was later to become president of the
United States: Jimmy Carter. In 1973, Carter reported that four
years earlier he and 10 other people in the town of Leary,
Georgia, had watched a brilliant UFO low on the horizon which
appeared to move towards them and away again, while changing in
brightness, size, and colour. He estimated the distance as
between 300 ft and 1,000 ft, and said that at times it became
almost as big and bright as the full Moon.
This case was thoroughly investigated by
Robert Sheaffer, who described it in his book The UFO Verdict (Prometheus,
1981). For a start, Sheaffer found that Carter was nine months
out in his recollection of the date. Of the ten claimed
witnesses, Sheaffer could find only one who remembered the
incident even vaguely, and he thought the object might have
been a balloon. But with the correct date established, Sheaffer
found that the witnesses had been looking straight at brilliant
Venus. The errors in his report are typical of those made by
UFO witnesses: the size and brightness of the object is
overestimated, the distance is underestimated, and spurious
motion is attributed to the object.
In The UFO
Handbook, Allan Hendry describes an
apparent close encounter of the third kind stimulated by Venus.
A woman reported that a very bright object in the southwest had
made a slow, jerky descent over a period of an hour one
evening. As she stared at it, she became convinced that she
could see occupants with rounded silvery heads looking out of
the object’s windows. The UFO turned up again on
subsequent nights, exactly where Venus should be.
Keep this report of apparent occupants in
mind when considering the famous story of an American couple,
Betty and Barney Hill, who claimed to have been chased by a UFO
one night. Barney stopped to look at the object through
binoculars and reported seeing a row of windows with alien
faces peering out. Thinking they were going to be abducted, the
Hills drove off in panic. Later, Betty Hill dreamed that they
really were abducted, and many UFOlogists have believed her
dream story.
Yet, from Betty Hill’s own sketch,
Robert Sheaffer has identified the UFO as Jupiter, which is
second only to Venus in brightness. The apparent
‘chasing’ is another phenomenon of celestial
objects, which appear to keep pace with moving cars. Sheaffer
also describes a hilarious 100 mph police chase of Venus
through Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1966. They never did catch it,
but they did inspire a scene in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Another example of a ‘close
encounter’ with Venus concerns a Spanish family driving
home one evening, known as the Serena
encounter after the family
involved. They reported that they were chased by a bright light
which descended to a height of 7 to 8 metres above their car,
lowered landing gear and caused one of their children to be
violently sick. Venus at that time was a brilliant object in
the evening sky but the investigators of this case, who
included an American professor of physics, Willy Smith,
rejected Venus as an explanation because its setting time was
around 9.30 pm GMT, whereas the UFO was visible until 10.30 pm.
However, the investigators forgot that
Spain keeps one hour ahead of GMT and so the visibility of the
UFO matched that of Venus exactly. The child’s stomach
upset is easily explained by a combination of fear and travel
sickness on the winding road. Hence even a close encounter
endorsed by a professor of physics can have a simple
astronomical explanation.