I
saw another “UFO”, maybe two I
saw another UFO Saturday night. Once again in the car headed west, I spied a bright
starlike object in the reddish post-sunset sky, low to the mountains. It was reminiscent
of Venus as it appears deep in the sunset glow, but of course Venus is not in
that part of the sky at sunset right now. I stopped long enough at a traffic light
to determine that the object was drifting very slowly to the south. This motion
was entirely consistent with what is frequently seen with incoming aircraft arriving,
perhaps from Seattle, circling around Denver to land nose to the north wind at
the airport. Moments
later I lost sight of this bright spot while we drove to a nearby Post Office
to send out — guess what — tax returns. At this point I was convinced
that the “UFO” was simply landing lights of an incoming jet. I don’t
know of any better or more reasonable explanation. But if that were all there
was, I would have forgotten it by now. Minutes
later when we parked at the Post Office and started to walk inside, I noticed
another odd sight to the west. It was in the same general direction as before,
but a little higher in the sky. I doubt that there was any connection between
the two sightings, but this one was obviously not landing lights on a plane. Nor
was it a weather balloon. It was larger and more diffuse that the first sighting,
maybe roughly a quarter the size of a full moon. It was slightly rectangular or
just oblong — I couldn’t be sure. It appeared in a relatively clear
patch under a rapidly encroaching deck of clouds. My impression — and that
is all it is because I have no actual evidence — was that this object was
considerably farther than the clouds which were intervening. It looked like a
small bit of jet contrail broken off and shining in the last rays of the sun.
Caught off guard and camera-less, I did not get any photographs, although I’m
pretty sure they would have appeared as a sunset with clouds and a barely distinguishable
spot. Now, I could
jump to the conclusion that these two sightings — or perhaps two sightings
of the same object — were outside the bounds of normal experience. I could
jump to the conclusion, as some did with the image of “aliens” pictured
here, that they were evidence of extraterrestrial visitations. I admit that such
sightings would be fantastic, but there just isn’t any good evidence of that,
and every reason to believe that what I saw had a much more mundane explanation. By
the way, the two “aliens” in the photo shown here made the rounds over
the Internet recently when they appeared on the side of a house in Calgary, Alberta.
They are striking, but hardly extraterrestrial. Instead, they are fairly complex
and admittedly odd reflections off a nearby window, and only show up in the late
afternoon when there are no clouds. It is understandable why people think they
look like “aliens.” But it is as unreasonable to think that they are
extraterrestrials communicating with us as to think that there is a pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow. Interesting idea, maybe, but hardly worth serious consideration. |
