Russell Crowe's 2013 UFO photo: what is known, and what isn't?
In March 2013, Australian actor Russell Crowe accidentally captured a glowing, red-and-yellow object in the sky above a Sydney neighborhood with a bat-watching camera. According to a Vice article from October 5, 2026, the footage has still not received a satisfactory explanation.
In March 2013, Russell Crowe posted a link to a YouTube video containing long-exposure photos he had taken himself. The images show a red-and-yellow, bright object streaking across the sky. According to the actor, he took the footage with a camera that he and a friend had installed on the balcony of his office in Woolloomooloo to photograph the fruit bats living in the area, but this series of shots was captured instead.
After the photos were made public, many people received the case with skepticism. According to skeptics, the object may have been a reflection of the beacon light of a nearby sailboat, while others suspected a lens flare. Crowe rejected both explanations: according to him, the camera was on the balcony, not behind glass, and the object moved in the footage while the camera was fixed, which in his view rules out a lens artifact.
What do we know, and what don't we?
It is certain that the images exist and that Crowe published them himself, together with his explanation of where the camera was placed. It is also known that Vice suggested the phenomenon could have been caused by sunlight reflecting off a passing airplane. However, not even the article claims with certainty what was actually captured in the footage. If the object had actually been there in the sky in reality, outside the camera, above a densely populated part of Sydney, others would have been expected to report the sighting as well, but there is no public information about that.
Crowe did not drop the subject after these events. In 2015, he posted another image showing mysterious lights and asked his followers what they thought about it. According to the Vice article, a few years later he also shared another recording on a similar subject. The actor remains convinced to this day that extraterrestrial life exists.
The object in the 2013 photo series has thus remained unidentified for now: neither the sailboat-light, the lens-flare nor the airplane explanation has been confirmed, and no independent witness or other footage of the case has come to light.
The sober take
According to skeptics, the light seen in the footage may have been caused by a reflection of the beacon light of a nearby sailboat or by a lens flare, but Crowe rejected these, citing the placement of the camera and the movement of the object. Vice also suggested a third, likewise unconfirmed explanation: sunlight reflecting off a passing airplane.