2007 Alderney UFO sighting

Reported UFO sighting April 2020 May 2023 2007 Alderney UFO sighting Alderney by Sentinel-2.jpg Satellite image of the island of Alderney The island of Alderney, above which the reported sighting took place. Approximately 14:09 UTC+0 Approximately 0 9 0 23 April 2007 Over Alderney, Channel Islands 49 42 N 02 22 W type:event_region:FR UFO sighting Ray Bowyer Ray Bowyer (pilot) Paul Kelly (air traffic controller) John and Kate Russell (passengers) Patrick Patterson (Blue Islands pilot) In the afternoon of 23 April 2007, Ray Bowyer, a pilot for the airline Aurigny flying south towards the island of Alderney in the Channel Islands, sighted unidentified flying objects. He reported the sighting to an air traffic controller, who told him that a second pilot had seen something similar. In Bowyer's report to the British Civil Aviation Authority, he said he saw two bright, stationary objects. Two passengers on Bowyer's aircraft said that they saw unusual, coloured lights at the same time. Proposed explanations for the sighting have included earthquake lights and sun dogs. Accounts of the sighting Bowyer's accounts thumb|alt=Photograph of a passenger aeroplane|An Aurigny Trislander, similar to that flown by Bowyer On 23 April 2007,Cleland 2008 Ray Bowyer, a fifty-year-old pilot for Aurigny with eighteen years of flying experience, reported seeing "a cigar-shaped brilliant white light" in the sky.Evening Standard 2007Campbell 2021Haines 2007United Kingdom Government 2007Lewis-Kraus 2021 He first thought that it was reflected light from greenhouses on the nearby island of Guernsey.Campbell 2021 Then he decided it was a stationary object, approximately the size of a Boeing 737, at an altitude of around 2000 ft and at a distance of 10 mi. He later concluded that its distance was closer to 40 mi and its size was "as much as a mile wide".Evening Standard 2007 In 2021, Bowyer said it was "the size of five or six battleships", and that it had been "a very sharply defined, solid, bright yellow-gold object with a couple of black bands on the side that were kind of shimmering".Campbell 2021 For a 2007 BBC article two months after the incident, Boyer said it was "like a CD on its edge".Rohrer 2007 In 2013, the British academic and folklorist David Clarke published a partial transcript of the recorded conversation between Bowyer and an air traffic controller on the island of Jersey. In the transcript, the air traffic controller said that he did not pick up any radar contacts ahead of Bowyer's aircraft, only seeing "a very faint primary contact", which he considered to be meteorological in origin.Lewis-Kraus 2021 Bowyer said that he approached the light and looked at it through his binoculars. He later said that he had been "able to look at this fantastic light without discomfort".Lewis-Kraus 2021 He also said he saw a second object moving in formation with the first set of lights, later stating it was "exactly the same ... [but] further away", being closer to the island of Guernsey. He said the UFO was "clearly visual" for approximately nine minutes.Lewis-Kraus 2021Evening Standard 2007 After landing in Alderney, Bowyer made an official report to the Civil Aviation Authority, labelling the incident as a "near-miss".Evening Standard 2007 Bowyer then flew the return leg of his flight to Southampton, but did not see the objects again.Campbell 2021 By 25 April 2007, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) had stated that it would not investigate the reported sighting.BBC News 2007 Approximately a week after the reported sighting, the MoD stated the incident had taken place in French airspace and so was outside its responsibility.Lewis-Kraus 2021 Two weeks after that, the MoD released information connected with the report, including a statement from a second pilot.Lewis-Kraus 2021 The report of the sighting published by the MoD reads in its entirety: First object was bright orange/yellow. There was a gap in light or darker area. Second object was identical.United Kingdom Government 2007 Later, in Pilot magazine, Bowyer added a sketch of what he had seen to this report, in which he described the objects as approximately the size of a "reasonably large town".Lewis-Kraus 2021 Bowyer reported to the BBC that he was "pretty shook-up" by what he saw, describing the incident as "pretty scary".BBC News 2007 The Times regarded Bowyer's report as "one of the most impressive and perplexing testimonies to have found its way into MoD archives".Campbell 2021 In 2008, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported on the incident in connection with what it called a "huge rise" in reported UFO sightings in the United Kingdom.Cleland 2008 Other witness accounts According to Bowyer, several passengers on his aircraft had noticed the light,Campbell 2021Lewis-Kraus 2021 one of whom described it as "sunlight-coloured".Lewis-Kraus 2021 Two passengers reported seeing the light to the Evening Standard, one of them describing it as "an orange light ... like an elongated oval".Evening Standard 2007 Patrick Patterson, a pilot from the airline Blue Islands reported that he saw a similarly described object in the same approximate position.Clarke 2013 167 It was later reported that this pilot saw "an object behind him to his left" at 1950 ft m.Haines 2007 One interpretation of this event was that this was an atmospheric phenomenon.Clarke 2013 167 Proposed explanations thumb|alt=Photograph showing the sun, central, and two tall, bright lights equidistant from it to the left and right.|Sun dogs photographed in North Dakota in 2009 Bowyer rejected the suggestion that he had claimed to see an alien vessel, only remarking that he had "never seen anything like it before in all [his] years of flying."Evening Standard 2007 When interviewed by the BBC, he accepted the possibility that he had seen earthquake lights,Rohrer 2007 a scientifically-debated phenomenon where flashes of light appear over areas of seismic activity,Derr St-Laurent Freund Thériault 2011 165 connected to the earthquake in south-eastern England that took place on 28 April.Rohrer 2007 A local astronomer, Michael Maunder, attributed Bowyer's report to sun dogs, an optical phenomenon caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals in the atmosphere. He described the weather during the flight as "just right for setting up sundogs and similar phenomena".Maunder 2007 5 Sun dogs appear at 22 degrees relative to the direction of the Sun from the observer,Pretor-Pinney 2011 124 and Maunder noted that at the time of Bowyer's sighting, the lights he reported seeing would have been approximately 22 degrees from the Sun.Maunder 2007 6 References Bibliography BBC News BBC News 2007-04-25 Pilot spots 'UFO' over Guernsey https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/guernsey/6591365.stm 2023-05-13 Campbell Matthew 2021-08-01 The truth is up there: how the Pentagon gave hope to Britain's UFO spotters The Times https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/the-truth-is-up-there-how-the-pentagon-gave-hope-to-britains-ufo-spotters-0thx8wp32 2023-05-13 https://archive.today/20230518015856/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-truth-is-up-there-how-the-pentagon-gave-hope-to-britains-ufo-spotters-0thx8wp32 2023-05-18 live Clarke David David Clarke (journalist) 2013 The UFO Files: The Inside Story of Real-life Sightings Bloomsbury Publishing and the National Archives London 978-1905615506 https://books.google.com/books?id=PC_6or5kQ9EC&pg=166 19 May 2023 Cleland Gary Huge rise in British UFO sightings 2008-02-07 The Daily Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1577922/Huge-rise-in-British-UFO-sightings.html 2023-05-13 https://archive.today/20230523152432/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1577922/Huge-rise-in-British-UFO-sightings.html 23 May 2023 live Dewan William J. 2006 'A Saucerful of Secrets': An Interdisciplinary Analysis of UFO Experiences The Journal of American Folklore 119 472 184–202 10.2307/4137923 4137923 Lewis-Kraus Gideon 2021-04-30 How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously 2023-05-13 live https://web.archive.org/web/20230511010656/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously 2023-05-11 Derr John S. St-Laurent France Freund Fridemann T. Thériault Robert 2011 Earthquake Lights Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics 1 Gupta Harsh K. Harsh Gupta Springer Dordrecht 978-90-481-8701-0 165 Haines Lester 2007-04-27 UK airline pilots spot giant UFO The Register https://www.theregister.com/2007/04/27/mystery_object/ 2023-05-13 Alderney Journal 26 May 2007 http://www.alderneyjournal.com/issues.php?startissue=873 873 St Anne, Guernsey UFO Explanation Michael Maunder 'Mile-wide UFO' spotted by British airline pilot The Evening Standard 2007-06-22 https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/milewide-ufo-spotted-by-british-airline-pilot-6592519.html 2023-05-13 Evening Standard 2007 Pretor-Pinney Gavin 2011 The Cloud Collector's Handbook Chronicle Books San Francisco 9781452105185 Rohrer Finlo BBC News 2007-07-04 Saucers in the sky https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6268708.stm 2023-05-15 United Kingdom Government 2007-07-06 UFO Reports 2007 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/16852/ufo_report_2007.pdf 2023-05-13 Further reading Pilots spot 'UFOs' near the Channel Islands Report on Aerial Phenomena Observed near the Channel Islands, UK 23 April 2007 http://www.nicap.org/reports/070423channel_islands.pdf Jean-Francois Baure David Clarke Paul Fuller Martin Shough none [Cited in Lewis-Kraus 2021.] Bowyer Ray UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record Gigantic UFOs Over the English Channel https://books.google.com/books?id=Mzc6R2LH24kC&pg=73 73–81 2010 Crown 9780307717085 none [Cited in Lewis-Kraus 2021.] Clarke David David Clarke (journalist) 2015 How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth Quarto Publishing Group London 978-1-78131-304-6 none https://astronomy.org.gg/user/media/Newsletters/2007-Sagittarius-c.pdf Sagittarius September 2007 La Société Guernesiaise Alderney UFO – a Meteorological View Tim Lillington St Peter Port, Guernsey none [Cited in Baure et al. 2007.] 49 42 N 02 22 W type:event_region:FR title Alderney UFO sighting Category:Alderney Category:Aviation accidents and incidents involving the Britten-Norman Trislander Category:Alleged UFO-related aviation incidents Alderney UFO sighting Alderney UFO sighting