I am a photographer, and on March 19th I was outside taking pictures of the moon during its lunar perigee. My grandparents were also outside with me, playing with my daughter on her swing set. While aiming my shot of the moon I noticed what I thought was some debris on my lens, so I cleaned it and prepared to try the shot again.

I observed at this point that I could make out the object only through the camera lens, and that it was not obvious to the naked eye. At that point I realized that I was not seeing a spec on my lens but rather something in the sky. I tried to use my auto focus to capture the object, but it kept focusing on the moon. I turned off the auto focus and manually targeted the object: this is the picture that is attached to this report.

Do you remember when UFOs or Flying Saucers as we used to call them were all the rage? Unidentified Flying Objects have not really gone away, people still maintain they have seen them, but some how the interest in the phenomena has shifted from the mainstream public consciousness into the realms of conspiracy theories. But back in the 1950s people were seeing the objects almost on a weekly basis and Teesside was no exception. We decided to have a look back at what was going on in the skies over Teesside back then.

The very first report we could find in the Evening Gazette of a 'Flying Saucer' was on December 12, 1950 just three years after the first sighting by Kenneth Arnold in America who first used the term 'saucer' to describe the objects he saw. The report in the Evening Gazette read: "It was sure to happen sooner or later. A flying saucer is reported to have been seen on Teesside. Our informant, a 16-year-old from Yarm is quite clear that at 9.55 last night at Bank Top, Yarm he saw at a considerable height an object of a brilliant light green hue descending in a spiral in a north-easterly direction at an angle of 45 degrees. He said, 'It was something entirely different from what I have seen before. It was visible for two or three seconds and then it was gone."

UFO in Carlos Paz, Cordoba Province, Central Argentina.

Here's one for the X-Files.

Philip DiPaolo, a family man and respected community activist, says he saw a silently pulsing, moving light floating over his beloved Williamsburg neighborhood last Monday - one year after witnesses saw a similar phenomenon in the same area.

DiPaolo, 50, saw the light while walking his dogs around 11 pm.

"I got out my camera to use the zoom to see if it was a satellite," the mild-mannered leader of the New York Community Council told us via e-mail. "I could not figure out what this was. About 10 seconds in, some pulsing image goes across the screen. Very weird!"

Weirder still, witnesses reported seeing a similar bright light spinning over Williamsburg several times last winter.

DiPaolo's unidentified flying object appeared high in the clear, south sky. It appeared to change color and move, he said. He shot some video of the object, then went inside. When he came back a few minutes later, the airborne anomaly was gone.

You perhaps have heard of it, the staircase at Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where -- according to the literature -- nuns who operated a convent there began a novena to Saint Joseph, patron of carpenters and builders, when they needed a way to easily traverse up to the choir loft, which previously had been accessed by ladder. Their dilemma was that there was no room for a stairway as normal stairways go. A flurry of carpenters they consulted had said so.

According to accounts, on the last day of the novena, a gray-haired man came to the convent with a donkey and a tool chest -- basically, a saw, a hammer, and a square. He also needed tubs to soak wood. They gave him the job, and he set about the work on July 25, 1873, taking what is now estimated as six to eight months to complete it. Only wood pegs (no nails) were used. And the result was exquisite.

"The winding stairway that the old man left for the sisters is a masterpiece of beauty and wonder," noted St. Joseph Magazine. "It makes two complete 360-degree turns. There is no supporting pole up the center as most circular stairways have. This means it hangs there with no support. The entire weight is on the base. Some architects have said that by all laws of gravity, it should have crashed to the floor the minute anyone stepped on it and yet was used daily for nearly a hundred years." Indeed, there are photos of the staircase filled with members of the choir!

When the sisters went to pay the man, continues the account, he had vanished. There is no record of paying anyone a penny for the incredible piece of carpentry.

John Keel briefly discusses the hallucinatory and paranormal aspects of the UFO phenomenon.

What's going on in the sky?

Britain on Thursday released 35 previously classified files documenting sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by the military and members of the public dating back to the 1950s.

The files contain around 8,500 pages which mainly cover the period from 1997 to 2005 and include photographs, drawings and descriptions of flying saucer sightings, as well as letters the Ministry of Defense (MoD) sent eyewitnesses in response to their accounts.

Policemen, a soldier, a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer and members of the public report sightings of objects including a "chewy mint shaped solid craft" and aerial objects resembling a "ring," a "jellyfish" and a "silver voile spin top."

In one account a man said he believed he had been "abducted" by aliens in October 1998 after seeing an unidentified craft hover over his London home and finding he had gained an hour of time in the process.

"It was a large cigar-shaped vehicle with big projectiles on each side like wings," he told the MoD.

UFO filmed by STS-133 rocket camera?

Over at Youtube an intriguing new video, Feb. 24th, STS-133 Discovery SRB camera: The smoking gun UFO video???. The video contains great camera footage from the space shuttle rocket boosters and what could be an unidentified flying object, UFO. The Youtube video contains an analysis of why the UFO isn't a parachute. As usual, we believe it's up to the readers to ascertain whether the object is a 'smoking gun' UFO caught by NASA cameras.