The Day After the 2007 Alderney UFO Sighting

A month ago I made a pretty fascinating discovery.

For those who of you who don't remember the 2007 April 23rd Aldernery sighting, here is a quick refresher.

The case was interesting for all the reasons any good case is interesting (radar, multiple witnesses, air traffic control chatter, CAA involvement, etc.).

Something definitely happened.

The only problem though was after digging through the radar plots. We were still more or less empty handed. David Clarke provided a nice overview of the case in his book, The UFO Files.

The research showed the testimonials were consistent. The radar was inconclusive. Another pilot reported seeing something. But that was it. The trail went cold. Another dead end.

Or so it seemed at the time.

Two to three weeks ago as I was rummaging through the notes in my scrapbook (available online here). I discovered that there was another sighting the next day (official cnes-geipan.fr report), not that far from the location of the Alderney sighting, in the south of France.

And guess what?

The video of the thing looked more or less identical to Ray Bowyer's drawing...

(listen to Ray describe the image)

Now compare Ray's description to the April 24th videos:
and

There are differences to be certain. However, I can't help but think what would this weird elliptical thing look like if the sun was gleaming off it?

Pretty curious, don't you think?

a reply to: Xtraeme

While the airline pilots story is very compelling, those 2 "UFO" Videos you posted are quite obviously/easily faked, the first one looks more like a little black hole.
There are rumors that there is a full video showing the second "UFO" Video hanging something from the tree infront of the guy filming.

Also the pilot says what he seen was roughly a mile long so not quite sure what compelled you to connect the dots on these 2 good effort for trying though mate

The videos look fake to me, but I'm no analyst.
a reply to: Aliensun

"Local Genuis" was it? Quite well you earn the self-given title. You are obviously correct because everyone knows that UFOs don't exist and, thus, all reports and images of them are fake.
Take a bow for your brilliant powers of deduction.

What are you talking about? He/she never claimed UFOs didn't exist, and even said he thought the pilot's sighting was compelling.

Howdy LG,

originally posted by: LocalGenius
a reply to: Xtraeme

Also the pilot says what he seen was roughly a mile long so not quite sure what compelled you to connect the dots on these 2 good effort for trying though mate

It is hard to estimate the size of something when you are not sure what you are looking at and you don't know how far away it is. Radar helps with the latter.

Assuming you know the distance, I would expect a pilot to be a fairly good judge of angular size.

Here is a transcript, word-for-word, of what Ray Bowyer said he saw,

(@38s) From my first sighting of it, which was initially 50 ... maybe around 50 miles away, perhaps 40 miles away from the actual object, it appeared to be fairly small, but it must have been pretty huge. It must have been very, very much larger than I thought it was originally. I told the air traffic controller, they asked me for a size approximately. I said about the size of a 737, perhaps twice the size. But in reflection, seeing this object from about 40 miles away. It must have been very, very much bigger than that. Perhaps maybe a mile across, perhaps.

Notice in the image it says "About the same as 737?" The question mark is important because it expresses uncertainty.


A 737 is approximately 94 feet long. One mile divided by 94 feet is equivalent to roughly 56 Boeing 737s end to end. This gives us a range (a rather huge range at that).

At the smallest Bowyer thinks it was about the length of a 737 to two times the size of a 737, and at the biggest a mile long. So the truth is probably something in the middle.

Trying to figure out the size of the object in the two videos is harder because we are dealing with a 2D image with no depth. If the videos are fake and the object is near the camera. The disc is very small. If the disc is big and very far away. It could be huge -- possibly a mile long.

those 2 "UFO" Videos you posted are quite obviously/easily faked, the first one looks more like a little black hole.

The first time I saw the 2007 videos when they were first released I was dubious about their authenticity, but at the same time there was a steady stream of reports coming in from France around late April 2007. So something was going on.

The link provided in the original post includes one of the official CNES reports from April 24. The Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) (English: National Centre for Space Studies) is the French government space agency.

www.cnes-geipan.fr...

There are rumors that there is a full video showing the second "UFO" Video hanging something from the tree infront of the guy filming.

Notice in the first video it starts with a wide shot? There don't appear to be any trees in the foreground where the person could have hung anything. If it was hoaxed, since the object moves from left to right without swinging back to the left, I would bet it was computer generated rather than a physical prop.

If you turn up more information about a hoax I'd be curious to see it, but as of now I am leaning towards the videos might actually be real.

The fact that something so similar was seen moving along a general southern trajectory over the space of several days. If it is an actual real physical craft, I suspect that it is probably some sort of government project.

Bowyer's sighting kind of reminds me of Jean-Charles Duboc's 1994 UFO sighting to be honest.

a reply to: Xtraeme

Heres that video I was talking about showing it's a hoax


Though I believe the pilot did see something interesting

originally posted by: LocalGenius
a reply to: Xtraeme

Heres that video I was talking about showing it's a hoax www.youtube.com... Sorry wont embed for some reason


Though I believe the pilot did see something interesting

I started laughing hysterically at the end of the video. I guess he used a fishing wire horizontally from the house to a tree and then hung another fishing wire off the first?

originally posted by: Xtraeme

originally posted by: LocalGenius
a reply to: Xtraeme

Heres that video I was talking about showing it's a hoax www.youtube.com... Sorry wont embed for some reason


Though I believe the pilot did see something interesting

I started laughing hysterically at the end of the video. I guess he used a fishing wire horizontally from the house to a tree and then hung another fishing wire off the first?

Haha probably something like that, I'm guessing they must have some attachment to the advertised website on top of the "ufo" aswell.
Wish the pilot could of snapped a few shots

I read a great webpage recently about the reliability of pilots' testimony regarding UFOs. It gives a detailed account of 3 cases where pilots were convinced that had seen a UFO, but in actuality they merely saw satellites entering the atmosphere, amongst other things. It also mentions how pilots are in fact quite unreliable when it comes to witnessing UFOs due to the way they think. If anyone cares the page is here:

www.zipworld.com.au...

originally posted by: Sharted
I read a great webpage recently about the reliability of pilots' testimony regarding UFOs. It gives a detailed account of 3 cases where pilots were convinced that had seen a UFO, but in actuality they merely saw satellites entering the atmosphere, amongst other things. It also mentions how pilots are in fact quite unreliable when it comes to witnessing UFOs due to the way they think. If anyone cares the page is here:

www.zipworld.com.au...

I'll give it a ganders, but personally I would say it's entirely down to an individuals character when it comes down to reliability. I wouldn't say for instance that a high class military's account of a UFO sighting it any more reliable than an average class citizen's account, yes it sounds better on the news but for all we know, the military guy could be a liar and the citizen could have very good character...

Extreme excitement and then extreme disappointment all in one page of a thread. Bugger!

originally posted by: skyblueworld
Extreme excitement and then extreme disappointment all in one page of a thread. Bugger!

My thoughts exactly .
It would be awesome if the French speaking American who reaches up and pulls
the fake UFO from the sky had a YouTube channel. He could make that his motif.
And with every hoax he walks on screen like King Kong and yanks discs from the sky.

originally posted by: skyblueworld
Extreme excitement and then extreme disappointment all in one page of a thread. Bugger!

They don't call me Xtraeme for nothing.

You always gotta to be prepared to update your views.