Thursday, September 04, 2003
MYSTERY AFTER UFO SIGHTINGS PUZZLE EXPERTS
Scotland - Strange lights in the North-east night sky have baffled the experts.
Sixteen lights travelling rapidly across clear skies were spotted over two nights by a Fyvie resident.
Air traffic control bosses and aviation experts have ruled out aircraft or satellites, because the lights were travelling too fast to be planes or orbiting objects.
Astronomy experts say the lights could not have been "shooting stars" because they were travelling too slowly and from different directions.
One North-east UFO expert was at a loss to offer a straightforward explanation and said the mysterious sightings should be logged as genuine close encounters with unidentified flying objects.
The high-level Fyvie flyovers first appeared on Thursday about 10.30pm and were still crossing silently overhead more than two hours later.
They took only seconds to cross the sky, then gave a repeat performance on Friday night and into Saturday morning.
Resident and Evening Express reporter Graham Lawther said he spotted the first lights at 10.35pm on Thursday.
He said: "I had stepped outside for a good view of Mars, which is closer to the earth now than it has been for thousands of years, on what was a crystal-clear, moonless night.
"But I also saw a small white light, high in the atmosphere, appear in the southern sky and fly extremely fast to the north.
"It was far too rapid for an aircraft. It was across the whole sky in under 10 seconds and a plane would have taken several minutes."
Mr Lawther saw seven identical, fast-moving pinpricks of light between 10.35pm and 11.20pm, and six more from 12.15am-12.45am.
Three more were witnessed on the Friday night, between 10.20pm and 10.35pm, the first heading south and two more quickly heading north.
A RAF Kinloss spokeswoman said: "We had no activity in that area on either day."
A National Air Traffic Services spokesman said: "I have checked with our colleagues in Aberdeen and Prestwick, which covers the upper air space.
"There are no reports of any sightings from either night."
A spokesman for the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh said the lights could have been satellites in high orbit.
He said large satellites were occasionally seen with the naked eye, though never 13 in less than two hours.
He said they were almost always observed shortly before dawn or after dusk, when sunlight reflected off their highly polished surfaces.
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