Posts Tagged ‘Amateur Astronomer’

My wife and I had just gotten off the 8:09 PM train from New York City to Bay Street in Montclair. We were walking up Glen Ridge Ave to where we had parked the car on Cloverhill Pl. As we walked we noticed a very bright light in the sky to the South West. It was brighter, and larger than Venus or any of the other bright planets would be, and looked very much like the headlight on a car hanging in the sky, or a landing light on a plane. I was looking at it wondering what it was when my wife commented “what is that?” She never notices things in the sky, so that gives an indication on how odd it was. I had been an amateur astronomer since I was a kid, so I can tell the various heavenly objects in the night sky quite easily. It was about three or four times the size of Venus at its brightest. Maybe about the size of a pea at arms length. All we could see of this object was a bright glaring light. It was not moving, made no sound, and had no other navigation lights. It was bright white in color, much whiter than the bright stars. I almost thought it was a comet, but it was too bright, and I hadn’t heard of any comets that were due. It was at about 45°. There were a few planes going by, as we live not far from EWR in Newark. You could easily tell the planes, since they had red and green lights and the white strobe. This object stuck out like a sore thumb. It gave us the feeling that something unusual was happening, that’s how out of place it was. It made my wife uneasy. We wanted to see if this object was truly stationary, so we stopped walking at the corner of Glen Ridge and Cloverhill and stood still for about 30 seconds. The object was totally motionless in the sky. We could see a plane passing by farther away. We turned the corner and walked to our car, and then proceeded up Cloverhill in a NE direction and made a left turn on Clairmont Ave heading West. When we got to the intersection of Clairmont and Grove, we could see that the object was still there in the same location. I joked that maybe we were seeing a new supernova! The object remained in view the whole way as we drove up Clairmont, and as we turned left on Upper Mountain Ave and then right on Bloomfield Ave. Our driveway is halfway up that block. The ride took approximately 6-8 minutes. We had the object in the view the whole time. It remained stationary in the sky. I went upstairs and grabbed my Celestron Skymaster 15X70 astronomical binoculars and headed back outside to get a better look at the object. I really didn’t think it was a planet, but I would know for sure when I took a look. It was brighter than I had ever seen Venus. I got out to the front of our house and looked up to where the object had been, it should have been in the trees across the street, and didn’t see anything. So I walked East on Bloomfield Ave to Upper Mountain so I would have an unobstructed view of the sky. At this point the object was nowhere to be seen. It would have been very hard to miss, as it was the brightest object in the sky. I realized at that point that we were not looking at a planet or other astronomical object, since they don’t just disappear, but we figured it wasn’t anyway. Something just didn’t seem right about the object.         NOTE:  Case is under investigation.        

KEN PFEIFER  MUFON NEW JERSEY        WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG

9-24-07  BRIDGETON NEW JERSEY

An amateur astronomer took this night time shot of a UFO.  This witness had a close encounter with a very large black triangle a few months earlier.  Ken Pfeifer, a MUFON investigator, handled both cases and after interviewing witnesses in the area found that no one would want to talk about it.  When this object appeared on September 24th the witness was ready with the right equipment to take these incredible shots.  There is a total of 4 photos and they are clear as a bell.  The witness, who really did not believe in UFO’s, wanted to become an investigator because of this.  The case was listed as a unknown but because of the rural farmland location is was felt that this object was possibly looking for farm animals.  There are many cow and horse farms spread out over a large area of South Jersey.   Salem Nuclear Plant is located a short distance from this area.  These are probably the best night time photos available to the public.

Ken Pfeifer MUFON New Jersey.   http://www.worldufophotos.org http://www.nationalufocenter.com