I saw another UFO Saturday night. Once again in the car headed west, I spied a bright starlike object in the reddish post-sunset sky, low to the mountains. It was reminiscent of Venus as it appears deep in the sunset glow, but of course Venus is not in that part of the sky at sunset right now. I stopped long enough at a traffic light to determine that the object was drifting very slowly to the south. This motion was entirely consistent with what is frequently seen with incoming aircraft arriving, perhaps from Seattle, circling around Denver to land nose to the north wind at the airport.
Moments later I lost sight of this bright spot while we drove to a nearby Post Office to send out — guess what — tax returns. At this point I was convinced that the “UFO” was simply landing lights of an incoming jet. I don’t know of any better or more reasonable explanation. But if that were all there was, I would have forgotten it by now.
Minutes later when we parked at the Post Office and started to walk inside, I noticed another odd sight to the west. It was in the same general direction as before, but a little higher in the sky. I doubt that there was any connection between the two sightings, but this one was obviously not landing lights on a plane. Nor was it a weather balloon. It was larger and more diffuse that the first sighting, maybe roughly a quarter the size of a full moon. It was slightly rectangular or just oblong — I couldn’t be sure. It appeared in a relatively clear patch under a rapidly encroaching deck of clouds. My impression — and that is all it is because I have no actual evidence — was that this object was considerably farther than the clouds which were intervening. It looked like a small bit of jet contrail broken off and shining in the last rays of the sun. Caught off guard and camera-less, I did not get any photographs, although I’m pretty sure they would have appeared as a sunset with clouds and a barely distinguishable spot.
Now, I could jump to the conclusion that these two sightings — or perhaps two sightings of the same object — were outside the bounds of normal experience. I could jump to the conclusion, as some did with the image of “aliens” pictured here, that they were evidence of extraterrestrial visitations. I admit that such sightings would be fantastic, but there just isn’t any good evidence of that, and every reason to believe that what I saw had a much more mundane explanation.
By the way, the two “aliens” in the photo shown here made the rounds over the Internet recently when they appeared on the side of a house in Calgary, Alberta. They are striking, but hardly extraterrestrial. Instead, they are fairly complex and admittedly odd reflections off a nearby window, and only show up in the late afternoon when there are no clouds. It is understandable why people think they look like “aliens.” But it is as unreasonable to think that they are extraterrestrials communicating with us as to think that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Interesting idea, maybe, but hardly worth serious consideration.
You are not alone. Many are seeing these small pinpoints of unidentified light. We don’t claim to know what they are either but, something is happening…even you feel compelled to write about it.
http://www.theapocalypsetimes.com/bloggin/2008/04/everyone-is-looking-up.html
The Apocalypse Times
Comment from Larry Sessions:
Compelled, yes, but to say that we should not jump to unfounded conclusions without significant physical evidence. Simple observations, even by “expert” witnesses or groups of people, do not a good case make.
What you described doesn’t seem that extraordinary. I suspect most people wouldn’t jump to any conclusions with so little information. They might speculate but I doubt any one would argue that what you saw was extraterrestrial. But what other people claim to have seen truly does seem astonishing. Obviously they could be mistaken or lying or hallucinating but to ask them to prove it scientifically seems at least to me a bit too much. I doubt I could scientifically prove anything I did today. I’m by no means suggesting that we abandon the scientific method or much less to believe every thing people claim with so little to go on. But we need to come up with a more comfortable half way point where people can report what they see without ridicule and we can some how get to the bottom of this issue. My simple uneducated opinion is that either extreme of this subject are a bit silly. The “true believers” that think that the same government that created the mess in iraq is in cahoots with ET’s. Or the skeptics that try to explain everything away as mass hysteria or swap gas and insist that people can’t discern between a weird looking cloud and something that just might be unexplainable by our current level of knowledge.
UFOs can be something that are very dangerous it is best not to make close contact with these things as you could be abducted!
to me a ufo siteing is not surpriceing becouse you see their are stars and planets that resemble earth but so lifeforms can survive with no co2 or oxegen.so thier are posibillitys that many animals or plants are evolving with out any needs.if a cruistanion ar any other animals can life in a super heated vent with out haveing to surface or dyeing of the heat i think that it is posibalbe for an adavanced or not advanced creature to live in exstrem tempetures or condetions.so i am really just a kid but i could not tell ou why i think this but as we advance i belive we could live so where else in this unaverse that we can advance at.
UFO is one interesting topic. Reports and studies about it are quite commonplace. But one thing is for sure there are a lot of things in the universe that are yet to be discovered. Maybe in the future, mankind will be able to witness some extraterrestrial happenings.
Try living in Neenach,Ca. !!!!!
And what are you seeing in Neenach? Not far from Tehachapi, right?
Now in the case of the reflection though if you were there you could look around and see it is just an odd reflection, just as oddly-shaped clouds can resemble certain things.
The rub with UFOs is that you cannot get up close to them to see what they really are — they’re way up there in the sky so you can’t really do much to examine them. You can _speculate_ all you want of course but it’s little more than that: speculation.
“But it is as unreasonable to think that they are extraterrestrials communicating with us as to think that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Interesting idea, maybe, but hardly worth serious consideration.”
Actually there is nothing _wrong_ with giving it “serious” consideration, it’s just that it would not be logical to leap and say “YES!!! That UFO I saw was an alien starship!!!! They’re HERE!!! WOOHOOO!!!!!”. Many scientists have given “serious” consideration to the idea of extraterrestrial contacts, it’s just that there is no good proof yet so one cannot logically claim that event X was it.
UFOlogy is interesting stuff but as you have noticed, it is not easy to get good evidence of anything. You see something and then it’s gone. You can’t get a probe into it, you can’t do any of that. Even if you had a rocket-and-probe geared up and ready to go you still might not be able to get it there in time. At most, if there doesn’t seem to be any “commonsense” explanation (although in this particular case there may have been), the only “logical” conclusion that can be deduced is, “I don’t know”. And the UFO remains just that: a UFO, an (U)nknown (or unidentified) flying object. Unknown.
Mike, I agree that until you have actual evidence you cannot accept something as true, and conversely in the absence of such confirmational evidence you cannot conclusively rule it out. But in the absence of anything other than stories people tell and photos or other “evidence” that can be easily faked, plus with the knowledge that many if not all can be (and many have been) shown to be misinterpretations of manmade or nature objects and phenomena, I think that it is reasonable to be highly skeptical. Whether anyone wants to give it “serious” consideration or not is really a matter of how they want to spend their time.
I also agree that there is a small residue of reports that have not been satisfactorily explained, which *could* conceivably be due to alien activity, but the lack of explanation is more likely simply due to lack of information in those cases. (I say “more likely” in application of Ockham’s Razor.)
In absolute knowledge, we cannot “prove” that leprechauns really aren’t hiding out in the forests of Ireland, or menehune in the back country of Hawaii. The leprechauns and menehune served their purpose in the evolution of Irish and Hawaiian culture, but that doesn’t make them real. I would say that the vast majority of UFO reports serve the same purpose of filling a void in the lives of people in our technological society. There may well be reason to give them “serious” consideration from a sociological or anthropological viewpoint. And you may not consider it logical dismiss them from any other consideration, but as a certain pointy-eared Vulcan is predicted to say, “Logic is the beginning of wisdom… not the end.”
Granted, astronomers and others *do* seriously consider the possible existence of extraterrestrial life, but they do so in an entirely different context and for reasons unrelated to the many UFO reports. In addition, they acknowledge that their speculations are done in the complete absence of any evidence other than the existence of life on Earth.
Speculation is a good thing — maybe even a vital thing. But unbridled speculation at best is a waste of time and at worst dangerous.
Interesting story. Kind of eerie. The picture looks like baby yoda’s.
You were very prudent to draw the conclusions you did. I note from your comments that there was a weather system around at the time of the siting and indeed cloud cover can misrepresent distances and scales. In essence though, this is one of those instances that only you can truly decide what is was you saw given the lack of evidence of the incident.
The pictures are a bit too weird and you can understand nothing from them.
Mike
Mike, that’s my point. No photograph of an alleged UFO is good enough to be considered any kind of conclusive evidence. In fact eye-witness accounts are only of very limited usefulness since it is so easy to misidentify objects, and unfortunately some people exaggerate, distort and even deliberately fabricate stories. The only good evidence would be hard, physical evidence that can be openly examined in a lab and freely discussed among scientists — not questionable accounts, alleged government cover-ups, or easily faked objects and photos. Something may look strange, but that doesn’t make it evidence of alien visitation.