A UFO Sighting

EDIT: This post is about the first of three possible UFO sightings. You can check out the other sightings by clicking April 5th and July 13th, or simply click the UFO tag at the bottom of this post.

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Note: I strongly recommend you expand these images for viewing.

Photo #1a:

I noticed this bright object moving across the sky. At first I thought it was a helicopter, but as I kept watching there seemed to be something odd about it; its profile was too round and solid. I know it sounds strange, but I kept trying to convince myself it really was a helicopter, even imagining I could see the blur of its rotor blades. Too late, I decided to snap a photo of the darned thing so I could examine it later. By then it had crossed a goodly portion of my field of vision, from left to right. It disappeared from view just moments later. Which is why, in spite of the fact that the object was in view for a good minute or so, I just have these few photos.

I guess part of it was this thought in the back of mind: 'Nah-- I couldn't possibly be watching a UFO up there, just floating across the sky all leisurely-like, as if such a thing happened every day' (I could kick myself -- repeatedly).

[Jacques Vallée, the maverick UFO researcher who served as a model for the French scientist character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, mentions in one of his books that someone of his acquaintance once had a good opportunity to photograph a UFO, but experienced an odd mental block against doing so; I'm not one of those paranoid people who think UFOs control witnesses' thoughts (aluminum foil hat, anyone?), but there's an interesting parallel here in the fact that I, the compulsive sky-watcher and photo-diarist, seem to have actively talked myself out of taking more photos of this particular object, even though normally I am apt to take multiple shots of anything that I find even slightly interesting or unusual]

That was yesterday. Tonight I downloaded the photos and blew them up, and imagine my surprise.

NOTE: As I said, I strongly recommend you expand these images for viewing.

Photo #1b:

Photo #1c:

Photo #2:

Photo #3a (Yowza!):

Photo #3b (Zoom 1):

Photo #3c (Zoom 2):

Photo #3d (Zoom 3):

Looks like in photo #3 the object has changed either its angle toward me, or its shape, or both.


Edit #1: By 'yesterday' Wednesday, the 16th is meant -- I started the post late at night and didn't realize what time it was.

Edit #2: There is a video clip of me taken a few years ago for the office Christmas party, in which I am seen wearing an aluminum foil hat and declaring that I 'religiously' put it on every evening for seven minutes starting at 6:15 PM in order to keep mind-control rays at bay, or something like that; if you happen to have seen it, remember this -- it was a joke.

Edit #3: Other than cropping/resizing, these photos have not been enhanced or altered in any way -- they have not been cleaned up for noise, or had the contrast heightened, etc.

Edit #4: There was the inevitable objection that the blow-up in photo #1c looks like a speck of ordinary shmutz sitting on the lens; so I deliberately left in that piece of lint on the lens in photos #2 and #3(cropped out in #1), for comparison purposes -- just so you can see there is no resemblance between the two; in any case, it's obvious the blow-up in #3d looks nothing like #1c.

Edit #5: I AM NOT one of those people who automatically equate UFOs with spaceships (see the list of questions at the end of the December 28, 2010, entry); I do not believe in little grey alien creatures abducting/breeding with humans or sharing technology with the government in return for whatever, or Scandinavian-looking aliens bearing bland messages of peace and universal brotherhood; nor do I believe in Hangar 18/Area 51-style 'crashed saucer' conspiracies; as far as I'm concerned all that stuff is rubbish born out of the overheated imaginations of people who can't tell the difference between reality and grade-D science fiction; what I do believe is that there really are some strange things going on in the skies, and that they should be rationally investigated, like anything else.