UFO
mystery in the sky at night View GalleryBy
GARETH EDWARDS and CHRIS MARSHALL RISING
eerily into the night sky, they're unidentified, flying and orange.
Captured
on camera (pictured above) in the Braid Hills area on Saturday night, these strange
balls of light sparked notions of an alien landing somewhere in Morningside. Several
people reported sightings of the glowing objects between 8.50pm and 9pm. Student
Lyle Brennan, 19, of Marchmont, was out walking in the hills with his friend Sam
Mackay 20, when they saw the strange lights. Mr
Brennan said: "When we looked back over our shoulders we could see a succession
of fiery orange lights moving across the sky. They appeared to be coming from
the hills in groups of two or three, moving north very slowly and gradually burning
out after about a minute." A
number of other people had stopped to watch the lights when Mr Mackay took a brief
video clip of them on his mobile phone. While
no-one reported the sightings to the police, others have contacted the Evening
News to ask what the strange lights were. Mr
Brennan added: "We passed maybe five or six people who had stopped their
cars and were looking at the lights. I thought at first they would be flares,
but they seemed to move too slowly for that, and then just disappeared."
Air
traffic controllers noted nothing unusual on Saturday night, and the Army also
struggled to come up with an explanation. An
Army spokeswoman said: "It could be that what they have seen are parachute
illumination flares being used at one of our training ranges at Dreghorn. "These
are used to light up an area for troops. They are incredibly bright, travel very
slowly and would be fired in groups of two or three, so it would fit the description. "We
did have Territorial Army troops carrying out training at Dreghorn on Saturday,
and while we don't know if they used flares, that would be one explanation. "Of
course, I can't say for certain. It could have been a genuine UFO sighting."
An
Edinburgh Airport spokesman said a recent switch to another runway had led to
an increasing number of planes approaching from Midlothian and across the Fairmilehead
and Morningside areas of the city. Michael
Mulford, a spokesman for the RAF, said that no operations had been conducted in
the area. He said: "It can be very difficult to get to the bottom of these
things sometimes, but if a lot of people saw these lights there is probably a
rational explanation." Last
year, the Government opened its records over UFO sightings for the first time,
containing eyewitness reports from across Edinburgh and the surrounding regions.
Sightings included a series of flashing lights over Corstorphine Hill in 1998.
Investigators
said at the time they were puzzled by the lights and urged more witnesses to come
forward, but the mystery was never solved. Other incidents, such as two "fuzzy
white lights" that danced over Leith in 2001 and a "swirly" object
appearing above East Linton in 2006, have also never been explained.
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