Cargo ship sailors saw glowing orbs over the Atlantic Ocean; the radar showed nothing
Two sailors on a cargo ship watched glowing orbs through binoculars for about 40 minutes south of Nova Scotia in the early hours of October 11. According to the report sent to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), the ship's radar did not show a single target. So far, nothing else corroborates the report.
Predawn watch on the open ocean
The anonymous sailor submitted the report to the civilian database of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). According to the report, at around 3:25 a.m. on October 11, their ship was heading east at 17 knots (roughly 31 km/h), about 640 kilometers south of Nova Scotia, Canada.
According to the description, conditions were good:
- the sky was clear, the sea was calm, and the ship was neither pitching nor rolling,
- there was no ship traffic nearby,
- the Moon was a thin crescent, barely one percent illuminated.
One light became four or five
The ship's second officer first noticed a strange light, slightly to the left of the bow. They watched it through binoculars: they saw a single glowing white orb, which they estimated to be 19–26 kilometers away. According to the report, the light rapidly rose and fell for five to ten minutes, moved left and right, and at times, according to the reporter, darted away at what the reporter described as "hypersonic speed". The reporter described the first object's movement as erratic and of varying speed, as if it was not following a defined path.
Later, three or four more orbs appeared, which according to the reporter resembled the first in every respect. They turned, rose and descended together, without any regularity. At times they moved to another position at a speed the reporter could only call unreasonable, and then they were there again. The duration given in the report is about 40 minutes.
Empty radar screen
According to the reporter, no targets were detected on the radar. NUFORC published the report on October 21 with three uncaptioned images. According to the Daily Mail, these were taken of the radar screen during the sighting, but no one has authenticated the images.
What we don't know
Neither the name of the ship, nor the shipping company, nor the identities of the sailors are known, and as of October 23, no authority had commented on the case. There is no independent witness, authenticated video or ship's log. NUFORC has not offered an explanation. The case does not appear among the Pentagon's UFO files, a new batch of which was released on October 23.
The sober take
The case is based on a single, anonymous report that nothing else confirms. The strength of the report is that two sailors on watch duty observed the lights for a long time, through binoculars, in clear weather. However, according to Gadget Review, over a dark ocean, without a fixed reference point, it is very difficult to judge the distance and speed of a light by eye. The 19–26 kilometer estimate cannot be verified, and if the actual distance was different, the impression of speed may also be wrong. Near the horizon, a bright star or planet, a satellite, a distant airplane or the lights of another ship can also appear to move or pulse when viewed through binoculars from a moving ship. The fact that the radar showed nothing does not prove anything by itself: detection depends on the target's size, material and altitude, as well as on the equipment's settings, and the range is also limited by the curvature of the Earth. If the light was a star or a planet, the radar could not have detected it anyway. The Brit Brief also raises the possibility of a mirage (fata morgana) and military drones, but no specific data supports either. A meaningful investigation of the case would require the ship's navigation data, the raw radar recordings, and precise direction and elevation estimates that could be compared with that day's satellite orbits, flight data and rocket launch data. No such data has been made public so far.