Photo: Contributed - Kari and Phil Taneda
Published: 2:28 PM 7/7/2015
... a plethora of hoaxes making the rounds.
by Darren Handschuh
Something is out there, but most of the time
it can be explained.
Gavin McLeod is the regional representative
for MUFON – the California-based Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network –
and since he began looking at reports of UFOs in the early 1990s, he has only
seen two he cannot explain.
And that is out of countless of
investigations.
McLeod, who lives in the Lower Mainland and
is also an amateur astronomer, said there have been reports of UFOs coming out
of the Okanagan for years, but all of them have a rational explanation.
Last week, there were reports of unexplained
lights in the Westside area. When the story ran, several people contacted
Castanet to say they too saw the lights, however McLeod said the lights were
just unusually bright planets.
So what about a piece of video from the
Westside fires last year that showed an air tanker dropping a load of fire
retardant on the blaze and at the top left portion of the frame a bright ball
of light is clearly visible?
McLeod can explain that one as well.
“To me, it was a daytime meteor,” he said,
adding he had meteor experts look at the video and they too thought it was a
space rock in earth's atmosphere.
“It is very interesting. It is a very rare
phenomenon,” he said.
There is also a plethora of hoaxes making the
rounds.
“There are brothers in Hawaii who produce
fake videos. That's what they do,” he said, adding the videos then go on their
website and they make money every time someone clicks on their site.
McLeod said there are more objects in the sky
than ever. Planes, satellites, weather balloons are just a few of the many
items people spot, don't know what it is and hit the UFO panic button.
But, McLeod said, initially they are
unidentified flying objects, but the vast majority of the time they are
explainable.
“If you don't know what it is, it's a UFO,
but that does not mean it is unidentifiable,” he said, adding that doing some
research will almost always unearth the real explanation.
So does that mean there are no true UFO
sightings?
McLeod said he has researched some cases that
cannot be explained, but they are rare and none are from the Okanagan.
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