UFO in North Dakota - Video and photos (Low qual)

My girlfriend and I were about 5 miles south of Grand Forks International Airport watching the stars. We were parked on an approach, facing south.

At about 12:35am CST on April 26th - a partly cloudy but very scarce coverage at this time, with winds of, by my estimate, 15 mph tops from the north. My gf noticed a dim orange light to the west, moving south. I couldn't make an adequate guess at it's altitude, but when it enters a cloud, as I will say in a bit, i think it would be 2-6000 feet. After it was a ways to the SW of us, it turned towards us. It really didn't seem like an unnatural flight path but it was dark and I really couldn't tell much, other than the orange light got very bright, and it started moving toward us. by the time it was directly to the south of my car, It seemed to turn again, and during this turn the light remained unchanged. During this time my girlfriend was taking photos of it, then started recording just before it turned to us. As it got closer, and I'm truly sorry for this, we chickened out (as you will hear in the video). The recording ends here. Sighting lasted about a minute.

As we drove off, I leaned my head back and out of the window, and watched as it entered, or flew just above, a cloud (which was not a very large cloud - a seemingly low puffy cloud which I looked on the internet to be roughly 3-6000 feet high. When it was to the west of us it didn't seem to be this high, but I really didn't notice a drastic change in altitude and it was dark, so...). As it "entered" the cloud, the cloud directly around the object lit up orange. It wasn't a huge portion of the cloud that lit up, but I would guess the light seemed to extened by about 3 times it's original glare/illumination. I leaned my head back in the window and decided I had seen enough... lol I really was spooked.

We drove to the north, moving at about 35-40 mph, waiting to see if it would pass overhead to go to the airport, which it did not. After about a minute, I got curious and looked back. I couldn't locate the object. We followed the road north for about 3 miles, turned back east to town, and thats that.

There is an AF base 10ish miles west of the airport, pretty sure we got refueling jets and drones there now. But when I think of it, it didn't seem to be coming from that direction, more like it was to the NW of us, moving to the SW, as when it faced us initially, the light became bright and solid and remained solid even when it was directly south of us and during it's northward turn to approach us. Either it was a forward-facing light (which is the sense I got from the movement), or it was a rotational, non-omnidirectional light, like a spot-light.

One of the two things that really stuck out about this was that at 3-6000 feet, and if this is correct (and it didn't seem to be very high at all), we heard no sound. We hear jets and planes flying over our place all the time and she was basically leaning out the window. The other thing is that the orange light was very bright, but it didn't make me squint - hell I don't know if I even blinked lol. It almost seemed to be a very clear, or soft, glow... almost like a flourescent bulb, rather than the normal 75 watt ones.

Footage was all gathered with a Kodak m763, a pretty cheap cam, so it isn't anything grandoise.
www.kodak.com...

And trust me, I slap myself every day over being a chicken and my bro ripped into me a few times over doing just that lol.

Anyway, here are the photos:
img33.imageshack.us...

And the vid:
www.youtube.com...

The first and third photos may be blurred by shaking, but the other 3 seem quite clear, imo.

The shape is so strange.
Really interesting.
Is that the actual shape or is it an effect of the camera you used, when you saw it with the naked eye did it actually look like that, if so it's unlike anything I've seen in the sky.

Honestly, good effort with the pictures and video it may not be great quality but I think people are rational enough to understand not everyone's going to be carrying around a top grade camera.


At least you bought something to the table rather then just a story.

reply to post by pop_science


Actually, all I could see when looking at it with my eyes was a bright orange light. I couldn't make any distinct shapes at all. It was 12:30ish, so quite dark and the light was very contrasting to the background. And I really don't know a lot about cameras and photos, so hopefully someone can answer that question as well.

And thanks, I know it aint much, but maybe someone can get some enhancements going on the photos.


[edit on 28-5-2009 by shanerz]

No one wants to try to do any work on the photos? Maybe some filtering, filling in/adding pixels or whatever you guys do? Someones gotta be bored enough. It would be much appreciated.

Here are some quick and dirty enhancements using heavy oversaturation and bumping up the brightness and contrast. So the colors are not necessarily going to be accurate. Make of them what you will.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/669bc2f8bad7196f.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/d3331a1946efe336.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/a248c003bd539c04.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/0213b73e8092cdb7.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/b88fa85ad768d806.jpg[/atsimg]

Thanks for your story. Fairly detailed and gives us enough to build the pictures in our minds. The pictures do seem oddly shapped, nothing I've seen to recent memory, and the enhancements are quite interesting. Thank you for making an effort to document it!

Thanks for the compliments, and welcome for the documentation.

Thanks, Nohup. I appreciate any work done at all.

Now, I'm thinkin the red hazeyish stuff is probably due to my camera capturing, or rather failing to capture, light.

If there is anyway to get that stuff cut out, at least whats overlapping the object, and to fill in/blend with what would seem natural colors.

Also, the light was orange, so if theres anything that can be done to take orange outta it, unless Nohups work works in that way, but I'm pretty sure the color captured is already skewed by the quality of the camera.

If anything, on the second photo.

No rushes, though, and thanks again. It is much appreciated.


[edit on 29-5-2009 by shanerz]

The larger format image (the smallest one above) shows orange and yellow no matter how much you bump it up, so that one might be the most accurate, color-wise. The other images show green, mostly, and there's really no good way for me to change the color without heavily modifying the image. Maybe it was the camera, although it's odd that the colors would be so different in the one image and not the others if they were all taken with the same camera.

The increase in color saturation is only going to bump up the values of the colors already present in the images, and those were predominantly green. Anyway, here's another stab at an enhancement:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/719922156d9db9dc.jpg[/atsimg]

Now, here's a little something. The first, larger format photo (the 3072 x 2304 image), actually has two points of light in it, one centered, and one on the far right. Enlarged and enhanced, they look like this:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/5c1006d6dac97005.jpg[/atsimg]

[edit on 29-5-2009 by Nohup]

I am from Fargo, where was this? I mean what main roads were you near, I have posted a story in another thread about an encounter. It was in the same general area? I wonder if the base being there is an attractant for ufos?

reply to post by Nohup


I'm pretty sure that the second photo 101_1202 (with 2 objects), the larger photo is blurred from shaking... I'm fairly certain that the bottom right light is just a house light.

It's hard to tell though, because the other house light to the left of the light that is similar to the one higher up seems to be somewhat in focus. But compared to 101_1204 (the one with the rectangular with a slant on the left object) the light in 1202 seems much more dim. Could be just the camera, but I have no experience to tell.

*Forgot to add: (and wow do I fail at that) I'll try to clean up in a sec...

Another thing, when this camera shakes when recording small lights, is you get a big snake looking image. But when shaking on a bright object, like the moon, I get like a smear. I'll post examples in a minute.

Clear Moon: img12.imageshack.us...

Shaky Moon: img40.imageshack.us...

Shaky house lights:

Maybe just for a test, could you take out the red "haze" and replace with a natural color in some part of the photo say the upper right "wing" or the lower left part. If this doesn't take too much work.


And to meph: This was 5 miles south (opposite side of HW 2) on the road that runs to GFI airport. Can't remember the exact road, but about 12-15 miles E-SE as crow flies from the air base.

[edit on 29-5-2009 by shanerz]

[edit on 29-5-2009 by shanerz]

[edit on 29-5-2009 by shanerz]

reply to post by shanerz


But then again, maybe it is a good shot and the camera made a duplicate image somehow? As with the shaky light (last photo) you see a couple duplicates... and the 2 houses that would have been captured are obviously level, and the image shows the dupe lower.

Oh, LOL pretty sure these photos were taken with the window up... it isn't until the video (which was after the photos) that the window gets rolled down, probably accounts for duplicates? No flash though obviously. Might account for the color differences also?

Her coat is green and white, might be the cause of the color... maybe even the object in the photos... but I would think there would be more of her visible if this were the case. But again, I'm not a pro... if this is the case, I can try to reproduce the effects when it gets dark? Man I hope I didn't totally fudge this up.


[edit on 29-5-2009 by shanerz]

[edit on 29-5-2009 by shanerz]

reply to post by shanerz


Nevermind, her coat is white, and other night shots I have seem to have a green tint to it... probably because of the night setting on the camera.

No lights on the front of the camera, so this isnt it. I'm fairly certain the object in the photos is whatever was flying that night.

Some orange/red house lights stay orange, dont really understand why the object in the photo takes on a green tint, as it was a solid orange light the whole time since it turned toward us from the east.

Sorry wrong thread




[edit on 30-5-2009 by observe50]

The lights look similar to what the popular crafts around these
days might flash.

You might want to go wit the triangle craft.

reply to post by TeslaandLyne


If you are referring to the video, it really isn't a very good representation of what we saw. My cam specs are posted above, so I suppose you can understand why, lol. This object was a solid, bright, orange light. Couldn't make out any shapes in the dark, just a bright orange light that drowned out whatever was making the light.

We've also been out numerous times since then, haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. Tried to reproduce reflections, due to a closed window, but couldn't. Haven't really been able to make anything out of the photos myself. Just thought I'd share what I have with ATS in hopes of someone putting some explaination on it, other than a UFO... but I didn't really expect a lot to come out of it.

Thanks again to everyone.

This area has had a few UFO sightings over the years. I live north of the GF airport and have had a few sightings myself. In 2005 I saw and photographed a triangle shaped object. link And last fall my Son and Wife both witnessed a large triangle object flying from east to west very low in the sky south of our home. It happened on October 1, 2008 at about 10:00 pm. They called for me to look at it, but by the time I got outside it was already gone. I just assumed it was a plane at first but once outside I noticed there was no sound of any planes in the air. I had them each draw a picture of what they saw and was surprised to see they both drew a picture of a pointed triangle (not equilateral) with 5 to 7 yellow lights on each leading side of the triangle. The object disappeared behind some trees as it headed west.

The airbase might be testing some advanced UAV's or some other exotic crafts, but what I don't understand is why they would be all lit up and traveling near a major population area. I have had a couple more sightings around this area if any of you are interested.