Airline pilots’ UFO sightings demystified in case of mistaken identity
- Many airline pilots claim to have seen unidentified flying objects (UFOs)
- But it turns out the source of what they’d seen could be a lot closer to home
- Researchers recreated the exact condition of the sightings for answers
Published on Mar 22, 2024 at 7:54 PM (UTC+4)
by Amelia Jean Hershman-Jones
Last updated on Mar 25, 2024 at 1:20 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
While some airline pilots claim to have seen an unidentified flying object (UFO), it turns out the source of what they’d seen could be a lot closer to home.
Researchers used half a dozen pieces of software to model a sighting – and what the airline pilots are seeing could be manmade – rather than alien.
It turns out they may have actually been looking at one of the 5,500 dazzlingly bright Starlink satellites currently orbiting Earth.
In a new preprint paper by researchers from the University of Utah, it is mentioned how ‘many deployment and orbital evolution strategies’ have led to ‘a long string of confusions’.
With thousands of satellites in orbit, plus an additional 36,500 pieces of space junk that are 10cm or larger, it makes sense that pilots will see things they don’t recognize.
Like this pilot who captured a super rare ‘gigantic jet’ phenomenon during a night flight.
That video is definitely worth a watch – it’s incredible.
They discovered that modeling sky conditions and the right lighting could help SpaceX Starlink satellites be more recognizable in the sky.
U.S. Navy pilot, Ryan Graves, testified to Congress about a UAP he saw and couldn’t explain.
He also founded an organization to ask for more UAP reporting and resolution transparency.
“The [Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)] has no direct process for commercial pilots to report unidentified or anomalous objects in our airspace,” Graves told Newsweek.
“FAA regulations direct pilots to report UAP incidents to civilian organizations without official follow up or analysis via a verified official data set.”
The industry and the US government responded with new policies creating paths for all airline pilots to report their UAP sightings.
The result is an influx in reports of UFO sightings from airplane pilots.
And airline pilots aren’t the only profession seeing things as an ex-US Navy officer warned of ‘unidentified underwater objects’ lurking in the ocean.
In this new paper, the researchers detail an instance from 2022 in which five pilots from two airlines reported the same UAP sighting.
Sightings of the UFO were corroborated with photos and video footage.
To address it, the physicists made a model to simulate what the airline pilots saw.
The scientists studied the photos and video footage submitted by pilots, approximating the brightness and category of the visible objects.
Then they employed specialized software, like SAOimage DS9 from the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory to study every pixel, deducing sizes and angles.
“The video shows that the apparent size of the object did not change during the 12.7-second useful interval of the video,” their analysis said.
“Photo 2, however, shows the object angular size to be smaller than in Photo 1, because a ’zoom’ factor has been applied to the second cellphone picture.”
The team also plotted the set of Starlink satellites that launched the same day.
They used data that applied to the first of the five flights that had observed the UAP, then metadata from the cell phone photos to narrow down the exact window of time the UAP was overhead.
From there, the team was able to fish out the relevant data points from Starlink’s trajectories, speed, and more.
Blender – a 3D modeling software used for video games – was then used by researchers to view their satellites from the cockpit of the relevant airliner.
And the intense forensic reconstruction yielded results, revealing an image that accounts for everything the pilots saw.
Each satellite looks unique from every angle, in every lighting condition, and in all of its configuration states.
It’s hoped the 3D model can put pilots’ minds at ease.
The study authors also called for more public information about satellites in our skies.
It enables pilots to track and contextualize them.
It’s not the first time the US has spoken out on what most UFO sightings actually are, with the Pentagon even coining a new term for them.
For those who believe some UAPs are sent by aliens, being able to rule out the other 99% as Starlink sightings would help.
Keep your eyes on the skies, people.
Some of the images in this article were created using AI
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All Supercar Blondie contributors undergo editorial review and fact-checking to ensure accuracy and authority in automotive journalism. After gaining her BA Hons in French and English at the University of Nottingham, Amelia embarked on a vocational diploma from the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). This led to numerous opportunities, from interning at Vogue to being on the small team that launched Women’s Health magazine in the UK, which was named the PPA Consumer magazine of the year for three years running. As Health, Beauty and Fitness editor, Amelia personally received a Johnson & Johnson Award and was shortlisted for both PPA and BSME titles. Since then, Amelia has created content for numerous titles and brands, including the Telegraph, 111 Skin, Waitrose, Red magazine, Stylist, and Elle, as well as being Head of Content at Vitality and Editor in Chief at INLondon magazine. “My superpower is translating technical jargon about the mechanical workings of a supercar into a relatable story you’ll want to share with your friends after you’ve read it.” After joining the SB Media family as a senior journalist in September of 2023, Amelia’s role has evolved to see her heading up the SEO output of the editorial team. From researching the most ‘Google-able’ key terms to producing evergreen content - it’s been a time of hard work, growth, and success for the editorial team and the Supercar Blondie website. “I like to think of myself as a ‘method journalist’. In other words: I live and breathe whatever I am writing about. When writing about fitness, I trained as a personal trainer, and as a beauty editor, I completed an ‘expert’ in scent diploma with the Fragrance Foundation. “During my tenure at Supercar Blondie, however, I did something I never thought possible: I passed my driving test at the age of 36. One day I’d love to train as a mechanic to better understand what happens under the hood, too. “My sweet spot is providing readers with a ‘takeaway’ (read: something new they didn’t know before) after reading every one of my stories. While I don’t claim to be an expert in the automotive world, I know the experts and bodies in the field to rely on to provide our readers with an informative and thought-provoking story every time they visit the site.”
