Comet of Unknown Origin

Posted on by farlane
Northern Lights and Comet Neowise by Gary Syrba

Northern Lights and Comet Neowise by Gary Syrba

Our friends at EarthSky share that the latest observations of Comet 3I/ATLAS show it brightening more quickly than predicted:

Up until now, the interstellar comet had been brightening as expected. But now, the observations from mid-September 2025 are beginning to rise above the upward-sloping line of brightening that would have been typical for a comet nearing the sun.

(There has been a lot of talk that 3I/ATLAS might be an interstellar probe due to its great speed & a trajectory that takes it close to Jupiter, Mars & Earth before it slingshots away using the Sun’s gravitation.)

A team of scientists, led by Xabier Pérez-Couto of the University of A Coruña in Spain, has traced the path of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS back 10 million years. Indeed, this is only the 3rd-known object found traveling in our solar system that didn’t originate with our sun and its planets. Its trajectory tells us it must have come from another star system, but which one?

They traced the path back over 100 million astronomical units (9.3 quadrillion miles) but couldn’t find where it started towards Sol. You can read on for lots more!

Gary took these photos of the Northern Lights & Comet Neowise over Lake Michigan back in 2020. See more in his Night Skies gallery on Flickr and view & purchase Gary’s work on his website.

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Crowdsourcing the UFO Enigma

Posted on by farlane

UFO Leaving Henderson Castle by William Dolak

Axios Detroit takes a nice look at an app for UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) & UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) reporting developed by Enigma Labs. The artificial intelligence app generates a score as to the likelihood that user-submitted photos are something truly unidentifiable or just a plane, satellite or other known object (hint: most of these are the deeply freaky Starlink satellite clusters).

UFO researcher Alejandro Rojas says the app aims to crowdsource as much information as possible because the government typically lacks enough data to study these anomalies. Michiganders have submitted 526 sightings since the app launched last year which is good for 9th most UFO friendly state in the nation. Check the map out below, and if you have an iPhone & want to check it out (or get on the Android waitlist) head over to the Enigma website.

Bill took this photo ten winters ago at Kalamazoo’s Henderson Castle. See more in his absolutely massive Kalamazoo, Michigan gallery on Flickr.

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The UFO Show

Posted on by farlane

The UFO Show by Jamie Macdonald

The UFO Show by Jamie Macdonald

In 1973, the nation (and my 8-year-old self) were captivated by a wave of Unidentified Flying Object sightings. Clipping the stories from the paper for a scrapbook left me with a lifelong fascination for UFOs which is apparently becoming mainstream. Last night 60 Minutes showed some declassified UFO footage previously leaked to The New York Times by Christopher Mellon and Luis Elizondo:

“It’s bizarre and unfortunate that someone like myself has to do something like that to get a national security issue like this on the agenda,” Mellon said. Everyone Whitaker spoke with underscored that unidentified means just that, not yet identified, there’s no evidence these phenomena are extraterrestrial, and they are a potential national security risk no matter who created them because the technology seems far beyond what the U.S. can currently produce.

Mellon said the UFOs are not secret U.S. government technology, and “I can say that with a very high degree of confidence in part because of the positions I held in the department, and I know the process.”

Former Navy pilot Lt. Ryan Graves told Whitaker that fellow pilots began seeing UAPs hovering over restricted airspace off Virginia Beach in 2014, after upgrades to their radar, and continued seeing UAP’s off the Atlantic Coast “every day for at least a couple years.”

Jamie took this photo back in June of 2016. See more in his Stormy Weather gallery on Flickr & for sure head over to his website at mirrorlessminutes.com for more!

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Will we find that the Truth is out there?

Posted on by farlane

Lakenenland UFO by Kristina_5

Lakenenland UFO by Kristina_5

CNN reports that the Pentagon is forming a new task force to investigate UFOs that have been observed by US military aircraft:

Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist will help oversee the task force, which is expected to be officially unveiled in the next few days, according to the officials. Previous efforts to look into what the Pentagon dubs unidentified aerial phenomena were led by the US Navy as many of the documented encounters involved their aircraft.

…The Senate Intelligence Committee voted in June to have the Pentagon and intelligence community provide a public analysis of the encounters, following the official Pentagon release of three short videos showing US aircraft encountering these phenomena.

“We have things flying over our military bases and places where we are conducting military exercises, and we don’t know what it is and it isn’t ours, so that’s a legitimate question to ask,” the chairman of that committee, Sen. Marco Rubio, told a local Miami news station, WFOR-TV in July.
“Frankly, if it’s something from outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some sort of technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary,” he added.

More at CNN.

Kristina writes that Lakenland is 15 miles east of Marquette on M-28. This sculpture park was created by Tom LaKenen (pron. Lay-Kin-en) several years ago. He started creating these pieces as a hobby. Eventually his yard became full and he had a hard time finding places to display them. He thought about trying to sell some except he is kinda proud of them and has so many hours into each sculpture that he would hate to see them go. This is when LaKenenland was born. See more in her excellent Michigan Oddities gallery on Flickr!

No word on if the Lakenland UFO will be investigated but fingers crossed!

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The Michigan UFO Craze of March, 1966

Posted on by farlane
The UFO Show by Jamie MacDonald

The UFO Show by Jamie MacDonald

The UFO Show, by Jamie MacDonald

WDIV Local 4 / ClickOnDetroit shared a feature on the Michigan UFO Craze of 1966:

In 1966, a string of seemingly odd occurrences in Washtenaw County drew the attention of the entire country. The events centered on a sudden wave of UFO sightings, with reports by police and citizens in March 1966. The same lights were spotted by officers in Ohio, just across the Michigan border, and by observers at Selfridge Air Force Base. The sightings triggered investigations by the Civil Defense and U.S. Air Force.

A few days following the first reports, the lights were spotted again at various locations around Washtenaw County, with one deputy reporting something floating in the sky – described as looking like a “child’s top.”

On Sunday, March 20, 1966, the sheriff’s office received reports of a UFO landing in a wooded, swamp area of Dexter Township. Police spoke to Frank Mannor, a truck driver who had gone into the swamp with his son. Here’s what Mannor told police:

“We got to about 500 yards of the thing,” Mannor told interviewers. “It was sort of shaped like a pyramid, with a blue-green light on the right-hand side and on the left, a white light. I didn’t see no antenna or porthole. The body was like a yellowish coral rock and looked like it had holes in it—sort of like if you took a piece of cardboard box and split it open. You couldn’t see it too good because it was surrounded with heat waves, like you see on the desert. The white light turned to a blood red as we got close to it and Ron said, ‘Look at that horrible thing.’”

More from Click on Detroit.

More cool clouds from Jamie right here on Flickr and definitely follow MacDonald Photo on Facebook!

Here’s a part of one hour UFO special with Walter Cronkite from 1966:

Weird Wednesday: Hamlin Lake UFO

Posted on by farlane

Strange Sunset on Hamlin Lake

Strange Sunset, photo by Craig Downing

On the last Wednesday of every month I used to do a “Weird Wednesday” feature in conjunction with Linda Godfrey. She’s still going strong and you can follow her findings at LindaGodfrey.com.

This isn’t one of Linda’s stories, but I thought I’d share it for old times sake. Via the Mutual UFO Network:

I am now age 78 but when I was about 6 or 7 and messing in the dirt with ants on the dirt dead-end road in back of the cottage about 10 miles outside of Ludington, Michigan, I saw a saucer like object flying toward me; it then stopped over Hamlin Lake and after a second, went back the way it came from the other side of Hamlin Lake and on perhaps in the direction of Lake Michigan. It didn’t make any noise and I didn’t see any windows. It just looked like a flying saucer.

The speed was relatively slow and it seemed to stop for a moment over about the middle of the lake there and then reverse course going back in the direction it had come as if to say, “Oh, I’m going in the wrong direction” I don’t know why I recall this event today as if it happened yesterday. I wish I didn’t. I recently saw on T.V. the Lake Michigan triangle between Benton Harbor, Manitowac and Ludington.

You can head over to MUFON for more reports. As to what’s actually happening over to Hamlin Lake, the Sunrays – Crepuscular rays page at Atmospheric Optics explains:

Sun rays, also called crepuscular rays, streaming through gaps in clouds are parallel columns of sunlit air separated by darker cloud shadowed regions. The rays appear to diverge because of perspective effects, like the parallel furrows of freshly ploughed fields or a road wide at your feet yet apparently narrowing with distance. Airborne dust, inorganic salts, organic aerosols, small water droplets and the air molecules themselves scatter the sunlight and make the rays visible.

View Craig’s photo bigger and see more in his Ludington slideshow.

Lots more Michigan weirdness on Michigan in Pictures!

UFOs Over Michigan

Posted on by farlane

UFO "Cyclops" Hovers Over Saginaw River

UFO “Cyclops” Hovers Over Saginaw River, photo by AmBelCanto

“Where there are people, there are UFOs.”
~ William Konkolesky, Director, Michigan MUFON

The Mt. Pleasant Morning-Sun had a feature this weekend on the Michigan chapter of the Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network aka MUFON. In the article, Michigan Mutual UFO group watches the skies, MUFON  Director William Konkolesky talks about his experiences and then details what a MUFON investigator does:

“We can take soil samples, we have labs that can identify anomalous readings in the soil. One of the things we would be looking for is unusual chemicals in the soil,” he said.

Konkolesky said that although the reported UFOs are often things like “airplanes and Chinese lanterns,” some investigations aren’t that simple. “More than 80 percent of the reports we get a year (turn out to be) identifiable objects and the rest are things that you can’t easily explain,”

Konkolesky said those interested in being MUFON investigators have to apply online, buy the training materials necessary to become an investigator, and pass a certification test. “Some of the things (investigators are taught) are basic things like how to identify an airplane, data collection, and how to interview a witness, just to name a few,” Konkolesky said.

Konkolesky said he understands why some may be skeptical about the existence of fully-functional life on other planets. “If you haven’t encountered the UFO phenomenon yourself, it obviously takes a lot for somebody to feel the need to take it to heart,” Konkolesky said.

View this photo from the 2007 Bay City Fireworks bigger and see more in AmBelCanto’s slideshow.