Mystery of orange UFOs

Bright lights in the skies have baffled police and air-traffic controllers.
The unidentified flying objects have been likened to similar strange orange glows seen over Liverpool and Essex.
Witnesses said thousands of people may have seen the bizarre floating orbs.

Air-traffic controllers at Shoreham Airport and Brighton police said they had received inquiries about the UFOs, with as many as eight seen in the sky at one time.
James Gordon-Johnson, of Preston Park Avenue, Brighton, said he was leaving a restaurant in Shoreham with his brother at 11.30pm on November 18 when he saw "what appeared to be a very big orange light in the sky".
He added: "It was very, very bright but static - it wasn't rising or falling. Another one then appeared in mid-air. Then another.
"It must have been somewhere over Hove Lagoon but the lights were so bright thousands of people must have seen them.
"The next morning I got a phone call from a friend of mine who saw the exact same thing."
Mark Sztopel, from Brighton, told The Argus he saw seven lights moving slowly in an easterly direction across the city at midnight.
He added: "I'm a big plane enthusiast so I know what the lights and characteristics of a plane look like at night, and I can tell you now that these definitely weren't planes."
A spokeswoman for Shoreham Airport said staff had received emails from people inquiring about the glowing objects.
She said: "We closed at 7pm so there was nothing happening here. We've no idea what they could have been."
Police said they also received a report from a man in Hove who said he saw "approximately eight planes coming in over the sea, with no flashing navigation lights, towards Gatwick, in a dead line".
Officers contacted air traffic controllers at Gatwick who said they knew of no movement in the area. Sue Heard, a police spokeswoman, said: "We were called out and made checks to establish it wasn't a known aircraft.
"It certainly seems pretty baffling on the face of it but there was a meteor shower on Saturday so maybe the two are connected."
A cloud of comet dust produced a Leonids meteor shower over the weekend, which managers of Herstmonceux Observatory said peaked on Saturday night with a display of shooting stars.
UFO spotters have also linked the orange lights to sightings in Liverpool and Essex, recently revealed as hoaxes created using open flames suspended under plastic bags to produce mini hot-air balloons.
But Mr Gordon-Johnson, 33, said: "These weren't meteors - there's no way they were meteors. They were far too big and bright and low in the atmosphere.
"They looked like they were about 3,000 or 4,000ft up. As I kept looking at them they just sat there. I was trying to think of explanations but couldn't think of one.
"It was very odd. If it was just a balloon you wouldn't have seen another just appear at the same altitude. There was no sound. Nothing at all."

By Andy Dickenson

Original Article : Here

South Koreans Join Hunt for ET

It seems that there are more different types of searches for extraterrestrial life than ever before. We have sent different types of probes into the universe with information about our little planet, just in case an alien race finds one of them. Of course, there is the ongoing SETI search which began here in America using radio waves. Radio waves have been called the most likely way of making contact, but as of late, there is a movement to use light waves also. With light traveling much faster than sound, the reasoning seems sound to me. I often think of some of the old Sci-Fi shows of the late 1950s and 1960s which depicted one man sitting in front of an archaic looking instrument that showed audio frequencies, hoping for a reply from an alien intelligence who just happened to be monitoring his channel. How they determined what frequency to use, or how to direct their signal is anybody's guess. Although science has grown by leaps and bounds the last few decades, at least at this point and time, the results are no better.

Korea to Search for Extraterrestrial Life tells us that South Korea will soon make their own attempt to contact life outside our planet by going back to the basics of listening for a message from space with a radio telescope. The National Science Museum, which will open in the next few months near Seoul, will be in charge of the program. They will follow suit with America, allowing the public to be a part of it, by sharing computer resources with the general public. Relying on the theory that our youth are the future, youngsters are expected to be a major part of the program. "We expect a large number of youths to take part in the SETI program as there is no minimum qualification required to participate," said Lee Kang-hwan, head of the SETI program. Even though years of negative results seem to discourage us, at least we can wish good luck to the eager South Koreans in their search for that elusive point of alien contact. Hey, maybe they will dial in just the right channel.

Strange Light seen over Plymouth, England

This week I received an interesting report from a British Man named Robb he reported a UFO encounter he had all the way back in the year 1994. He told me that even though the sighting was 12 years ago he still clearly remembers the incident and has never stopped talking about it since. So here is the bizarre account of a light ball UFO seen over Plymouth, England -
"I've looked for so long to find a website I could tell my story to. I know it was 12 years ago, but it was something me my brother and two friends saw in Plymouth, England. It was about 8:30pm in December and we were in an old council grounds, doing what teenagers did, when we caught sight of a stationary white light on the horizon over the moors. Plymouth has the sea with a very big naval base on one side of the city and vast moor land on the other. This light we figured at first to be a plane or something, but due to not moving at all we ruled that out pretty quick. After about 30 seconds it was getting bigger and bigger thus realising it was coming towards us. as we watched this, it swung to its left as if heading towards the naval base at a pretty fast rate, not being something we had seen before, we got pretty excited about this then, but it disappeared behind a cloud and didn't see this again. The next day though someone in school had seen the same thing and reckoned it had indeed flew straight towards the base but veered out to sea and shot off. I've never really told this to people due to the fact I sound like an idiot!"

by
Sam Willey

UFO Photographed during Carnival

Editor: Black dot has been enlarged and noise has been added using Adobe Photoshop.

Name: Ray GilbertName of

Photo: Carnival Flypast

Date of Sighting: Saturday, June 20, 2006

Place of Sighting: Grantham, England

Ray Gilbert from Montrose Close, Grantham saw his second UFO in as many years on June 20, 2006. Mr. Gilbert was attending the Grantham Carnival and was snapping photos of the various airplanes going through their maneuvers overhead.
He is an amateur photographer and was amazed to see a black object in his photo of a Dakota airplane. He is positive he didn't see it as he captured the photo with his digital camera. He only became aware of the strange object while examining his photos. Commenting on what was in the photo, he said, "When I saw it a chill went down my back and everyone I've told says I should inform the Ministry of Defence. I know it's a UFO and I'm wondering if anyone else saw the same thing."
When enlarging the photo on his computer he claims the object has a flat top and has a red rim!

He states that he saw his first UFO last year while traveling to Lincoln.
Mr. Gilbert adds, "I took more photos of the flypast but this is the only one with a dot on it."

by Dirk Vander Ploeg

Original Article : http://www.ufodigest.com/news/1106/flyby.html

UFO Ignorance II

By 1952 the Air Force was in "full debunking mode," and that summer would offer a grandiose example of how far the Air Force would go to explain away the Flying Saucer (UFO) Phenomenon.
Common folk (those "mildly" knowledgeable about UFOs) have often said, "If they are from another planet, why don't they just land on the Whitehouse lawn?" Ironically, in July of 1952 they came very close to doing just that!
The headline of the Washington Post's Final Edition of July 28th, 1952 declared, "'Saucer' Out Ran Jet, Pilot Reveals." The article went on to reveal a "secret military investigation" of what were described as "glowing aerial objects" that were appearing on radar screens in the Washington area for the second consecutive week. Pilots sent up by the ADC (Air Defense Command) reported that they were unable to overtake the UFOs that were near Andrews Air Force Base.
The Air Force's official response was that they were investigating the incidents and that it was classified as "secret." They further stated, "we have no evidence they are 'flying saucers'; conversely we have no evidence they are not 'flying saucers.' We don't know what they are."
To be clear, the UFOs were not just "blips on a screen" they were simultaneously witnessed from the ground as well as from the air (radar/visual sightings) by the pilots pursuing them in addition to civilian airline pilots.
In an interview with The Alexandria Gazette, James Ritchy, an "air traffic controller and radar specialist" for The Washington Air Traffic Control Center said, "These objects were about 30 miles from the airport when we first made contact with them. We spotted 12 objects, and judged that they were moving in a southeasterly direction at a speed of about 40 mph . . .. The Air Force sent some jet planes up to investigate, and we would help 'vector' the pilots toward the objects . . .."
When we 'vector' a plane onto an object, we are in radar contact with both the object and the plane, and also in radio contact with the pilot of the plane. We keep telling the pilot how to turn to approach the object until he makes a sighting. The first jet pilot to go out Saturday night reported that he sighted a steady white light that appeared to be about 10 miles distant. When we tried to draw closer, it just disappeared . . ..
A commercial pilot got much closer to one of the objects, and reported to us that he sighted a yellow light that appeared to turn red and then yellow again. He reported to us that the object appeared to be about two miles away and the flying parallel with him.
Radar confirmed that he was between two and three miles from the object.
A third pilot sighted two bluish lights and later five more white lights. Our radar continued to show unidentified objects through the night, until 6 a.m. the next morning, but the pilots did not get closer to them."
The pursuit planes used were F-94s with a top speed of 600 mph. The targets (UFOs) were tracked at speeds as slow as 90 mph and faster then that of their pursuers. (Substantially faster, as when planes approached in some instances, the UFOs would simply disappear from radar-presumably retreating faster then it took the "radar antenna" to make a full sweep).
As one might imagine, since this was an ongoing phenomenon (for two weeks) and it was taking place near the nation's capitol, it created quite a hubbub! With telegrams, phone calls and letters by the thousands pouring into the Pentagon, as well as pressure from the constituents of local Congressman, and topping it off with a lot of noise from the media; the powers-that-be needed to do something, and quickly! That something ended up initiating "the largest press conference held since the end of the Second World War."
On July 29th at 4:00 pm in the conference room at the Pentagon, Major General John A. Samford, Director of Intelligence of the Air Force proceeded to engage in the one of the largest cover-ups ever perpetrated on the American public! With him in this machination was Major General Roger M. Ramey, Director of Operations, a veteran in confabulating UFO events (a la Roswell), Colonel Donald L. Bower, Technical Analysis Division, ATIC (Air Technical Intelligence Center), Captain Roy L. James, Electronic Branch, ATIC, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Aerial Phenomena Branch, (head of Project Blue Book and future author of The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects) ATIC, and Mr. Burgoyne L. Griffing, Electronics Branch, ATIC.
On the other side of the table were the media's elite, top correspondents from all the major newspapers and national magazines were in attendance; heavy hitters from radio and the new medium, "TV" were also there; in the midst of that crowd was one "Major Donald E. Keyhoe," who had penned, The Flying Saucers Are Real and was a considerable thorn in the Air Force's side.
Samford's opening statement recapped the Air Force's investigation of the UFO phenomenon since 1947; he mentioned the Air Force's concern of possible air born menaces to the United States, talked about Project Saucer (Project Sign) and it's current "more improved" organization. He noted the mass amount of reports that have been analyzed, and quickly put them to rest as some easily explainable phenomenon, e.g., our own aircraft, weather aberrations, hoaxes etc.
His oratory was mild mannered and done in an academic fashion; Keyhoe later commented that the "tension in the crowd was eased" by his simple explanations of the UFOs. Samford didn't shy away from the "20%" of the reports that couldn't be "identified," either, and gave the impression that with more data those could be laid to rest as well.
In concluding he made a point that the Air Force's role was to ensure that UFO sightings didn't pose a threat to the United States; he said there was no pattern to indicate there was one.
At this point the rest of the conference would proceed as a Q & A session with the reporters. As would be expected, the reporters began a barrage of some very poignant questions, but Samford held his ground, and calmly gave rational explanations for the previous weeks UFO sightings and consequent "radar tracks."
When asked about "solid returns" Samford talked about "birds and temperature inversions"; when asked about multiple radar units tracking the same objects, "simultaneously" he mentioned the same phenomenon can pass from scope to scope, and indicated that the timing can be off. (I.e., it wasn't simultaneous). When asked about the "expertise" of the radar operators he politely indicated that even the "best can be fooled."
As you can see, no matter the question Samford and or one of his panel had a very "logical explanation" for the recent UFO phenomenon; even when he left room for further investigation he firmly stated, "there is nothing in them that is associated with materials or vehicles or missiles that are directed against the United States."
The conference lasted an hour and twenty minutes, at it's finale the members of the media had a mixed response, some thought that Samford and his group were on the level, others didn't buy it for a moment, but by and large they would "accept the more feasible explanations" and that is what would "go to print."
The following day the New York Times published an article entitled, "Air Force Debunks 'Saucers' As Just 'Natural Phenomena.'" The Herald Tribune published the same article, and the Post headlined an article, "Saucer Blips Over Capitol Laid To Heat." The "AP" ran with "those stories" and premise was spread across the country.
Some might wonder how the press could be so naïve . . . but those were different times, and we were much more trustful of the powers-that-be. Still, after taking in Samford's explanations, it must have given people pause if they had to board an airplane, since their very lives depend upon the air traffic controllers who apparently couldn't tell a plane, or another solid object from a flock of birds and or heat inversions.

By
Frank Warren