UFOs from Reflections
Reflections from the bright sun have produced many elusive UFOs. All pilots are familiar with the luminous objects that sometimes appear in the air below a plane on a sunny day, particularly when the plane is flying over wooded terrain that is partly obscured by atmospheric haze. The sun has been reflected momentarily from a broad shiny surface, such as the metal roof of a farm building; because of the contrast between the bright surface and the dark forest surrounding it, the image appears to be a UFO floating high in the air.
Sometimes the sun shines on a bright metallic surface, such as the chrome trim of an automobile, and by chance is reflected directly into the eyes of a passer-by. If he then glances at the sky he may see a whole fleet of UFOs; the bright flash has produced a temporary chemical change in the retina so that for a moment or two the eye sees a series of saucer-shaped images of the sun. A photographer’s flashbulb or a bright flash of lightning can produce similar after-images.
Some startling UFOs have been produced by reflections from an object that the witness was not able to see or did not recognize. One night in the spring of 1961 an amateur astronomer reported that a huge cigar-shaped flying saucer was hovering in the sky several thousand feet above the Harvard College Observatory. Investigation showed that the “UFO” was a reflection from a small oblong insulator on an electric wire strung between two buildings. Faintly illuminated from below by the lights from the unshaded windows, it seemed to be an immense and brilliantly glowing object high in the sky. The witness at first refused to believe that he could so mistake the evidence of his own eyes. Next morning, however, he returned to the scene and was able to see that what had appeared the night before to be a giant spaceship was only a small insulator a few feet above his head.
The bright sun reflected at a particular time from an object invisible to the observer often produces a puzzling phenomenon, such as the flying saucer reported from Danby, California, early in October 1958.
About 4:00 in the afternoon on October 2, three prospectors standing near a tungsten mill at Railroad Danby noticed a sudden bright glow in the northwest sky which remained visible for about 2½ hours and then disappeared. When a glow appeared again the following day at the same time and place, the observers tried to identify it by using a small telescope and saw a bright, oblong object hovering above the horizon; it was the color of aluminum, approximately fifteen feet long, five feet high, and about four miles away. Getting into a car, the men drove in the direction of the object and searched the supposed location on foot for several hours, but could find no trace of the UFO.
Several days later, realizing that the object reappeared every day at about the same time and place, two of the men decided to investigate further. Studying the object through a pair of powerful binoculars, they could see guy wires coming from it and rods radiating from the guy wires. Remembering that two tall radio antennas used by the highway patrol stood in approximately the same location, the witnesses found the explanation, which Air Force investigators confirmed. The antennas, placed some twenty feet apart, extended about twenty feet above the trees. The cigar-shaped hovering object was a special effect depending on a particular combination of circumstances: only during the first part of October, and only late in the afternoon, did the sun’s rays strike the antenna in such a way that the reflection was visible to an observer at Railroad Danby[XII-1].
Sundogs in Utah and France
Sundogs are another special effect resulting from a peculiar combination of circumstances, and they continue to supply their quota of good UFO reports. Tiny ice crystals floating in a layer of quiet air and reflecting a bright sun are responsible for producing sundogs. A thin layer of such crystals may be invisible to the observer; a thick layer appears as the familiar cirrus clouds. Sunlight filtering through such an ice fog is reflected in each crystal so that a pattern of bright spots of light forms in the sky, an image of the sun that sometimes rivals the sun itself in brilliance. These images are called mock suns, sundogs, or parhelia when they accompany the sun (and mock moons, moondogs, or paraselenae when they accompany the moon). They appear in the sky at a position a given distance from the sun and usually have a trace of red on the edge nearest the sun.
Occasionally a sundog makes a complete circle of light surrounding the sun with four bright patches, one above, one below, and one on either side. Sometimes two circles will appear, one within the other, surmounted by an inverted arc and traversed by a cross, like the spokes of a wheel whose center is the sun. The complicated structure of a fully developed mock sun—which is extremely rare—can suggest to the imaginative an enormous chariot in the sky and can terrify the superstitious. There is little doubt that this phenomenon inspired the two visions of Ezekiel described in the Bible.