Osservatorio Siciliano
The Osservatorio Siciliano is a Sicilian cultural association founded in 2025 that monitors UFO/UAP phenomena; its president is Filippo Finocchiaro. Its project called Oculus would continuously monitor the sky and Mount Etna; no independent assessment of its work is known.
The Osservatorio Siciliano (in English: Sicilian Observatory) is a Sicilian cultural association that deals with the observation of unidentified aerial phenomena (UFO/UAP). It was formed in 2025 out of a blog launched in 2024, and its motto is “Passione – Ricerca – Territorio” (passion, research, territory). Its president is Filippo Finocchiaro. Despite its name, it is not a professional astronomical institution; it should not be confused with the island's scientific observatories, such as the Catania astrophysical observatory of the Italian astronomical institute (INAF).
What it claims
According to a report by La Sicilia, the association wants to move from witness testimony to instrument-based, multidisciplinary and verifiable investigation. Its main project is Oculus, which the paper calls Italy's first independent, continuous monitoring network: it would monitor the sky and the activity of Mount Etna 24 hours a day. Its model is the camera and thermal-sensor monitoring of Mexico's Popocatépetl volcano, in operation since 1994. According to the association, the recordings are not stored on external servers but are kept by the association itself, so that their integrity is ensured. The cases linked to the association include light phenomena and silhouettes recorded by Etna's webcams in 2025.
Official and skeptical position
No independent scientific assessment of the association's work is known, and the public reports do not state how many cameras and sensors are operating, where, or by what method the recordings are analyzed. La Sicilia itself emphasizes that the collected material awaits verification and does not prove the existence of extraterrestrial or unknown technology. At Etna, gases, ash and glowing particles distort the image to begin with. A network of several cameras could in principle also measure distance and size, but if the recordings are kept only by the association, outside experts can verify them less easily.