Does anyone know of any reports from astronomers of seeing UFO's (ie - possible alien craft) ?

My thought is that astronomers (me being an amateur one) know the sky pretty well, and see things that people that are not as schooled in the normal sky activity might think are alien in nature.

I for one have never seen any, and have seen many posts and messages on here and other sites by people who swear up and down they saw a "space ship", but it turns out to be some normal nighttime activity.

OK, that's amateur astronomers, but what about profesional astronomers that spend every night looking at the sky?

They probably do, but if they came out and told everyone " Hey I just saw a UFO" and has no proof it would kill their career... Their reputation would also be killed because UFO are still not considered acceptable my a large amount of people.

Well, think of it this way, if they're as unfreqent as they are down here, how the hell would you spot them up there.. I'm sorry, it's just a pretty stupid question if you ask me.

Depends on what type of UFOs you are talking about. Astronomers gaze into the sky, mostly in search of stars and galaxy out there. I am sure they come under various objects in sky they can't explain. But I doubt they think they are alien crafts, but unaccounted star or planet.

Surf

Once I tried to follow a satellite with my cheap telescope. I couldn't see it at all. I don't know if it would be the same for professional astronomers.
I'd say many of them would at least see something just because they are always looking up.

With all due respect, Drexon, I think you could have informed the author without the insult.

Drexon does state a very good point though -- a telescope is going to severely limit the observer's field of view. Think of it this way -- if you're standing outside looking up towards the stars, you see the entire sky above you. How many people look upward in this manner and yet see nothing?

Now imagine, instead of observing the entire sky above your head, you're only examining 1/1,000,000th of the visible sky. What's the likelihood your going to have something fly through your field of view?

Originally posted by Umbrax
Once I tried to follow a satellite with my cheap telescope. I couldn't see it at all. I don't know if it would be the same for professional astronomers.

Assuming the telescope wasn't very cheap, you should have been able at least to spot the satellite right before sunset or sunrise.

By following it is another thing, telescopes move really fast compared to planets and to follow them you have to make perfect adjusements in telescope angle.

Surf

I think you all would be surprised how much time astronomers just spend looking up at the sky with the unaided eye as oposed to looking through telescopes.

Good point sensfan, though I would have to imagine that "professional" astronomers find less time to skygaze than ametuer astronomers, if for no other reason then due to the fact that (at least when on the clock) they must perform more tasks than simply sky watching (e.g., data collection and analysis).

And thx, Frith, for the link.

From the source text:

"The returns identified 62 respondents who had witnessed or obtained an instrumental record of an event which they could not identify and which they thought might be related to the UFO phenomenon."

This equates to slightly over 4.5% of the repsondents -- less than one in twenty.

I find it especially interesting that while less than 5% opf the repsondents had actaulyl witnessed and/or recorded an event they attributed to the UFO phenomenon that 23% of the respondents answered "certainly" when asked whether or not UFO's deserved scientific study (another 30% answered "probably").

However, when asked to assign probabilities to explanations for UFO reports, the average probability assigned to the explanation having to do with extraterretrial life was only 3% -- less than the number of respondents who reported actually having witnessed a UFO.

Is this indicative of our inherently skeptical nature -- that someone can see something out of the ordinary yet deny the validity of someone else's experience?

Or is this simply a result of some accepted (allbeit unofficial) baseline of the percentage of sightings which can historically be explained by conventional means?

CLYDE TOMBAUGH, THE DISCOVERER OF PLUTO witnessed UFOs on more than one instance. A year or so ago I posted a link to a catalogue of blue book and sign/grudge reports... you might want to search for those and check out his original reports. I don't have enough time to look for them right now (sorry).

I believe amateur astronomers may see some strange sights in the sky from time to time but are able to give a reasonable explanation for what they see most of the time. Other people not as familiar with the sky would just call it a ufo. An astronomer is much more likely to pop out a star chart and say oh, that is the planet Venus or Jupiter, etc.

I remember one very unusual (for me at least) night time unidentified flying object. I was at the beach and my relatives told me to run quickly to the window. We all saw a very bright streak across the sky and it started breaking up into a million pieces from a center ball of light and it literally grew two or three times as big as the full moon within seconds. It looked like tons of glowing glitter in a circular fireball. It was very impressive. It kept going over the ocean and started to dim and fade away. After some investigating I decided it was one of those "soft snowballs" or a small water filled meteorite breaking up in the Earth's atmosphere. I hadn't heard much about them before and didn't realize they struck the Earth so much. That was the first and only one I've ever seen and I'm an amateur astronomer. I was wondering if it might have been a satellite crashing to Earth but this object scattered apart in a circular pattern into evenly glowing glitter like pieces of light. Too bad I didn't have a night time camera but it would have been too quick to record it anyway.

I have seen a strange day time event. I have no explanation for that event but I know the military knows all about it because I saw a cloud with rain coming out of it being escorted by helicopters at very low altitude right over town in the direction of a military base. Now that was strange. I suppose a very cold object could have caused lots of condensation around an object and the 4 or 5 helicopters had a reason for flying with the "cloud". Maybe I should call that a UFC or unidentified flying cloud.

I still remember reading after San Francisco had an earthquake and the lights went out, some residents called police reporting ufos all over. They didn't know that those lights were stars.

Did ATS go down a little while ago? Strange that I lost my connection to ATS when I attempted to post additional info on my story of the UFC above. This site could not be found on my pc for several minutes afterward either. This could make one to be slightly paranoid. Maybe I should just deny existence of any clouds.

[edit on 5-2-2005 by orionthehunter]

One time on a field trip in 9th grade we went to the planetarium,
they were letting us veiw the big telescope, it had a sun filter on it that allowed us to see sun directly, one at a time we looked, i was lucky, i saw 2 ufo/disks fly from right to left in front of whole sun!
i yelled out i see a ufo!
then the lady supervisor came and looked quikly and she saw another one go by and she yelled cool cool, lol
the guy behind me almost pushed her outta the way, just me and her saw it, i asked her right there if they see them all the time, she said "only the main guys around there saw them before but it was rare and it was her first time in 2 years".

So to answer your question they do see them, but its better when looking aginst a bright surface and back lit like the sun.... FYI

I know you guys wont belive this but ive been told by many firsthand that space outside earth is congested like a highway, if you could stick your head out of clouds you would see many moving ufos everywere!

[edit on 5-2-2005 by lizzardsamok]

When you are looking unidentified objects in space, how are you going to know its a UFO???

Astronomers probably expect to see something they cant identify. And of course, most space/sky ships would be either so small they dissapear or so close they zip by too fast.

I do remember one astronomer that did a very early report about flying objects crossing between us and the sun (as in fleet size). The pictures resemble those black ships in Babylon 5, lol. Could have been insects I suppose.

[edit on 5-2-2005 by merka]

A "Proffessional" Astronomer isn't necessarily going to be looking at the sky. He, or she, is most likely going to be sitting in a small room in front of several monitors looking at images of specific parts of the sky via a CCD feed from the telescope.
It's more likely going to be the amateur that sees the majority of anomolous objects as he, or she is probably going to be outside with a smaller telescope manually pointing it, and so visually taking in more sky.

I often spend ages in my parents garden when I go visit them in the East of England. They live in a small village and there is very little streetlighting so the nighttime sky views are very clear. There are many satellites easily visible to the naked eye and I have even had 4 in view at one time, following a N > S track. I guess it's a case of being in the right place at the right time though.

Originally posted by merka
When you are looking unidentified objects in space, how are you going to know its a UFO???

Astronomers probably expect to see something they cant identify. And of course, most space/sky ships would be either so small they dissapear or so close they zip by too fast.

I do remember one astronomer that did a very early report about flying objects crossing between us and the sun (as in fleet size). The pictures resemble those black ships in Babylon 5, lol. Could have been insects I suppose.

[edit on 5-2-2005 by merka]

no , these were clearly metalic shiny flying suacers like from a 50's movie.
thats what they actually look like in real life, so a ufo, it banked on turns...
I saw 2 of them exactly alike also, she saw same thing so thats 3 total..

[edit on 5-2-2005 by lizzardsamok]