Unidentified Flying Sundog
Published on Jan 18, 2008 at 11:27 am.
10 Comments.
Filed under atmosphere, skywatching.
Two days ago, I wrote about an UFO sighting over Stephenville, TX, that has been getting a lot of press attention. Well, the local news paper, the Fort Worth Star Telegram, has published a photograph purportedly of the UFO. It is an excellent photograph of a parhelion! Here is the photograph, courtesy of Sean Kiel, a truck driver who took it with his cell phone:
The more detailed eyewitness descriptions of the sundog UFO that are now being published by the paper are classic descriptions of sundogs. The UFO is being called a long cigar shaped object, multi-colored, and slowly rotating. That is what sundogs like this look like as the cirrus clouds that form them slowly drift past. In fact, this picture taken here in Texas is very much like the following photograph from NOAA that is posted in the Wikipedia article about sundogs:
Kiel’s photograph is even better than the ones that I took several weeks ago. The one that I saw was every bit as impressive as these, but by the time that I got home to get my camera, the sun and clouds were no longer in the proper position.
What I find interesting is that so many of the people commenting on the photograph published in the paper are now claiming that it is “proof” that a UFO was flying overhead. It is clearly a sundog phenomenon. This just goes towards making my point that many people don’t pay much attention to what they see in the sky. I have numerous college students who come to my astronomy classes who have never seen the Moon in the sky during daylight hours. But, sundogs are a naturally occurring phenomenon, and many people who look at the sky a lot have seen them. In fact, since Stephenville is in a fairly rural area, no doubt a lot of the farmers and ranchers there have seen so many sundogs over the years that they didn’t even give the object a second thought if this is what was seen. So, that might explain why so few people saw the UFO. For most of them, it was identifiable!
What is really disturbing, though, is that if you look at the comments on the news story, a large number of people correctly saw it as a sundog and pointed that out. But, there were also a large number of people who flatly rejected that explanation, even though this is a classic parhelion. This shows that people will often believe what they want to believe, no matter the evidence to the contrary. Carl Sagan once said that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” A photograph of something that looks exactly like a sundog does not make extraordinary evidence for a spaceship.
-Astroprof
Brian Waddington on January 19, 2008 at 4:23 am: 1
Larry King has dedicated a whole hour to this UFO. His guests are declaring it one of the most significant siting events. Amazing what a cloud can do to people. Admittedly when I was a light keeper a partially deflated weather balloon was puzzling for a while but cynic that I am…
Marcianitos Verdes » Ovnis sobre Stephenville (7) on January 20, 2008 at 7:23 pm: 2
[…] http://astroprofspage.com/archives/1440 […]
Strange sights in Stephenville « Archaeoastronomy on January 22, 2008 at 10:40 am: 3
[…] Astroprof’s follow-up post is interesting because it tackles the intellectual bankruptcy of simply throwing up your hands and exclaiming “It’s a mystery!” One of the UFOs is photographed and the photographer did a great job. It’s good enough to be able to see that it’s a sundog. The misidentification is not the fault of photographer. We’re growing more detached from the natural world. It explains the irony that Pliny the Elder knew more about sundogs than many modern journalists do today, despite the benefit of 2000 years of research. What Texan journalists have which the Romans didn’t have (nor the Peruvians in the puna) is access to scientists who have spent years studying phenomena. You’d think that the local paper in Texas could do better, but for some reason it doesn’t. […]
Observer on January 22, 2008 at 5:07 pm: 4
I thought the paper’s coverage was atrocious. The photo shows a daytime view, obviously, but many of the quotes say the sighting occurred at night.
JohnInFlorida on January 24, 2008 at 9:47 am: 5
These neat little pics are clearly NOT ufo’s. Anyone can see this even if they have never heard of ’sundogs’. This is not what was described by witnesses. Do sundogs appear at night? Do they move around in the sky? Do they accelerate when followed by jets? Me thinks not. Good try, though.
Astroprof on January 24, 2008 at 11:36 am: 6
Yes, this is not a picture of what I’d call a UFO. And, it did not seem to match what some of the early witnesses said that they saw. However, the top photo was widely published and reported by the local media as a photo of “the” UFO. With all of the media publicity, all sorts of people have been claiming that they saw the UFO, and many said that they saw it during the daytime.
Most likely, the Air Force Reserve jets practicing that evening in the area were the UFO sighted by the people at night (or the blimp whose flight path passed through the area that night on the way from West Texas to DFW).
Sorting Out Science » Blog Archive » Carnival of Space, Week 38 — The Adventures of Shorty Barlow, Private Eye on January 24, 2008 at 8:24 pm: 7
[…] As I walked past the newsstand, the headlines caught my attention — it said “Strange Sights in Stephenville.” I had to laugh when I read a bit further. Some huge thing supposedly flies over this ranching town of 17,000 people, but only about 30 of them see it. Were the rest blind, or were the 30 just over-enthusiastic? Maybe the 30 really saw a Sundog, or maybe they’ve just been drinking some of “homeboy”’s hooch… […]
Stephenville UFO Flap, pt. 6 - The first videos and photos | Fukien on July 5, 2008 at 7:24 am: 8
[…] 3.) A photo and sighting description only 45 miles from Stephenville, on the night in question. Unfortunately, the photo doesn’t look like much, and has been suggested to be a sundog. […]
-=cSs=- on October 21, 2008 at 9:33 am: 9
There is a theory that sundogs are actually portals for Galactic Lightships to enter third dimensional reality.
Sundogs are often accompanied by UFO sightings as well as chemtrails.
Astroprof on October 21, 2008 at 10:08 am: 10
Sun dogs are nothing other than a natural meteorological effect. Of course, if you don’t know what they are, then they are, indeed, unidentified objects (aerial, though not really flying).