UFO Viewing Tips

Posted: Friday, January 18, 2008 7:32 PM by Alan Boyle

Ten days after the first sightings of lights in the sky over Texas, tales of UFOs are still sparking speculation. One of the witnesses, Steve Allen, is offering $5,000 for a good picture of the flying object - but he hasn’t bought any of the photos or videos offered so far. “The pictures weren’t worth a damn,” he told me.

On Saturday, he and other witnesses are gathering to pool their accounts for a national UFO organization – but there’s always a chance the Texas sightings will fade into the distance, just like the O’Hare UFO sighting over a year ago. What's the best way to document a sighting? Here are some tips:

Take a picture

Getting an image of something in the sky may sound like the best way to go, but as this month's reports illustrate, that's not always sure-fire. Allen was one of the most widely quoted witnesses of the purported flyover on Jan. 8, and it was his desire to have an image that led him to offer the $5,000 reward. "I'd have given five grand that day to have a camera," he explained.

Several residents from the area around Stephenville, Texas, responded - but Allen said the pictures showed little more than dots in the sky. "I don't need a dot standing out there," he said.

Today the Fort Worth Star Telegraph published a front-page picture of the sighting, taken by a trucker with his cell phone as he drove along Interstate 20. "It looked like a meteor entering the atmosphere," the truck driver, Sean Kiel, was quoted as saying.

Allen was unimpressed. "It's not worth a flip," he told me. The bright spot's position in relation to the sun reminded me of a sundog, and the speck on the upper part of the image looked like an airplane. But of course, I'm no expert.

Full article here:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/18/589552.aspx