How to Watch a UFO: Tips for Identifying Unidentified Flying Objects

[Ivan Seeking]

How to watch a flying saucer!

Years ago, two friends of mine, Ron DiIulio and John O. Williams, wrote and produced a planetarium show called “How to Watch A Flying Saucer.” Truthfully, I barely remember the show, but the title has always stuck with me.

However, I prefer the term “UFO” because “Flying Saucer” just automatically means that whatever it was, it was from another world in space. Although “UFO” carries the same general connotation, it just means “unidentified flying object,” and as such can be and often is later identified as some natural or human-made phenomenon or artifact. While there are a few UFO reports that are difficult to explain, and I cannot say with 100 percent certainty that no UFO report is the result of some visitation by beings from another planet, I have yet to see any convincing evidence.

Now, I am not writing here about what UFOs are or might be. They are unidentified flying objects, so they first step is to identify them as well as possible. While you may not know what you are observing, there may be someone out there who does, but you’ll find out only if you report your sighting with enough valid information.

Probably 99 percent [Ivan: Est to be more like 95%] of all “UFO” sightings are actually of human-made devices such as weather balloons, atmospheric phenomena such as lenticular clouds, or astronomical objects such as Venus. [Please hold your comments about what UFO’s may be — that is not what this blog entry is about. I’ll try to get around to that in a future blog.] With the right information, such sightings can usually be easily identified by a knowledgeable person. And even if the sighting remains unidentified, at least the known possibilities can be eliminated. [continued]

http://blogs.Earth'sky.org/larrysessions

 

[hypatia]

I find that holding my breath{so I don't scream} and sitting down{so I don't run around like a crazy person} helps a great deal. Of course, I've only seen one thing in the sky, that was so odd, that I had to apply these tactics.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Uh oh! Unless this is just a glitch, it seems that Mr. Sessions has removed this blog.
http://blogs.Earth'sky.org/larrysessions/space/073036/how-to-watch-a-flying-saucer/

Maybe it was too scary.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Okay, the blog is back. I was wondering if this was considered to be too controversial for EarthSky, which would be rather silly.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Part II: How to identify a UFO

...there are a small percentage of reports that are not easy to dismiss and do not appear to be within our capability to explain with the available information. In no way am I implying that even those sightings are alien spacecraft or interdimensional travelers, nor do I personally believe that, but in the absence of other information to the contrary, it is not hard to understand how some observers could make that speculation. But that is as far as I will go with the UFO as alien spacecraft question.

So, of the natural and human-made phenomena reported as UFOs, what are the most common? [continued]

http://blogs.Earth'sky.org/larrysessions/space/080538/how-to-identify-a-ufo/