While trawling through the recent UFO reports in MUFON’s database, I came across this video of a UFO seen over Miami, Florida on 3/23. While there is not much detail in the video and there is definitely a lot of air traffic over Miami (both legal and illegal), I feel this video may have some merit and deserves to at least be investigated further:

From the report to MUFON:

I stepped outside and noticed a very large orange glow to my left.
I saw this “acorn-shaped” object growing in size- hovering over the rooftops. It was transparent on the bottom half. I ran inside and grabbed my Sony HandyCam Hi8– and yelled for my girlfriend to come see. By the time I started filming, it was already moving away and shrinking.

Additionally, a commenter on the YouTube page claimed to have seen the same or similar craft much further to the south somewhere in the Caribbean on the same night.

The lack of any strobe or marker lights in the video, lead me to believe that this is not video of an aircraft. There are what appear to be stars in the background at one point in the video as well as a brief clip of a railing of some sort as the cameraman lowers camera after the object disappears. Unfortunately, the poor low light performance of the camera leaves us with very little detail in the clip to give us any clues to the objects altitude, location or size. Despite these shortcomings, I believe this is a valid video of an object in the sky that is not an aircraft following civil aviation regulations and may very well be some sort of unknown craft. What you believe, is up to you. Let me know what you think in the comments.

MUFON Report
UFO 3/23/08 Miami FL. @ YouTube

Technorati Tags: report, sighting, UFO, video

photo by dev null If you are lucky enough to see a UFO (hopefully it was a pleasant experience and nothing horrific happened), the first thing I would suggest doing is writing down a detailed account of what you saw (including the date, time and direction you were facing) and draw as detailed diagrams of the craft and maps of where you were in relation to it. If you later choose not to report the sighting you can just destroy this information if you like, but if you do report your encounter it will help you make it as detailed as possible. Once you have taken notes about your sighting, take a minute to relax and let the initial excitement pass. Now you have to consider a very important question, whether or not to report your UFO encounter.

When you consider reporting your sighting the first thing to think about is if there is a simple, non-UFO, explanation for what you saw. Ask yourself, could what I have seen been an known aircraft? Another common source of UFO reports is the misidentification of stars or other celestial bodies. You can use a sky chart like the one at Sky & Telescope (free registration required) to see if there are any visible stars, planets located where you saw your UFO. You may even want to call your local community college or science museum to see if there were any meteor showers the night of your sighing. Don’t feel like this analysis should make you doubt what you saw - you did see something. This is just an exercise to see if when you think back about your sighting if you can come up with any good explanations. Even if you are not 100% sure you saw a UFO it is okay to report it (you just do not want to report something that you 100% know wasn’t a UFO). The next question you have to ask yourself is much more personal and will require some soul searching to find the answer.

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Technorati Tags: report, sighting, UFO