Above: Original case image; please click to enlarge
Daylight, Spinning, Unidentified Flying Object Captured Between Baunton and Cirencester in the Cotswolds, UK - April 20, 2011
The distinguishing feature of Unidentified Flying Objects is that they are - for better or worse, 'unidentified'.
An 'identified' object tends to be one that can be easily categorized as something else: in other words, in becoming identified it is transformed into a specific object, entity or phenomenon. A chair is therefore, not an identified object – it’s a chair.
The picture reproduced above was taken by roving shutterbug Kitty Keen, a regular photographic contributor to the kenhollings blogspot blog, around 3.30 in the afternoon of April 20, 2011.
She was walking in a field
somewhere between Baunton and Cirencester in the Cotswolds and had
actually stopped to capture a distant view of Cirencester Parish
Church, whose square tower is a local landmark, which can be seen
in the middle of the horizon on this picture. Quite what the spinning,
vibrating object in the sky to its left might be is anyones guess.
Miss Keen didn’t even notice it until we examined the picture together later that day.
According to Mark ‘Mirage Men’ Pilkington, the object corresponds to a
vintage type included in the 1952 NORAD UFO spotting chart: either a
‘winged cigar shape’ or ‘winged cylinder-shaped’, which narrows it down
a bit. Those already familiar with Mark’s excellent book will
appreciate that, as always, there is more to this than meets the eye.
In the meantime Miss Keen would like to point out that she does not
work for any government agency.
Note: this entry is being labeled as part of my occasional series of posts on architecture as
objects and in the sky and church towers always tend to do strange
things to the landscape.
