A mysterious orb-like object was seen flying over the Hudson River in footage aired by a local news helicopter on Monday. The light can be seen zooming in the clear skies of New York and later goes over lower Manhattan, the New York Post reported. The video was seen in a Fox 5 news report that accidentally caught the object.
The chopper was in the south of Battery Park and the light arches towards it in the video. The orb is moving extremely fast and looks white and blue in the video as it moves towards the camera.
While Americans are no strangers to UFOs, with several reports being made about strange objects or lights in the skies, this incident seems to be one of those where even experts on extraterrestrial issues seem to think that this is not it. They say that it mostly likely looks like an optical illusion created by the helicopter glass in front of the camera.
“This is most likely an optical artefact from the helicopter glass in front of the camera, namely a bright spot from the reflection of sunlight as the camera gradually changes its orientation relative to the sun and the ground,” Loeb told The Post.
Others also say that it just looks like an artefact, not a real object. Some also theorize that it might simply be a drone that only appears to move fast because the helicopter is also moving.
It is not clear when exactly the footage was shot, but it was likely sometime in the past year.
How fast the object is can be gauged from the fact it first crosses in front of a building in New Jersey near Hoboken. A shadow can also be spotted on a building. The object then picks up the trace of the shadow. The image soon enters the airspace of the Hudson River, moving away from New Jersey. It crosses towards the Lower Manhattan shoreline and down toward the mouth of the bay.
Starting from Hoboken, proceeding all the way down the river while passing the tip of Manhattan shows just how fast the object was travelling. The Post reported that going by its movement, the object covered three miles in just four seconds.
Pentagon’s UFO department on aliens
UFOs have been making headlines for the past few days in the US. Jon T. Kosloski, the director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) testified in front of the United States Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities earlier this week. He said the office has “not discovered any verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology”.
Before this, it released a report saying more than 20 unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) incidents reported in the past year have no explanation.
There was another hearing where former officials said that the US government has hid evidence of extraterrestrial visitors and other-worldly objects for years.