UFO Report

[HenryC]

Last summer, while doing some casual stargazing from my driveway in South Florida, I made an interesting and unusual observation.  I will document this sighting to illustrate how under certain circumstances even the most common and ordinary object might appear totally baffling to even an experienced observer.  I have a degree in astronomy, have been an active amateur for over forty years and I have excellent distance vision.

In spite of severe light pollution in southeastern Florida, I occasionally observe with my 80mm f/5 refractor from my front yard.  I was looking at the Cygnus Milky Way when I noted something unusual in the field of view of my 16X eyepiece.  It was a small extended object (not a point source, it had a size and shape to it) that drifted amongst the stars from east to west, much slower than an artificial satellite. I had no trouble following it with my altazimuth mount, but I decided not to switch to a higher power ocular and get a better look at it because I was afraid I might lose it.  It was not visible to the naked eye.  The weather was clear, with light winds from the south.

The object was especially puzzling since it appeared dim, that is, it was not bright like a star, it seemed to be glowing faintly from within rather than sparkling intensely like a celestial body or an artificial light.  It had a definite color, as well; against the night sky it appeared tan, or perhaps bronze or gold although I am well aware how misleading color perception is under low-light conditions, particularly when using a fast refractor with poor color correction.  This was definitely not a plane, any aircraft, regardless of altitude, would have shown easily recognizable navigation lights, or at least a shape or silhouette against the urban skyglow.  Wildlife could also be ruled out, I have often seen high-flying migrating birds through the telescope at night.  They are instantly recognizable by their rhythmic wing beats.  They can be seen against the sky by the city lights reflecting off their bellies.  Those who are mostly gliders, storks, egrets and the like, are another matter, but there are so many commuting in and out of the Everglades that they are also familiar to the South Florida amateur.  The object I was looking at was neither, it was like nothing I had ever seen before; it was quivering slowly, perhaps 'pulsing' or 'squirming' would be more descriptive.  Its shape was difficult to pin down, it appeared to be amorphous, and changing, on a time scale of about a second.  A tiny writhing amoeba silently ghosting through space:  very spooky.

I recall a chill when I thought to myself:  could this be it?  Are you actually witnessing what you have dismissed as nonsense all your life, a UFO?  An intelligent visitor from another world?  We always visualize an extraterrestrial spacecraft in familiar terms, a metallic "ship" vaguely similar to an aircraft, or perhaps a submarine.  But reason tells us that any technology capable of interstellar travel would be so advanced over ours that its machines might not even be recognizable as artifacts.  They might appear biological, meteorological, perhaps even supernatural.  All of the carefully reasoned and passionately held arguments about bug-eyed monsters and little green men, pro or con, suddenly become irrelevant when you finally see something really strange.  I lost the intruder as it passed directly overhead, an altazimuth mount cannot follow transits across the zenith, and is awkward to use pointing straight up, by the time I had trained the telescope around the object was gone.  I searched, but could not find it.

The best conventional explanation for what I saw, due to its very slow angular velocity, was a high-altitude illuminated balloon.  But I am familiar with the telescopic appearance of balloons and this wasn't even close.  Besides, the winds weren't right...or were they?  I called Aviation Weather and learned that winds were calm to southerly at sea level, but easterly, 15 knots at 6000 feet.  So the object's course and speed were consistent with a balloon, but what about it's bizarre appearance?

It wasn't until the next day that I came up with a reasonable answer.  It wasn't one balloon, it was many.  It was a cluster of those metal foil party balloons the authorities are always warning us about because of the havoc they cause when they short out power lines.  When they're blown out to sea they're mistaken for jellyfish by sea turtles who eat them and die when the plastic clogs up their digestive systems.  Tied together in a bundle, at the limit of visibility, they would appear to be a single pulsing or throbbing object.  As for the weird color, the balloons are  metallic coverings on Mylar, highly reflective of the garish yellow and salmon streetlights in town.  Even the clouds exhibit these ghastly colors at night over my house. I've often seen these balloons for sale at local supermarkets, always in bundles of a dozen or so.  I did some quick calculations as to size, speed, etc.  The party balloon hypothesis was consistent with the data.

This episode gave me an opportunity to reflect on how even an experienced observer can be misled by a commonplace event under unusual circumstances and  I'm convinced it was only sheer luck that I stumbled onto a reasonable alternative theory.  Of course, I still can't actually prove it was balloons, maybe it WAS the alien mother ship, but at least it is not necessary to resort to the fantastic hypothesis when a more familiar alternative also fits the facts without having to make additional assumptions.  But we all need to be reminded occasionally that it is hard to be objective when you really want to believe, and an honest but untrained observer might never have arrived at a conventional explanation. 

As Carl Sagan pointed out, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."  But I believe he also said  "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence."  In science, unlike the law, you are always guilty until proven innocent.

[rogerschwake]

Just goes to show you, never believe anything you hear and only half you see.

[HenryC]

For a related UFO tale, but one with less certain resolution, scroll down to Nov 20, 2010,

"Something to do on New Year's Eve"

http://cpyoa.geekworkshosting.com/forum/index.php?topic=3792.0