It was when I was attending University, in a town 60 km away from home, which meant I often drove home for weekends. And usually did it friday night (quite often after midnight) to avoid traffic and skipping classes. That specific night the sky had some low clouds and some open spots, and about 10 minutes into the trip I started seing three colourful lights ahead of me, apparently dancing around the sky and then disappearing only to reappear a little later. I thought to myself “what the BEEP?!”, and went on driving, keeping an eye on the sky as I drove.

At some point I had to start looking into my rear view mirror to spot the lights, but kept puzzling about what that strange phenomenon might be almost till I got to town, although I stopped seing it some 10 minutes before that. I was alreading seing my hometown lights looming ahead when I recalled one crucial fact that provided an explanation for the thing.

That week, a disco about halfway between the town I was studying in and my hometown had innaugurated a new attraction: a set of projectors that were to be used as advertising for the place. I knew that because… well… I was in college. In college one always knows about stuff like that. They were just being reflected off the clouds, and were visible for miles in either direction. So it remained UFO for about half an hour. But had I not known about the disco, the phenomenon might have kept that condition for much longer.

(they were soon forced to turn the projectors down, BTW – the town I was studying in has an international airport, and they interfered with its operations, according to what I’ve heard)

You can’t post a picture of a blurry kite that someone mistook for an alien spaceship and say it’s proof that UFOs (alien spacecraft) don’t exist.

Just admit that you are afraid, and that the hundreds of thousands of sitings a year has reminded you that, as scientists, you made a mistake you are afraid to atone for.

Wikipedia didn’t really have much on this, but Ibiblio (from UNC) does:

http://www.ibiblio.org/ghosts/bmtn.html

Didn’t miss much. Flares on balloons and the hoaxer was seen by a neighbor.

That sounds like the green running light on an aircraft.

That’s what the old timers called “Will O’ the Whisps.” How one interprets them depends on what one wants to see. It’s somewhat amusing to hear will o’ the whips described as “ghosts,” and it’s interesting to see what events people try to associate to them. OTOH, my grandmother grew up near a house noted will o’ the whips on the grounds, and they didn’t think it was anything other than some natural phenomenon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_light

Phil, even when more serious media try to sollicit “knowledgeable”opinions, they usually end up at the wrong place. They then usually contact an astronomy department on some university or observatory and talk to a professional astronomer.

Now the point is: most professional astronomers themselves have very little true knowledge of things visible in the night sky, like meteors etcetera. They can tell you everything about Quasars, Neutron stars, black holes, B-type stars and Sb galaxies: but when it comes to things closer to home like meteors and other atmospheric phenomena they know very little. Problem is that quite often they nevertheless start to pronounce on it with some perceived authority.

I have a strong amateur background (to a semi-prof level, having actually published papers) in meteor related stuff. And I have seen too many times that some professional astronomer was saying things about meteor-related topics (and other night sky phenomena) that missed the truth completely and would squarely fit under “Bad Astronomy”

Given this, the media don’t have it easy. Even when they try. It’s a catch-22.

The only unidentified object I’ve witnessed was around the middle 1970s. An object with lights that hovered over one spot. What was interesting was that we were in contact on the CB with another observer. If we had thought about it, we could have triangulated the position and the altitude. While we cracked some jokes about aliens with eyes like fried eggs, we assumed it was some sort of military exercise involving a helicopter.

Well, we found out, that it just was a rotating satellite, and we were quite sure that wasn’t a UFO.

It may have been that experience that helped set me on the path to being a skeptic. It showed me how I could be easily fooled by something relatively mundane and that it is best to truly search for answers, not just leap to the coolest conclusion.

The one most memorable happened in the mid ’70s at Love field in Dallas. Love is surrounded by the city and even back then it was a very busy place. Still is – the home base of Southwest Airlines. Two long parallel runways, north-south and always with lots of traffic.

Our flying club was thinking of buying a used trainer from the Piper dealer and I had taken my lunch hour to go check it out.

As I was not very familiar with the Comanche I had my head in the cockpit more than I normally would. at about 1000 feet, I looked up and right in front of me I saw a large metallic sphere, hovering right over downtown Dallas.

For a second or two (it seemed longer) I began to rethink my entire world view and philosophy of life. Once I had my head back on and realized that it was not close – no apparent change of size – I relaxed and proceeded South in the general direction of the object.

It turned out to be a Goodyear blimp seen head on several miles away.

A known (but unexpected) object seen from an unusual angle, even in bright daylight can cause an experienced observer to completely misidentify it.

Think what can happen with a brief glimpse in dark or low visibility conditions.

I’m not sure why, Juan, you say my description of the encounter isn’t very good. I was just summarizing it, and included a link to the story to get the details (sparse as they are). What about it was wrong?

While I don’t fully understand it, I realize it is because of my deficit of education on the subject rather than some paranormal phenomena. Why do people always assume the weirdest?

…Now, things I describe as “weird in the sky” are certainly UFO to me. But most of the time, these folks associate these with aliens. I sure don’t. It’s just… Something I can’t identify, and there’s a LOT of things coming before “MYSTERIOUS PHENOMENON FROM SCI FI!”