Photo: Fast Moving Figure 8 UFO Reported Over Kunming, China

Zhang Shen, Professor of physics at Yunnan University in Kunming, China and Chairman of the Kunming UFO Research Association got a pleasant surprise last week. At 8.40 pm on Wednesday February 11 of this year his wife was standing on their balcony and noticed a fiery orange glowing object streak across the sky. She quickly called her husband and their son to come out and all of them got a clear view of the UFO. Ms. Zhang also managed to capture the object on her mobile phone as it passed.

The object was travelling at an incredible speed and crossed the sky in less than four minutes.

Mr Shen later described the captured image as a ‘figure eight’ and said he was aware of this variety of UFO photo. He said in fact this was an optical illusion and the UFO was in fact a single globe or saucer with one of the round halves being the body of the object and the other the consequence of its extra-ordinary speed. He noted that he had been studying UFOs for a decade and is certain this was not any sort of terrestrial craft or a comet claiming they would have produced different results in a photograph.

To many readers the object in this photo might look suspiciously similar to the orange globes so often spotted in the UK and usually dismissed as Chinese lanterns. This image would have probably been written off as such had it been snapped in the English countryside.

One, however, can only assume that Mr Shen can distinguish a UFO from a Chinese lantern in light of the already mentioned facts about him, namely that: 1. He is Chinese 2. He is a physics professor and 3. He is chairman of the Kunming UFO Research Association with ten years experience.

Which begs the question: are at least some of the UK orange globe sightings real? Is someone or some organisation letting off Chinese lanterns to confuse the public leading them to dismiss similar looking genuine UFOs?

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