New Zealand Government Opens UFO Files

astroengine writes "Following hot on the heels of a series of international UFO sighting disclosures, the New Zealand government has joined the party and made public 2,000 pages of UFO eyewitness accounts dating back to 1952. Helpfully, the NZ newspaper The Dominion Post has scanned the documents and has made them available online. Among the accounts of alien encounters and strange lights in the sky is one of New Zealand's most famous UFO mystery: the Kaikoura sighting. But was it aliens? Probably not, but it makes for an entertaining read."

Comments

Kaikoura sighting

[MichaelSmith]

My bet is that the objects in the Kaikoura sighting were normal aircraft. Maybe somebody decided to try his hands at IFR flying without an appropriate rating. The radar data is consistent with a normal aircraft and the rapid movement on the film is obviously caused by camera shake.

Re:Kaikoura sighting

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio New Zealand had the radar operator who was on that night on for a chat about it the other day. Really interesting to hear the guy talk about it. Back then they covered the air space from the bottom half of the North Island and the top half of the South Island (or there abouts) from Wellington.

There were two flights that night which they knew about, plus this bright flying light that never identified it self to air traffic controllers.

Things I found interesting listening to this: Blenheim airport sighed the lights, when they appeared on the radar in Wellington which is 64km / 40 miles to the North. At one point the light stopped moving or became completely stationary over the sea. It tracked an aircraft on a flight to Christchurch for some distance over the sea, at one point the 'light' disappeared off the radar for a couple of sweeps, the aircraft also lost visual contact, then it re-appeared again both visually and on the radar and continued to track the aircraft. The filming of the light was a couple of nights later by an Australian film crew that wanted to be taken over area where it was seen, the light made a second appearance which was caught on film.

Re:UFOs? Misidentification more like.

[commlinx]

I've never taken a serious interest in astronomy but on a few drunken star-gazing nights I've seen a few fast moving lights. I'd always put them down to "shooting stars" without giving it much more thought. While they were UFOs to me in the sense I couldn't identify them I recently discovered the site http://www.heavens-above.com/ that has excellent satellite pass predictions.

I set up a tripod a few weeks ago and took a photo of the ISS as it passed over at a good azimuth and altitude. It really suprised me how bright it was both in the image and to the naked eye. Now I often look at the site and wander out the back for a look at appropriate times. Depending on the background terrain and path it's taking I can see how a lot of man-made satellites could be mistaken for something extraterrestrial.

While NZ of course have an airforce I'd doubt there's a lot of cutting-edge new tech being developed there, but their clear skies and southern location would make it a good location for viewing those sort of passes. Much like here in Tasmania that's only a little further north.