2000 Las Piñas UFO incident
The 2000 Las Piñas UFO incident took place at on September 3, 2000. A businessman named Antonio Israel captured, on film, a number of UFOs over Las Piñas, Philippines. Israel says that the video details "up to 12 balls [of light] bouncing in the clear night." The film was taken with a handycam and, though the entire video has not been released, Israel provided The Philippine Star with stills from the video.[1][2]
Overview
At 7:30pm on September 3, 2000, Antonio Israel woke up to "gauge the weather" when he spotted two large red objects in the night sky. The "red balls of light, which at times turned to white and yellow" were moving and dancing around the night sky. Intrigued, Israel took his video camera outside and started to film the objects in the sky. Neighbors of Israel pointed up at the sky and shouted in excitement. These shouts can be clearly heard on the video.
A seven-man team from the UN, led by Dr. Jean Chu viewed forty minutes of footage from Israel. The team asked Israel a lot of questions, some of them including movement of the objects, weather conditions, and physical or psychological effects of his neighbors or himself during the sightings. They also inspected his home and the locations from where the objects were witnessed, asking him if anything electronical or mechanical malfunctioned during the incident. Neither the United Nations Team nor the Philippine Weather Bureau drew conclusions from this evidence. Chu stated, "Maybe one can't really say when given just that footage to look at."[1][2]
Skepticism
Antonio Israel, the maker of the video, was originally concerned about authorities dismissing the objects in the video as planetary illusions, stating: "Some people may dismiss our claims as just a fruit of fertile imagination." Some time after the video was taken, an anonymous air traffic controller commented, "[y]es, we have seen them [red balls of light] before." He went on to add that he was on duty the night of September 3, and says that he witnessed the objects as well, though he did not log or take video of them. However, the air traffic controller declared that he was not competent enough to comment on the "small balls of fire" in the video itself.[1]
The Air Transportation Office director, Jacinto Ortega Jr., said that he did not receive any reports from his air traffic controllers about any "so-called 'flying objects'." He also said that he did not find anything significant about the red balls of light, stating that there are "too many things that can be seen in the evening sky."[1]
Media
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Incident at Las Piñas". UFO Dimensions. FarShores. Retrieved November 18, 2008.
- 1 2 "Las Piñas UFO". TheNightSky.org. Retrieved November 18, 2008.