On September, 20, 1977, locals in Petrozavodsk in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Republic, awoke to this unbelievable sight.
The object appeared in the sky between 1:00 and 4:00 AM, and was described by the official Prvada newspaper as a “Jellyfish star.”
The incident came to be known as the Petrozavodsk Phenomenon, and the object showered beams of light on the earth below.
Witnesses described the very fine rays as creating the image of pouring rain that pitted the ground and melted holes in glass.
The object itself was described as red and spherical at its core with a bluish white glowing cloud the lit-up area like a “white night.”
Soviet radar failed to detect anything over Petrozavodsk, but the crew and passengers of a nearby Tu-154 airplane confirmed the sighting.
Russian investigators suggested the event was a rare combination of a satellite launch, a solar flare, and radio wave ionosphere experiments.
NASA scientists, however, analyzed the report and dismissed the conclusion, believing the Soviets were covering-up a secret test.
On March 13, 1997, at between 7:30 and 10:30 PM, thousands of reports of mysterious lights over Phoenix, Arizona, poured into authorities.
The cluster of five to seven orbs formed a triangular pattern, with all but a white light at the front appearing to be red or orange.
Most witnesses insisted that the V-shaped formation emanated from a single black object or craft the size of “several football fields.”
As the shape slowly covered an distance of nearly 300 miles (483 km), the stars in the sky looked to be blacked out between the lights.
While the Phoenix Lights remain unexplained, the ground reports from the city seem to match an earlier sighting near a Nevada airbase...
...when a man witnessed a “V-shaped object” the “size of a 747,” flying in a “rush of wind” with six lights on its leading edge.
Texas’s governor stated the lights were training flares, but later came to doubt the explaination and described them as “otherworldly.”
According to some, the lights appeared to be silent “light-emitting engines,” but the US Air Force denied any such aircraft was in the area.
Meet Steve: a ghostly glowing jet that was formally spotted over Canada in 2017 and has since been photographed around the world.
The name is a placeholder for an atmospheric phenomenon that was at first thought to be an aurora, but is now unidentified.
Steve was discovered by a Facebook group named Alberta Aurora Chasers, that initially believed it to be a “proton arc.”
Scientists, however, realized that a proton aurora should not be visible to the naked eye and sent satellites to investigate.
The European Space Agency’s “Swarm” showed that Steve was a 15 mile (25 km) wide ribbon of hot gasses at an altitude of 185 miles (300 km.)
Data revealed it flows at 3.73 mi/s (6 km/s) (compared to 33 ft/s (10 m/s) outside the ribbon) and reaches 5432°F (3000°C).
It is not known why Steve was never noticed before, and scientists still haven’t revealed what might be causing it.
The occurrence of “ball lightning” has been reported throughout history, yet scientists only accepted the phenomenon as real in the 1960s.
And it was not until even more recently that it was caught on camera, with the first confirmed video being recorded in Tibet in 2012.
The phenomenon comes in many forms, but it is generally described as the sudden appearance of floating and glowing electrical orb.
Ball lightning also comes in many colors, can last over a minute and will either hover in place or fly horizontally though objects in its way.
Observers have rarely felt the orbs generating heat, but there have been reports of explosions that leave behind the smell of sulfur or ozone.
Accounts vary as to its danger to humans, as incidents of death and the harmless passing of balls through bodies have both been reported.
Laboratory tests have generated examples of ball lightning, but none have explained the phenomenon’s natural occurrence.
Current theories include the vaporization of silicon in Earth’s soil, spinning plasma toroids, and microscopic primordial black holes.
Fallstreaks holes are a dramatic meteorological process that punches massive gaps in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds.
The unusual phenomenon is a rare occurrence, leading many observers from the ground often mistake them for UFOs.
It is believed that most fallstreak holes are caused by aircraft cutting through supercooled clouds and triggering a chain reaction...
...as low-pressure vortices disturbed by the plane’s wingtips crystalize water droplets that had been floating as liquid at -40°F (-40°C).
The cascade of ice crystals will often spread out in perfectly circular holes with beams of sunlight breaking through the overcast sky.
Fallstreak holes have been observed for some time, yet it was only hypothesized in 2011 that airplanes may be responsible.