The motionless, cigar-shaped object spotted last week near Fort Worth, Texas on November 19th, 2018
At first, the white object in the sky looked like a cloud. A weather balloon, perhaps ?
The motionless, cigar-shaped object spotted last week near Fort Worth left the witness stumped. And a video of the sighting has since gone viral, opening the door to UFO theories online.
Keller residents said they saw a mysterious, rod or cigar-shaped object in the sky last week. The object, which appeared to be glowing, was still for about 20 minutes, the witness said.
"It was the oddest thing I've ever seen," the unidentified witness said, according to their report to Texas UFOs, a website that tracks mysterious UFO sightings throughout the state. "I watched it for about 20 minutes. It didn't move. I don't think I've ever seen anything in the sky stay that still before, not even for a few seconds, let alone 20 minutes."
Several people commented on the YouTube video guessing it could be a blimp. However, a Texas UFOs administrator said they couldn't find any information the Goodyear blimp was scheduled to be in Keller on Nov. 18, the day of the sighting.
Further, the witness said it sat motionless in the sky for about 20 minutes, and similar UFO sightings were reported in Brownsville in August 2016 and El Paso in August 2018.
A few people went along for the ride on YouTube, with one commenter comparing the footage to "the classic cigar-shaped UFO" he saw in the mid 90's over Reading, Pennsylvania.
Julian Gill is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | julian.gill@chron.com
Comment: The original source of this report, the Irish Examiner, has since published the claim from a 'aviation journalist' Gerry Byrne that what the pilots saw were "in all probability meteorites" and that "it's not uncommon for meteorites to come in at a low angle, a low trajectory into the Earth's atmosphere."
There have indeed been a large increase in the number of meteorites in our skies over the past 10-15 years, but the problem with this theory in this case is that meteorites do not generally change direction ("veer off the north") or "climb away at speed" as reported by the pilots that witnessed the event.