A UFO appeared over Lincoln, Nebraska on ABC affiliate KLKN’s towercam on the morning of Wednesday, September 4.
The station’s morning meteorologist Sean McMullen noticed the object just before 6:00 a.m. He explains, “I have never seen anything like this before. I even say that several times while I’m on air describing the object, because I want to let people know even I don’t know what this is, so I can’t exactly tell you what it is.” The flashing triangle or teardrop-shaped object in the video appears to hover motionless in the sky. According to McMullen, the UFO was visible for about 45 minutes, but disappeared from view when the sun rose. McMullen says the object looked almost like a weather balloon, but points out that weather balloons are not equipped with flashing lights.
Local resident Rich Webb, who is a member of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), told KLKN, “It’s an unidentified object. We don’t know if it was flying, floating, what it is.” Webb also informed the station that this same UFO was possibly seen a couple hours earlier that morning 200 miles southeast of Lincoln in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. The witness in Lee’s Summit filed a sighting report with MUFON. In this report, she describes:
I noticed a vibrant sparkling/pulsating/flashing light in the window above my front door – facing north. As I walked towards the door/window I didnt see it and thought it was gone but as I backed up it came into view again so it was fairly high. I went to a different window in the house and saw it still, pulsating and every so often it would appear to have a ring. Next I got the binoculars and couldn’t believe what I saw. It was very far, I could see red, white, blue and green flashing lights and at times I could see a small disc shaped object. I say small because I needed the binoculars to be sure. In addition, it seemed to have a couple small – tiny small – lights come out of it. At this time I awoke my husband to have proof. He observed the same details as me and returned to bed. During this time the object started in the center of the window above my front door, moved slightly to the left and ended up to the right which told me I was not seeing a planet or star. In addition, it was a beautiful star filled sky. The stars were very bright, none were pulsating but this and it was very near the big dipper. I tried to take pictures with my iPhone but they look like a white dot. So I attempted to take them with my Canon 40D with a high aperture and no flash but they arent good because the object was so far away it appears solid white. I was not able to capture the flashing/twinkling/sparkly lights. I can however see a red, green, and white, dot of light around the perimeter of the main object . . . The main object remained unmoved until around first light when you could still see the stars but it was gone.
KLKN contacted the FAA, but officials say nothing out of the ordinary was reported on the morning in question. The station also spoke with University of Nebraska-Lincoln physics professor Timothy Gay who says he “can guarantee the non-existence of extraterrestrials, and suspects the Towercam footage was a government aircraft of some sort, or perhaps an odd lens reflection.” Clearly this guy didn’t get the memo explaining that British scientists discovered extraterrestrial life last month. His unfounded claim about the non-existence of extraterrestrial life aside, Gay is correct in suggesting that secret government aircraft should be considered when attempting to identify an unknown aerial object. And although odd lens reflections are responsible for a fair number of UFOs captured on photo and video, that is unlikely in this case, as it was potentially observed by another witness in different location.
Gay also told KLKN that “the number of UFO sightings has gone down substantially in the past two decades.” Although this claim is inaccurate, it is understandable how one could be under this assumption given the media’s roller coaster reporting about the rise and decline of UFO sighting reports.
KLKN continues to investigate this UFO mystery.
I hope everyone understands that UFOs both daytime and nighttime were witnessed by and studied by scientist before there were drones. So I suspect some of these sightings are not drones.
For all of those who have personal experiences no one can say for certain these are not alien. In fact, we better hope they are. If aliens aren’t here than star travel has never been achieved by any race of aliens. Some of the stars out there, were their could be life, are billions of years older than us.
So say goodby to star travel if we haven’t been visited.
Joe Capp
UFO Media Matters
Non-Commercial Blog
Professor Timothy Gay can guarantee that extraterrestrial life does not exist.
Very interesting story that is COMPLETELY destroyed by the comments of an alleged scientist who GUARANTEES that extraterrestrial life DOES NOT EXIST.
(This is why so many legitimate people refuse to acknowledge phenomenon which they have observed….. even if their report is valid, there is ALWAYS some alleged expert who has never studied the phenomena, but claims to be the final word on the subject).
I will always give more credibility to a man who honestly says that he doesn’t know, than I would give an alleged expert who CLEARLY demonstrates that he DOESN”T know what he is talking about, yet keeps talking.
Very best wishes and full support to KLKN and meteorologist, McMullen.
I agree with you, Scott!
It is showing that the video is unavailable. Also, to the guy who claims there is a scientist who can “guarantee” that there is no extraterrestrial life: it is impossible to guarantee that. It is mathematically impossible for there not to be extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe among the billions upon billions of stars, planets, etc. And those are just the ones we have discovered.
Whether both occurrences involve UFOs is open to argument. The fact that both phenomena appeared on the same day over areas near nuclear power plants is not.
The KLKN Towercam 8 image of September 4th, 2013 was actually the star Sirius as seen through the distorting clear plastic housing around the TV camera which was set to very high zoom level. These domes that house surveillance cameras screw up the image and distort it strongly at the camera’s full zoom level into wild shapes, rather than showing the true point image of a star. These protected TV cameras were never designed to produce high quality images of stars, so it is no surprise that when pointed at Sirius and zoomed in fully, the results were quite bad. Check on the original story and the follow-on story clearly shows that the object was indeed Sirius which rose at 4:13 a.m. CDT in Lincoln and was only a little over 16 degrees above the southeastern horizon shortly before 6 a.m. The flashing behavior is common for bright stars that are not high up above the horizon (it is called scintillation). The later story even mentions the meteorologist clearly stating that it was slowly moving up and to the right, which is fully consistent to the diurnal motion that a star would show. When the 2nd story aired and the meteorologist zoomed out, the slight brightening of twilight and some low horizon clouds were visible at the left of the image, which shows that the camera was pointed roughly southeast and a towards the location that Sirius would have had at that time. As for the “sighting” in Lee Summit, MO, it could have easily been seen in Lee Summit, as Sirius was above the horizon there as well. It vanished later because the brightening morning sky would eventually become too bright for Sirius to remain visible. That MUFON person quoted in the story should also have been aware of the things I have described above, and quickly come to the proper explanation for that TV station instead of propagating a “mystery” where there was none. This is one of the things that puts so many UFO “researchers” in such a bad light.
Sorry but this looks like a hot air balloon to me that has its flame being blown by the wind. That would account for the flashing on and off.
To David,
First, I am pointing that Towercam well above 16 degrees. When I have my coanchor zoom out you can see cirrus clouds at the BOTTOM left of the video. Cirrus clouds are high level clouds, as I’m sure you know. Second and last, that specific camera can’t see stars due to the contrast of city lights from Lincoln and Omaha. I’ve tried several times to recreate the image to see if it was lens flare or any kind of distortion and I have never been suxcessful. Oh, and one more thing. The reporter was brand new and misquoted Dr. Gay. He was my physics professor at UNL and he respects the Drake equation. I would suggest watching the video I released independently on channel 8s Facebook page and Twitter page. The reporter’s story was uninspired. She didn’t realize what she had. It went National. But I am the one that compelled them to do the story, but it’s a small market. Not much you can do. Be well! Sorry for the late reply!