A bright orange light in the sky over Colne had drivers stopping in their tracks late on Saturday night. Mr Bill O'Hooghe got out of his car to film the spectacle, which he is convinced was a UFO.

"We thought it was a helicopter at first, thinking there was a problem somewhere," he said. "Either that or a plane. When we stopped to have a look, there was no noise, then the light just went straight up and disappeared.

"When the next light came I quickly got my camera and began filming it. Again, there was no noise. It was just really bright and then disappeared after 30 seconds."

Mr O'Hoogue and his wife Sheila, of Castle Road, had been driving home from a show in Lytham at around midnight when they pulled into the Macadams garage car park in North Valley Road.

Mr O'Hoogue said: "There were a couple who had stopped in the petrol station opposite who were looking up at it as well.

He added: "I didn't have my 800 mega-pixel digi zoom with me, otherwise I could have got a much closer view. By zooming in, though, you can definitely see the lights around it like a flying saucer. You just couldn't see that with the naked eye."

However, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said that unless there is evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom from an external military source - and to date no UFO report has revealed such evidence - then it did not attempt to identify the precise nature of each sighting reported to the MoD.

One theory is that it could have been a floating Chinese latern. What do you think?

Watch the video here.