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Li Peng via NASASpaceflight.com
Waves of light emanate from an object sighted by amateur astronomer Li Feng over China's Sichuan province.
Chinese skywatchers marveled this month over mysterious rays of light in the night sky, and now sharp-eyed analysts are saying those UFO sightings were sparked by a European Ariane 5 rocket that launched two telecommunication satellites from French Guiana.
Amateur astronomers in China's Sichuan and Yunnan provinces reported seeing the weird phenomenon on Nov. 11. They watched as a luminous object moved through the heavens, shimmering with rays or rings of light. The reports made a splash on Chinese news websites such as Sina.com, as well as the Astronomy.com.cn discussion forum.
"It is certainly a UFO," one forum poster wrote in Chinese. Another wrote that the UFO was a "blessing from another planet." (I couldn't determine how that comment was meant, because my machine-translation software doesn't have a sarcasm filter.)
For a while, Chinese experts speculated that the object might have been a comet — but skywatchers soon figured out that the sightings occurred less than an hour after Arianespace sent the Eutelsat 21B and Star One C3 satellites into orbit (from the European Space Agency's South American spaceport, where it was still Nov. 10).
"The detailed analysis of the height of the UFO and the timing of observation leads me to conclude that this was the ESC-A upper stage, 30 minutes after all the fuel leaked out via passification," a Hong Kong observer known as Galactic Penguin SST reported last week on the NASASpaceflight.com forum.
Today, Want China Times said that the Beijing UFO Research Society has reached a similar conclusion.
"The 'rays' were most likely the rocket jettisoning boosters or other parts and entering low Earth orbit after being launched 30 minutes previously," the Taiwan-based online publication reported. It's also possible that the swirls of light came from fuel or vapor emanating from the upper stage. Such explanations are consistent with a host of other rocket-related UFO sightings over the years, including Russian rocket stages that have been spotted over the Middle East and Scandinavia.
Just for fun, here are a few more such cases from the UFO files:
- Middle East UFO linked to Russian missile test
- Russia admits missile caused lights over Norway
- Did missile test spark Chinese UFO sightings?
- 'UFO' over Australia was likely caused by SpaceX rocket
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Seriously who believe in aliens visiting earth? Out of trillions of galaxies, trillions of stars and planets, the aliens choose earth.... Right...
great logic.
It's the mother ship.
A pinch of ground snail shell coated with rhino horn, exposed to that light, is what those master alien races use for fertility - and rocket fuel.
Soooo, this is a story that isn't a story? Another bomb from MSNBS.
Earth reflects trillions of watts of electromagnetic energy every second, much of it visible light. Its done this for BILLIONS of years. Our galaxy is only 100 thousand light years in diameter. There are a couple of hundred billion stars and even more planets in our galaxy.
This planet has been advertising life for billions of years. Does anybody seriously think that NOBODY noticed?
I'm guessing your someone who still believes the pyramids were built using wooden rollers.
so im guessing you know other planets have life
Earth was the easiest planet to get to located on the outskirts of the galactic plane, easy to get to through many portals. Gosh, do your RESEARCH!!
Actually Earth is a pretty nice place to visit. Not sure they'd want to live here, though.
If we can get our friggin planet back from the lizzies, THEN it will be the planet it was meant to and NOT a prison planet. do your research sheeple.
How come I never see a UFO?
Your not looking hard enough, they're out there. I see a UFO at least once every 3-6 months. You can tell its a UFO when it starts making unnatural maneuvers, something a comet or satellite won't do.
Shouldn't that be "their out there" ?
No, Doug, "they're" is correct. But "Your" should have been "you're". You both might consider suing your High School English teachers for malpractice.
Jim, your just guessing.. nobody knows for sure. I mean if God had intended they're to be flying saucers, He wouldn't have made gravity so sticky!
Too many sightings are occurring in every country to be a hoax. They're easily explained as rockets, planets, reflections or Chinese lanterns, but this is often a cover-up. There's been credible witnesses from former astronauts, pilots, police and military personnel. It's a topic that is usually dismissed as those who have seen UFOs are subjected to ridicule.
I agree, I wish society was more open and honest to these kinds of things. I feel like as intelligent and spiritual beings we should be.
Oh I agree! It is clear that this is an international conspiracy by tens of thousands of people in all the countries to keep alien visits secret. And they've been doing this without any kind of leak for many decades now. (These are the same governments that can't keep a botched gun smuggling operation secrect for more than a year, by the way). And MIB is not fiction, it is actually a documentary.
Right.
Poet930, so many sightings are explained because so many sightings are indeed witness misperception -- >90%, >95%, perhaps even more. Calibrating how reliable the reports are is very difficult but cases such as this provide clues on how often imaginary or exaggerated aspects can slip into a person's recollection of a bizarre apparition.
Specifically, when you say that the 'rocket' explanation has been used as a 'coverup', can you actually name a single time in which you think this deception was employed? Even once?
Hey'y'all! If there are millions of sightings and just one of them is authentic, that proves there are UFOs out there.
They are coming back on Dec 21...........to eradicate all stupid politicians from left and right that hinders the progress of this blue planet.
the stupid politicians ARE the bad aliens you ninny. 12.21 is the planetary alignment, after that, this place should be very interesting indeed.
These missile and space events, seen by eyewitnesses unaware of their actual stimulus, are very helpful in calibrating just how reliable the later recollections can be. China has produced a large number of such 'calibration runs' because until recently the UFO subject was suppressed by the regime.
Here's another excellent example of a case that was endorsed in the Richard Haines "pilots and EM effects of UFOs" study,
A Preliminary Study of Sixty Four Pilot Sighting Reports
Involving Alleged Electromagnetic Effects on Aircraft Systems
Richard F. Haines Dominique F. Weinstein
http://narcap.org/reports/emcarm.htm
Case 49 is:
[I have added GMT time to the provided local time, in square brackets]
June 18, 1982 21:57 [13:57]
Gong Heui area, Hubei, China (44°20 N / 114°31 E)
In Northern China on June 18, 1982, many sightings were reported from Heilongjiang Province, between 21:10 [1310] and 22:53 [1453]. One of the most interesting case is that reported by five Chinese Air Force pilots on patrol over north China’s military frontier. At about 21:57 the jet fighter’s electrical systems malfunctioned ; communications and navigation systems failed. Suddenly the pilots encountered and UFO of a milky yellowish-green luminous color, about the size of the full moon. The object grew larger and picked up speed, at which point it looked « as big as a mountain of mist». Then black spots were seen in the interior of the phenomenon. One pilot stated in his report : « When I first saw the object, it flew toward me at a high rate of speed as it whirled rapidly. While it was rotating it generated rings of light. In the center of the light ring was fire. In ten seconds the center of the ring exploded, then the body of the object expanded rapidly The planes were forced to return to base because of the equipment failures. The other four pilots also prepared reports. It is not known if gun-camera film was taken. After 30 seconds, the beam of light disappeared completly and replaced by a yellow sphere with clear edges. This sphere climbed rapidly and increased its size and brightness. The instruments returned to normal when the pilot went down to 500 meters altitude. At 22:01, One of the pilot arrived to his first turn at Cong Huei. Then after he flew for 3 mn toward his second step when his radio began to jamm : big noises resounded in the receiver, as if rain clouds and thunderstorm were in front of him, and the voice of the control tower operator became less audible. The radio compass instead of giving the direction of the tracking station direction gave a direction 30° on his right. He climbed to 6,000 then 7,000 meters, then he flew horizontally but the unusual noises continued to be heard in the receivers and the radio compas was still indicating a wrong direction 30° on the right. The pilot saw a bright object above the horizon. Very quickly this object became a beam of yellow light like a car headlight This beam of light was directed vertically toward the ground, in the same direction indicated by the radio compass.
JimO back: This is a classic case of aircraft electronic and electrical malfunction, multiple witnesses, 'no reason to lie', all the features of a sound data point, as Haines and Weinstein concluded.
But they contaminated their data base, unwittingly and probably not for the only time. The story is a misperception of a rocket launch. The equipment problem reports then had to be coincidences or embellishments.
Too bad Haines and Weinstein didn't bother to look at Jonathan McDowell's space launch log
http://planet4589.or...g/launchlog.txt
for June 18, 1982, and note what had blasted off at 1300 gmt and was easily visible to the west of northern China spewing a back-lit exhaust plume through second and third stage operation. Check the illumination conditions by using heavens-above.com and you'll see it was some time after sunset for the pilots, but the 150-mile-high humongous plume display was still in sunlight.
These are classic conditions for a 'missile UFO', and classic response from ufologists -- don't bother to check, pretend the case is rock solid, and plug it into the data base with so many others of the same quality. Mix well and bake, and get the results you always wanted from the beginning, regardless of the contaminated 'evidence' file.
Again, classic case where the conclusion is a theory based on a prosaic explanation ignoring many pinpoint details by the pilots that do not Jive with the rocket story. The author just simply runs with the theory as factual; case closed! That is simply pathetic and closed minded. That is generally mankind in a nutshell in the 21st century still when it comes to this phenomena.
Another Alan Boyle hit piece denying anything could possibly be extraterrestrial ever. They'll do mental gymnastics trying to explain this, and the great majority of you will either do mental gymnastics to try to believe their explanation...or will just believe their explanation without the mental gymnastics.
Boyle, your grandkids will some day hang their head in shame for being connected with your dishonest @$$.
Boyle has always impressed me as having an open mind, and the explanation given for this Chinese "UFO" strikes me as entirely reasonable. I speak, by the way, as someone who is confident that UFOs exist and almost certainly are extraterrestrial.
I'm sorry folks, you, along with many others, including the true authors of this story have been hoodwinked. This is not a Chinese rocket, this is the Chinese version of the H.A.A.R.P. program. We, the US, have a large array in Alaska. Study up a little bit. I'm no tree hugger, but this thing is really not good for people or the planet. The true use of this program is at the highest level of security. All you hear is smoke and mirrors!
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/haarp.html
the entire human race has been hoodwinked and those that dont wake up will find out in a most inconvenient way. do your research and I mean turn of the friggin TV and start doing some serious research. dig and criss cross reference.