The amount of press this one is getting has gone past my random UFO sighting threshhold.

CNN Video
Well, that sucks.


A half mile wide, a mile long, seen up to 20 miles away by at least 30 people, and nobody has a picture. Not even a fuzzy one.
I'm sure they saw something, but when the report has no pictures on such a large sighting, I figure there are some, and they would ruin the story.

I hope the settlers didn't attempt to name the county after our planet.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Wow, this is really the first post about this? I saw the headlines but never bothered to read the article. But the supposed "object" was a half mile wide and a mile long, and only 30 people noticed it? I mean, I know how much we're all absorbed in our own little worlds, but I'd think there was more than 30 people outside at any given moment that would be close enough to notice even such a small () object.

...or there were exactly 30 people outside who were unable to gauge the correct dimensions of whatever it was they were viewing. I wonder which is more likely?

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

Or that's a big percentage of the population... Afterall, it is Texas.
Stephenville is about 50 miles SW of Fort Worth, not exactly a high density area.

msnbc has a much better story.
And it's told by a reporter who says that he was driving by the town at the time, and he saw...


"Absolutely Nothing."

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

I just have a hard time believing that an object that is .5 x 1 mile in dimension would have only been seen by a relative handfull of people, even in a rural area in Texas.

Then again, Texas is one of the places I'd go if I wanted to be sure I'd see aliens.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

Yeah, this statement backs that up:
"UFO Bumps Fish Off Headline!"

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

ROFLOL! It's probably been said before, but I'm beginning to think UFO's cause hurricanes, because they're both always targeting trailer parks.

...just a joke, take no offense if you live in a trailer park. But please, if you ever see a news camera, take the time to take the curlers out of your hair.

...just another joke. half my family lives in trailers...

...and most of them don't have hair to put curlers in.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

A hologram perhaps?

Nothing substantial, but in stories and rumors people say the military is working on technology to create the appearance of aircraft that are not really there. This could create confusion, attract fire, distract from the true mission all without a loss to life: the enemy is shooting/seeing a "ghost" plane projected from a helicopter, blimp, or plane some distance away. Those are just rumors so far as I know anyway.

but a 1/2 mile long? And where is it now? Something a 1/2 mile by a mile isn't exactly easy to hide...I wish I could've been there!

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None to speak of

NPR had a segment on these sightings last night. The witnesses were fairly consistent in their descriptions. The "object" was seen at night, and visible as a red/orange glow with white lights that strobed in no apparent pattern. According to some witnesses the pattern of lights changed over time. No sound was reported.

To me this sounds entirely consistent with something burning up on reentry. Eyewitness reports of the size, height, and speed of an object seen in the sky are very unreliable, so the claims that the object was only a few thousand feet up can be discounted. It would also be impossible under these conditions for a witness on the ground to determine if it was a single object a mile long or multiple smaller objects moving together spread out over a mile. The random strobes and changing pattern of lights are just what you'd expect from a complex object tumbling and breaking apart. My guess would be booster stage or defunct satellite breaking up. Anyone know if there were any known reentries of space junk that night?

Here's the NPR story.

To me it sounds nothing like something burning up on reentry.
Do such things "hover?"

Ah well, it's the same ol' same ol'....

Dozens of witnesses, a police officer, a pilot, no photos or video (they'd likely be dismissed as hoaxes anyway) and a dismissal from the military.

Of course the military didn't chase anything that night.
These supposed objects are always faster and way beyond our aircraft maneuverability.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

They can appear to. It can be remarkably difficult to determine if an object in the sky with no reference points is moving or not. An object moving across the sky at a constant speed can be reported by people on the ground to be stop, change direction, accelerate or decelerate. Especially at night, and when the size and shape of the object is unknown to the people on the ground.

Although Depleted Cranium has put up some actual video which supports an alternate explanation: a blimp, arriving for a sports event in a nearby town. Apparently the pattern of strobes visible on the mystery object match FAA guidelines.

http://depletedcranium.com/?p=348

OMG...A blimp

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

The viewer's perspective has a lot to do with it. An airplane flying straight toward you in a dark sky can appear to stand still if there are no stationary reference points nearby. Once it comes close enough for you to detect change in size (due to proximity) motion is easier to spot. Flying away from you has the reverse effect: once it is far enough away an airplane (on a dark night, or in a bright, clear sky) can appear to slow. Check it out the next time you're at an airport--watch an airplane take off until it is out of sight. The farther and higher it gets the "slower" it appears to go. Head on/tail on and it can even appear to pause.

I suspect this is the reason for a lot of UFOs. People see an airplane flying, say, straight on and it suddenly starts climbing. Now it appears to have gone from "hovering" to "climbing rapidly". Or side to side, down, whatever. It doesn't answer everything, obviously, as many ufos seem to go "haywire", but it at least covers some.

Reentry sounds good for this one, but I know relatively little about it so no judgement from me. Craft in formation also sounds good. I wasn't there, so...

Lastly, I agree with the fact that altitude and distance can be difficult to judge without a fair amount of practice--and even then without reference points it is hard to know for certain.

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None to speak of

I can accept this.
However, given the multiple eyewitnesses and no doubt vantage points, would an object appear to hover from all directions?

Thanks, the NPR article notes that the military dismissed it with "reflections of two airliners" which is consistent with FAA guidelines.

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

I agree, judging altitude and ditance is difficult for even a trained eye.

But again, given the many vantage points of the eywitnesses I find it hard to accept the reentry of a single object as what was seen.
Who knows?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Yes, but here you're assuming the multiple witnesses were scattered arround the object's location, but if said object was miles to say, the west of all of them, it could quite easily have been traveling toward all of the different vantage points.

You have to think of distance and motion in relative terms. It would also explaine why one area of Texas saw this "Peculiar hovering object", when no other areas reported seeing it...because if it was moving from their vantage point it might not have looked weird at all, and therefore drawn little or no notice.

Additionally, something I've noticed about aircraft at night is that when they are heading straight/near straight toward you, aside from appearing to hover, they appear MUCH brighter, because forward lights (at least on some craft) are dirrected "spot light" type lights, that from the sides look much dimmer.

Obviously I can't say for sure that the above applies here, but it's something to consider.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

One witness said he had seen it a number of times. The object seems to be a reasonably common sight in those parts.

If it was a Goodyear blimp, that explains a lot.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense . OA Flickr set

I suppose it would be easy enough to check the sightings against the schedule of the blimp(s). A blimp up close might look like something much bigger and farther away...hmm. But to everyone?

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None to speak of

Well Whitley and Linda have made this into the "Flap du Jour" on their sites...I noticed that they did not mention the Goodyear Blimp.......

Dale

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"Ad astra per aspera"