Cylinder over Montreal West (Canada), QC · Canada
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
Nov 17, 2015 in Montreal West, Quebec, at 3:30 am I got up to take pictures of rising planets from my upper floor window with an easterly view. I saw a red blinking light. It was flying from due east headed in a southeasterly direction. I assumed it was an airplane, but then it suddenly reversed direction and started flying back due east. Also, it was lower in the sky than most airplanes. At one point, it was partially obscured by the bare branches of a large tree. After it cleared the tree, I was able to get it in my camera viewfinder (but no time to take a picture). My zoom lens has 60 x magnification. For the few seconds that I observed it under high magnification, I saw a long cylinder that was lit up with translucent red light from one end to the other. I did not see any wings on the object. Object then curved to fly due north before leaving my field of vision. There may be a logical explanation for it, but the flying behaviour was a bit bizarre. Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #124149). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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What would the paper say?
Canadian military and radar records answer to the Access to Information Act; historic UFO files are held by Library and Archives Canada. Through Aletheca, the house instrument, anyone can commission the request — filed, chased, and published in the open, refusals included. The draft goes over already written: the records sought, and the date window they would live in.
Routed to: Department of National Defence (Canada) · records window 2015-11-14 → 2015-12-01
From the same sky
Related entries
August 22, 2016 · 10:06 PM · DISK
Montreal West (Canada), QC · Canada
I was taking pictures from my attic window of the southwest view of Saturn, Mars, and Antares which appeared last night in a curved line. I gave the camera some zoom. A major airport lies in that direction. Twice I had to wait for airplanes to exit the frame. In one photo (shutter speed 1 sec), the airplane is still in the frame and appears like a blurred, slightly elongated light, as would be expected. I took 16 photos. I chose the photo that showed Mars and Saturn at its clearest. Then I did post-processing to improve contrast and saturate the colors, so that Mars's redness was fully evoked. As I began the post-processing, I noticed a streak in the upper left. I cleaned my computer screen, but the streak was still there and moved with the photo. I then feared I must have a scratch on my lens. I checked the other 15 photos--no streak. Then I enlarged the photo to see a disk-like object with six lights--3 pairs of lights that are reddish. The shutter speed was 4 seconds for that shot, so the object was not moving since it is very clear with no movement blur. I compared it to the photo that shows the airplane leaving the frame--no resemblance. The UFO is a disk with six lights and crystal clear. I also looked up pictures of satellites photographed from Earth--no resemblance. I have no idea what the object is, and I can't speculate. I am sending you the photo with the saturated colors. If you want the original photo or the photo with the airplane for comparison, let me know. Sincerely, ((woman's name deleted))
July 10, 2016 · 9:11 PM · UNKNOWN
Montreal West (Canada), QC · Canada
Sudden Appearance of Stripes on the Moon On July 10, 2016 at 9:11 pm, I was taking pictures of the moon through my 6-inch Dobsonian telescope (Orion Skyquest). I was using the afocal method, putting an Olympus SZ16 camera up to the eyepiece to photograph what I saw. I was not using my moon filter to dim the brightness of the moon. (I used it later in the evening, but not at that point.) I took a series of nine photographs of the moon at that point. I had taken an earlier series before photographing stars and planets, and a later series after photographing more stars and planets. During this particular series, the striped moon appeared as number #6 of 9 photos at 21:11 and 42 seconds. As I was setting up photo #6 in the series, I had the moon in my sights which I checked by eye. Then I put the camera up against the eyepiece and adjusted it until the moon appeared fully on the LED screen. I had my finger on the shutter button, when suddenly the top of the moon darkened as I watched. Two dark spots appeared at the top of the moon, and then streaked at high speed from the top of the moon to the bottom of the moon, not quite the diameter because it was off center. It left two shadowy stripes that appeared in less than a second. My finger was on the shutter button, I barely hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then I thought, “Branches.” And then I took the picture. I then looked up at the sky. The moon was high above the horizon in a clear field of vision. The trees in my backyard and neighboring yards were to the far left and right. There were no branches obscuring the moon. I would know. I have taken many artistic pictures of the moon behind branches. The view was clear. It occurred to me that a couple of my long, dark hairs floated through the open aperture of the telescope, which is like a cannon barrel, and landed on the mirror. That would have been a problem for me with subsequent photos. The best way to test the situation was to take another picture. Less than two mintues later, at 21:13, I took another picture of the moon. It was clear. When you compare the two pictures, you see that the striped moon has a dark area at the top, as if a cloud settled over it. The stripes have a peculiar jagged aspect, almost like a zipper or a series of stitches. The diameter of the moon is 2158 miles. The stripes sped across the moon off center. My guess is that the stripes covered about 1500 miles in barely a second. Travelling at 1500 miles per second comes out to about 90,000 miles per hour. I showed the photo to my husband, who has a PhD in statistics and is very analytical. He said, “It's branches.” When I discounted that theory, he said, “Two hairs in the aperture.” I told him the hairs quickly disappeared, and hairs do not start at the top and zip across at high speed. Then he said, half joking, “It's two spaceships flying at astronomical speed in formation.” I decided to report it. I am enclosing photo #6 in the series, the striped moon, and photo #7, which is the picture that was taken two minutes later. A Dobsonian refractor always shows a mirrored image, so the only post-processing I did was to flip the image so that the moon appears with the lit side on the right, which is how it actually looked in the sky. I know there is probably a logical explanation, but I can't think of one.