Database wanted to study UFOs

By BECK ELEVEN - The Press | Friday, 20 July 2007

SKY WISE: Hamilton air-traffic controller Graeme Opie wants a national database for sightings of unidentified flying objects.

If the truth is out there, Hamilton air-traffic controller Graeme Opie plans to find it.

Opie has set up an online system for UFO (unidentified flying object) spotters and wants Kiwi skygazers to document their findings.

Opie, who moonlights as a sighting report investigator for UFO Focus New Zealand, said the reporting system asked people to write what they saw, where they saw it and what effect the sighting had on them.

He said he had always been interested in unidentified artefacts and ancient writings but was lured into the UFO phenomenon after his first unexplained sighting in 1995 over the Hamilton Airport control tower.

"I spend a lot of time looking at the sky with my job, and I just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time for a second and a half," he said.

"This thing was really going. Other people saw it, too, and it wasn't an aircraft, fireball, meteorite or space junk."

Opie said the information compiled on the website would allow comprehensive UFO study.

"In the 1950s and 60s, people were reluctant to come forward about UFOs," he said.

"If you spoke up you were called a crank, but things have changed. In the last 12 months we've had about 50 reports.

"Whether something is man-made or a secret project by government or a visiting spaceship, we just won't know unless we get the information."

Skeptics New Zealand chairwoman Vicki Hyde said the data collection was laudable, but most mystery sightings had been explained. "There could well be something out there, but it's not in our world," she said. "There is about as much evidence for aliens as there is for Santa Claus."