woman called the police recently. He wanted to report a large object hovering over the trees for quite some time. The cops sent someone to check it out… and it was the Moon.
Stories like that make me (and everyone) laugh. How can you mistake the Moon for anything else? Yet people do it quite often. They actually don’t recognize the Moon, the second brightest object in the sky. Incredible.
Yet very credible. So remember that when someone claims to have seen a UFO and also says it couldn’t possibly have been anything other than a flying saucer. Ask them if they’re familiar with satellites, iridium flares, meteors, noctilucent clouds, halos, glories, parhelic arcs, crepuscular rays, autokinetic illusions, or even a flock of ducks. I spend a lot of time looking at the sky, and I know most people don’t. There’s a lot of stuff up there that can fool even experienced people, let alone those who don’t spend much time simply looking up.
The Moon. Heh.
Links to this Post
- *rofl* | Supernova | July 5, 2008
- links for 2008-07-06 | Yostivanich.com | July 6, 2008
- Sorting Out Science » Blog Archive » Skeptics’ Circle, the 91st | July 17, 2008
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- Scot UFO - UFO sightings, news & events from around Scotland | February 21, 2009
- Discover: Why Astronomers Don’t Report UFOs | Ghost Theory | September 1, 2010
- Why Astronomers don’t See UFOs and Other Oddities « Bodhi Thunder | September 1, 2010
- Why astronomers don’t report UFOs | Bad Astronomy | FEEDER | September 1, 2010
- Why astronomers don’t report UFOs « Dailyufo | September 4, 2010
- Marcianitos Verdes » ¿Por qué los astrónomos no reportan ovnis? | September 4, 2010
- Skeptics' Circle, the 91st | Sorting out Science | September 2, 2011