Report a UFO/UAP Sighting

The appearance of an aircraft can be influenced by several factors.

Daytime observations. During the day, especially around sunrise or sunset, an aircraft may appear as either a bright point of light or a luminous cigar-like shape when it reflects the light of the rising or setting sun.

Nighttime, front view. At night, with all its lights illuminated, an aircraft seen from the front may resemble a large, slowly moving lighthouse.

Nighttime, side or three-quarter view. Viewed from the side or at an angle, the diversity of the aircraft's lights, along with the shape and colour of the fuselage, can produce intriguing visual effects. The wings may not always be straightforward to identify.

Flight patterns. Airliners typically follow regular and linear flight paths, except when near beacons or approaching airports.

Variability in appearance. An aircraft may display position lights (red on the left, green on the right), splinter anti-collision lights (short flashes separated by a second), or very powerful and focused runway lights.

The observer's perspective. Observers often find it challenging to remember all the lights on an aircraft and may focus on one of the three types mentioned. Sometimes strong runway or burst lights blind the observer, making it difficult to discern the aircraft's true shape. Viewed head-on, such as when aligned with a runway, it might appear as a single point of light.

Caution. An aircraft can give the illusion of being stationary if it is directly in front of you during landing, or when viewed from the side while moving opposite to a car's direction of travel, producing a pivot effect.

Sunset reflection. As an aircraft moves away on the horizon, it can create the illusion of a thin flame from the setting sun reflecting on its trail.

See GEIPAN's explainer on aircraft trails · Watch a video on the subject

When people witness debris from space re-entering the atmosphere, they typically see very bright points of light, followed by a light trail, often coloured, moving across the sky in a highly organised pattern. Sometimes individual points break apart into smaller pieces with small explosions.

People sometimes perceive these organised lights as one large dark craft carrying coloured lights, apparently pushed by a visibly burning engine. This is the illusion of form — the same effect that makes shapes appear in clouds.

A great deal of satellite and rocket material orbits the Earth, and some of it eventually falls back as it slows in the upper atmosphere. These objects range from paint chips to entire satellites. NASA tracks objects larger than ten centimetres and can predict roughly where they will fall; one or two re-enter daily.

When they reach the denser atmosphere they decelerate very rapidly, producing the light trail. It can last at least ten seconds, and for the largest objects up to nearly ten minutes, sometimes breaking into smaller groups of light points before fading.

Occasionally fragments reach the ground. If you find something you believe came from space, do not touch it — it may be hazardous. Contact the local authorities or ISRO.

Distinguishing space debris from meteorites is difficult, but meteorites are on average faster and fragment less. Large falls are recorded and ISRO can sometimes confirm the origin. Space debris almost never travels east to west; a very small number of satellites move roughly southeast to northwest, but that is rare.

Some satellites are visible to the naked eye and are usually easy to recognise. They look like bright stars and can be seen only about two or three hours after sunset, or shortly before sunrise.

They move very regularly, in a straight line across the sky. They sometimes brighten or dim suddenly as they pass into sunlight or the Earth's shadow, and their brightness can change through the pass, either predictably or not — some satellites rotate, changing how they reflect the sun. Through binoculars they still appear as bright dots.

Brightness ranges from as bright as Venus — particularly the International Space Station — down to quite faint.

Many satellites seen in the evening in May, June or July moving south to north are Earth-observation satellites or spent rocket stages, orbiting between 600 and 800 kilometres up. You may occasionally see several passing close together at different speeds, resembling a race; these sit on adjacent orbits at different heights.

To identify one, note the moment it passes close to a well-known star to the nearest second, then check a tracking site such as Heavens-Above after entering your location.

When a relatively large meteoroid — typically a pebble weighing more than 100 grams, from a few centimetres to a metre across — re-enters the atmosphere, it creates a spectacular event known as a bolide: a substantial luminous trail that can light up the surroundings for several seconds, sometimes accompanied by a hissing sound or a sonic boom.

The light show occurs between roughly 100 and 40 kilometres above the surface, caused by the meteoroid heating and ionising the upper atmosphere. Colour varies with the entry angle, often appearing green, white or yellow. In some cases fragments survive to reach the ground, at which point they are called meteorites.

Although a bolide can appear very close — seemingly within 200 to 2,000 metres — it actually occurs at significant altitude, beginning around 100 kilometres up and ending near 20 kilometres.

Watch a video on the subject

A shooting star, or meteor, is the bright streak created when a tiny particle roughly the size of a grain of sand enters the atmosphere at between 11 and 70 kilometres per second — 40,000 to 250,000 kilometres per hour.

As the meteoroid passes through the atmosphere it leaves a trail of light lasting one or two seconds. Larger meteoroids can produce a longer trail streaking across the whole sky for tens of seconds, or very rarely a minute or two; those events are bolides.

Shooting stars are more common during meteor showers, especially around 11 August (the Perseids), but can be seen throughout the year.

A balloon probe at high altitude can resemble a very bright star, sometimes visible in daylight. It may seem stationary or show slight apparent movement, including oscillation.

Reflective envelope. These balloons often have large, sometimes metallic envelopes that reflect sunlight, making them exceptionally bright.

Apparent displacement. They may appear motionless or shift subtly, and it is not uncommon for them to oscillate.

Travel distance. A balloon can drift a hundred kilometres or more on the wind. Note its precise position and movement if you can.

Localised turbulence. Smaller festive balloons are affected by terrain and buildings, producing sudden stops, accelerations, zigzags, ascents and descents.

Types. White or coloured advertising balloons and spheres appear at fairs, gatherings, festivals and sporting events — helium-inflated at 1.8 to 5 metres across, or air-inflated at 60 centimetres to 1.6 metres.

Through binoculars you can often make out the shape, spherical or tetrahedral, and sometimes the basket hanging well below. The cable is usually invisible at that distance.

Proximity to events. If you are near a festival or celebration, there is a good chance the balloon relates to it.

There has also been concern about surveillance balloons. Given India's proximity to China, it is possible such balloons have been deployed here. If you suspect you are seeing one, alert the local authorities immediately.

Many people report a procession of moving objects — often described as fifty or more points of light, star-like in brightness, flying in single file, perfectly aligned and evenly spaced, moving west to east without any noticeable sound.

These are almost always Starlink satellites, part of a telecommunications constellation placed in low Earth orbit a few hundred kilometres up. Since 2019 several dozen have been launched every month, and well over ten thousand are expected this decade.

The aim of the constellation is high-speed internet coverage everywhere, including remote and underserved areas. SpaceX is not alone in this; OneWeb, with significant involvement from Airbus, is deploying similar constellations.

So when people see bright, evenly spaced lights crossing the sky in formation, it is usually a recent launch, and there is generally no cause for concern.

When you see lights in the sky — red, white or multicoloured — moving irregularly, there are a few possibilities.

Hobby drones and flying wings. Small remotely operated aircraft, often around 500 grams, frequently built by enthusiasts. They vary in size and sometimes fly in groups.

Military drones. Some have impressive capabilities, able to hover silently for extended periods, and in some cases reach very high speeds.

If you believe you have seen a military drone, or have concerns about what you are watching, contact your local authorities immediately so it can be properly assessed.

Photographers often find perplexing spots and objects in their images, particularly when the scene was not directly observed at the time. Modern digital cameras differ significantly from film in their technical parameters, which has led to a surge in photographs containing seemingly unexplained elements that were rarely seen before.

Depth of field is a key factor: objects appear sharply defined even when quite close to the lens, and even when focus is set to infinity. Modern sensors are also highly sensitive and use extremely short exposures, so they capture things the eye never registered.

In landscape photographs, dark elongated marks often indicate a bird crossing the field of view unnoticed. Insects passing close to the lens can leave elongated blurry traces, especially under flash. A wind-blown leaf or a speck of dust can do the same.

Understanding these effects helps distinguish genuine anomalies from optical artefacts produced by the camera itself.

Lantern sightings can be captivating. These hot-air lanterns are launched singly or in groups and frequently take witnesses by surprise.

They shine brilliantly, resembling a very bright star, often yellow-orange, white, red or purple. Their movement follows the wind, which makes them distinguishable. Released one after another they form an organised line of flying lights, and as each burner is consumed you may see them extinguish one by one.

Their steady drift resembles objects carried on a light breeze, though passing over strong ventilation or heat sources can make the path irregular.

Grouped lanterns sometimes create the illusion of a single massive dark object studded with orange lights — again the illusion of form, closely related to pareidolia, and recognised for centuries. It is the same faculty that finds figures in constellations.

The date can be a clue. Sightings on Saturday nights or during major holidays often point to lantern releases, though lanterns are also released at weddings, births, birthdays and funerals, so they can appear on any day.

As lanterns go out, some witnesses perceive them as accelerating into the distance. In reality this is the burner extinguishing; once out, the lantern becomes invisible.

To confirm: use binoculars for a closer look; ask locally whether a nearby event included a lantern release, as town halls are often informed; and check wind conditions on a weather site, since high-altitude wind can differ from ground level.

No. A careful written account is genuinely useful on its own, and in some ways more reliable than poor-quality video. Most footage of distant lights at night contains very little analysable information, whereas a precise description of timing, direction, angular size and duration can be checked against flight paths, satellite passes and astronomical data.

If you do have media, send the original file rather than a screenshot or a re-upload. Compression and re-encoding strip the embedded data that makes analysis possible, and a surprising number of otherwise strong reports arrive with the useful part already destroyed.

Yes. Historical reports are valuable, particularly from India, where there has never been a civilian channel to collect them and decades of sightings simply went unrecorded. Say clearly that you are recalling an older event, and give your best estimate of the date rather than a false precision.

Older accounts are harder to correlate against archived flight and satellite data, but they still contribute to the pattern record. Occasionally an old report matches a documented incident that nobody had connected it to.

Not without your explicit permission. You may file anonymously, or ask that your account be used without attribution. We ask for contact details only so we can follow up with clarifying questions, which is often what turns an ambiguous report into a resolvable one.

If you are serving military, aviation or law-enforcement personnel and have concerns about reporting, say so in the form and we will handle the account accordingly.

That is the most likely outcome, and it is not a wasted submission. The overwhelming majority of sightings worldwide resolve to aircraft, satellites, balloons, lanterns or camera artefacts, and a reporting centre that cannot demonstrate that is not doing its job.

Knowing what proportion of Indian reports resolve, and to what, is itself a finding. It also sharpens the small residue of cases that genuinely do not fit, which is the only reason those cases carry any weight at all.

Every report is read. We check it against the prosaic explanations first — aircraft schedules, satellite passes, launch and re-entry records, local events that might involve lanterns or balloons, and the weather at the time. Where the account includes media, we look at the original file rather than a compressed copy.

If we can identify what you saw, we will tell you. If we cannot, we will say that plainly instead of implying more than the evidence supports. We cannot promise a reply to every submission, but nothing is discarded.

If what you saw posed a safety risk — something near an airport, an aircraft, a nuclear installation or a military area — contact the local authorities directly and immediately. The same applies if you believe you saw a drone operating somewhere it should not have been, or suspected surveillance equipment.

India has no civilian UAP reporting channel and no official body with a mandate to investigate, which is the gap this centre exists to fill. Reporting to us is not a substitute for alerting the authorities where there is a genuine safety concern.

Our focus is India and the wider South Asian region, because that is where the record is thinnest and where existing international databases have almost no coverage at all. Reports from elsewhere are still welcome and will be logged, though we may point you toward a national reporting body better placed to investigate locally.

Yes, provided you say so. Brief sightings are harder to assess, and a very short duration is itself diagnostic — under three seconds points strongly toward a meteor, for instance.

Be honest about the limits of what you observed rather than filling gaps from memory. A short, uncertain, accurately described report is far more useful than a confident one that has been unconsciously embellished, and it is much easier to work with.