Sighting Cross-Reference
Enter the date, time, and location of the sighting. We compute whether the sky was actually dark and whether Venus was above the horizon at that exact moment, check the date against major meteor shower peaks, and flag other common confounders worth verifying against a live tracker. Assumes the time entered is local to the sighting's location. Watching something right now? Use the "right now" button below — for a live sighting we check real, currently-airborne aircraft from OpenSky Network, not just a generic advisory.
Decimal degrees (e.g. 38.9072 for Washington DC)
Negative = West (e.g. -77.0369 for Washington DC)
// Known Confounders — Quick Reference
🛸 ISS — International Space Station
Mag. −3 to −4 (brighter than Venus). Moves steadily across the sky in ~6 min. Passes visible from any location every 1.5 hours when sunlit.
NASA Spot the Station →
🌐 Starlink Trains
Newly launched batches appear as a string of 20–60 equally-spaced lights moving in formation. Most reported chains of "UFOs" since 2019 are Starlink satellites.
Find Starlink →
☄️ Iridium Flares
Predictable, extremely bright (mag. −8) flashes from older Iridium satellite antenna reflections. Appear and vanish in seconds at the same predictable location each pass.
Heavens-Above →
🚀 Rocket Re-Entry / Launch
Rocket body re-entries create spectacular spiraling, glowing debris fields visible for hundreds of miles. Often mistaken for structured craft descending.
Aerospace Corp Reentry →
💫 Meteor Showers
Annual showers (Perseids, Leonids, Geminids) peak at 50–150 meteors/hour. Fireballs — magnitude −5 or brighter — can exhibit color changes, fragmentation, and slow apparent motion.
AMS Meteor Calendar →
✈️ Aircraft (ADSB)
Military and civilian aircraft can appear unusual at night. ADSB-Exchange provides real-time and historical flight tracking including military transponders not shown on FlightAware.
ADSB-Exchange Globe →
🌕 Venus / Jupiter
Venus (mag. −4.6) is the most frequently misidentified UFO. Appears as a stationary, extremely bright point near the horizon. Scintillates when near horizon. Jupiter and Mars also generate reports.
Stellarium Web →
🎈 High-Altitude Balloons
NOAA weather balloons, Google Loon, and classified stratospheric platforms appear as hovering silver orbs at altitude. They can remain stationary for hours and reflect sunlight dramatically at dusk/dawn.
NOAA Upper Air →
🔬 Research Methodology — The "Exclude Knowns" Protocol
- Step 1 — Timing: Cross-reference date/time against ISS passes (NASA Spot the Station), Starlink passes (findstarlink.com), and historical satellite visibility (Heavens-Above).
- Step 2 — Astronomy: Check Stellarium for planetary positions. Venus near the horizon accounts for ~15% of all UFO reports globally.
- Step 3 — Aviation: For a sighting happening right now, this tool queries OpenSky Network directly for real, currently-airborne aircraft near the entered coordinates. For a past sighting, OpenSky's free tier has no historical access — query ADSB-Exchange for historical military and civilian flight paths over the location at the reported time instead.
- Step 4 — Meteors: Cross-reference against AMS meteor shower calendar for peak nights. Check for fireball reports submitted to AMS within 24 hours.
- Step 5 — Weather: Check NOAA for upper atmosphere conditions. Ball lightning, lenticular clouds, and temperature inversions create optical anomalies.
- Step 6 — If still unexplained: Document with the Five Observables framework. Submit to NUFORC or MUFON. Consult the Sightings Database for similar events near the same location.
- The Gold Standard: A genuine anomaly should survive all six elimination steps. Most sightings are explained by steps 1–3. Cases that reach step 6 are the ones worth serious investigation.