6 Famous UFO And Alien Sightings - And The Real Explanations Behind Them

Sightings of supposed alien spacecraft make headlines around the world - but what tends to go ignored are the mundane, reasonable explanations which come out afterwards.

Nigel Watson, author of The UFO Investigations Manual, says, ‘The problem with UFO and alien reports is that even if they are thoroughly debunked or explained, this doesn’t satisfy those who believe in visiting spaceships.

‘They dismiss debunkers as agents of the government who want to hide the UFO ‘secret’ - and so the explanations are quickly forgotten.

‘Some ufologists just grasp at these straws and just hope that one day they’ll be right.’

The Haiti ‘UFO’ fleet

At first glance, the footage is absolutely convincing - not to mention terrifying - as a fleet of mechanised spacecraft, looking like glowing Millennium Falcons, swoop over palm trees in Haiti.

As soon as the footage appeared online in 2007, it became a viral sensation – and was reported by news outlets around the world.

But there was just one problem - it’s not real.

In fact, it was knocked up by one of the animators on the Jim Carrey film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, who didn’t even intend for it to become a viral hit.

A UFO is seen near the Space Station - then NASA’s feed cuts out

This happens with surprising regularity - but one famous sighting was on January 22nd, 2015, where a large, grey object loomed near the Space Station, then NASA’s video feed mysteriously cut out.

Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual says, ‘The constant 'sightings’ of UFOs near the ISS are mainly due to reflections and space junk, and it is down to wishful thinking that images sent back from the space station are of alien craft.

‘The same applies to the enormous amount of alien artefacts and structures seen in images sent back from Mars.

In fact the video feed from the ISS cuts out regularly, which just means the feed is switching to another camera.

NASA says, 'Reflections from station windows, the spacecraft structure itself or lights from Earth commonly appear as artefacts in photos and videos from the orbiting laboratory.’

The Roswell Slides

Last year, UFO researchers claimed to have made a miraculous discovery – sixty-year-old slides showing a tiny alien being transported from the site of the Roswell crash in 1947.

An arena full of people in Mexico paid to watch the unveiling of the Roswell Slides – and thousands more tuned in around the world.

Billed as the big reveal which ‘proved aliens existed,’ the event created massive publicity around the world.

But keen-eyed internet detectives applied an image processing programme, Smart Deblur, to one of the images, and found a placard which seems to say, ‘Mummified Body of Two Year Old Boy.’

Further down are words which say, ‘San Francisco Museum’.

Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, says, ‘The slides are genuine images of a museum exhibit that have been erroneously been linked to Roswell and aliens. It is a shame this has tarnished the reputation of all the so-called experts who attended this event.

The Death Star is spotted ‘refuelling from the Sun’

Alien-hunters went wild in 2012 after an image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory seemed to show the Galactic Empire’s fearsome battle station, the Death Star, right next to the sun.

In fact, the spherical alien craft seemed to be ‘fuelling up’ - possibly before turning its beams on Earth, just like it did on poor old Alderaan.

But (thankfully), Lord Vader wasn’t actually paying our solar system a visit - it’s a solar 'prominence’ or 'filament’ - a feature extending out from the sun which forms over the course of a day, and can extend hundreds of thousands of miles into space.

Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre said, in a reply to Sunsflare’s video, 'Filaments appear to be dark because they’re cooler in relation to what’s in the background. When you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you see is this spherical object and you’re actually looking down the tunnel.’

Ray Santilli’s Alien Autopsy

It’s one of the most iconic images of UFO folklore - a black-and-white film of an alien being dissected, supposedly after crashing near Roswell in 1947.

But it’s completely fake.

Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, said, ‘There is very little evidence to support the idea that a flying saucer crashed near Roswell in 1947, and the same applies to other flying saucer crash incidents.

‘Indeed, they can be regarded as part of an American folklore tradition that stretches back to 1897 when newspapers reported stories of 'airships’ invading the skies and in some cases crashing. The most famous one refers to a crash of an alien spaceship in Aurora, Texas, which was obviously a made-up story that cashed in on this craze. This hasn’t stopped ufologists searching for the alleged grave of the Martian who was found inside this craft.

Ray Santilli released the so-called ‘Alien Autopsy’ film in the 1990s, claiming to have received it from a cameraman who worked at Roswell - and it was broadcast on television in 33 countries.

In 2006, Santilli admitted it was fake - but said that it is a ‘staged reconstruction’ of a genuine alien dissection film he had been shown in 1992.

Aliens visit the Large Hadron Collider

An swirling ‘dimensional gateway’ opens up over the Large Hadron Collider - and a glowing orb flies into it, in a video hailed as proof aliens are visiting Earth.

The video was posted on YouTube by Section 51 - a UFO fan channel.

But while the video became a viral hit, what was less well reported is that Section 51 also hosts clearly fake videos - including a video of Santa Claus flying over New York in a sleigh

Snopes says, ‘This is a fake video created by a YouTube channel that specializes in hoax videos. Section 51 has previously published fake videos purportedly showing “ancient pyramids in Antarctica,” a “giant UFO over parliament,” and “proof” that the moon is actually an artificial intelligence base. Section 51 is so prolific that it even promises to provide “new UFO sightings every Monday & Thursday.’