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Maaseik, Flemish Region (Belgium)

Sighted on Friday 08. February 2008
Reported on
Shape: Circle, Oval | Duration: 00:05:00
Source:

I did my usual block's worth of dog-walking, a bit later than usual so as to avoid the Friday 8PM evening traffic around those parts (large sports complex nearby). On my way back, I noticed a vehicle acting kind of suspicious (just standing there at a rather unusual spot with big lights on, engine running and all). I decided to take out my camera - always nicely tucked away inside the lower pocket of my coat, just in case - in order to try and catch said vehicle's license plate. What can I say - it's a small town, heh.As I've learned by a process of trial and error in the past, it's near-impossible to shoot anything from afar at night unless you've found the proper settings and, more importantly, a suitable surface to place your camera onto. A fence post near my person turned out to be the next-best thing to a tripod, and so I got to work.Whilst fumbling with ISO values, focus features and whatnot, I noticed a very bright light (formed like a sphere) appearing across the horizon, almost immediately urging me to re-calibrate the camera's position and settings.Looking at the spectacle from the corner of my right eye while trying to get the hardware set up correctly probably took some 10-30 seconds or so. I absolutely did not want to screw up this opportunity to shoot whatever-the-bleep-it-was, but night time shooting remains somewhat of a foreign subject to me and so valuable time was lost trying to localize the right buttons (e.g. in order to activate burst mode). Also note that I had to go by what little the viewfinder could offer me, as the brightly-lit LCD screen became more of a hindrance rather than an aid at that time.Anyway, I finally got the camera to shoot 10 pictures within a 15'ish-second window. During this time, I had a chance to take a look at the bright circle as it slowly moved along the tree line, some 200 yards away. Guestimations would put the object itself probably at a tad less than a mile away. After having dealt with the wide-angle shots, I tried to zoom in a bit; yet, at that point the large ball of light had faded out into a blinking tiny red speck - obviously leading me to the conclusion that it had been an aircraft all along, hardly worth a notion anymore. It appeared strange to me that there had been no humming/roaring noises at any point, much less there being an airfield (possibly explaining the bright light as being take-off/landing lights or whatever) near the object's direct surroundings, but it's not like I'm an expert in these matters - and so I wandered off into the night again.Hardly two minutes later I looked over my shoulder; this in an attempt to spot the suspicious car again. Much to my surprise, I found out that not only the car was still there, but also the bright ball of light had re-appeared (I almost feel tempted to use the exclamation sign here, heh). Out of luck at the time, there were no fence posts or similar objects nearby to act as makeshift tripods. In the excitement of the moment I started to snap some pictures regardless, resulting of course in the usual collection of blurry trails of light.I must note that the sports complex, in the vicinity of which all of this took place, illuminated the skies through the use of very bright stadium lights. Furthermore, there's a whole string of regular lights (streetlights, mounted security lights and whatnot) surrounding the complex. This made it extremely difficult to focus on the ball of light (as it was hovering its way towards a far-off forest) to begin with. Nevertheless, even the blurry, shaky pictures would later reveal the impressive nature of the unknown object's light source.Completely frustrated by my own inaptitude at not-shaking like a leaf while shooting low-quality macro shots of the object, I switched back to non-zoomed mode as I walked down the sandy path in a backward fashion. It would take me another minute to finally locate a new (yet far from levelled) fence post and attempt a new burst of photos. Naturally, the object had gradually disappeared by the time I was struggling to get a clear shot.----------Having arrived at home a few minutes later, I downloaded the pictures and found all of the early shots to be useful - whereas most of the more recent pictures were all suffering from motion blurs to some extent. Using the "flash fill" enhancement tool in Photoshop and lining up the first ten shots, I was able to form a makeshift animated version of what I saw that night. A full "landscape" version of this, as well as a "zoomed" variation can be found in the attachments of this report.To please the sceptics (a group in which I would certainly include myself when asked about the subject of UFOs), I have also included one of the original shots of the original burst so that the EXIF data can be scrutinized to one's best wishes.Note that both the original picture as (to a lesser extent) the animations ended up a lot less-impressive than my actual impressions at the time. I largely blame this on the abundance of light of the nearby sports complex confusing both the camera and its operator. Also take into account that, due to the high ISO/exposure levels, the craft comes out looking more like your traditional UFO (that is, a saucer), while I vividly remember it being a sphere (sphere + exposure trail = saucer, I guess).-----------Naturally, I've done a bit of sleuthing myself. Some findings below.- While editing the animated version of the burst shots, I noticed a second craft following a somewhat-similar path as the "main" object. This one is much, much dimmer than the craft cathcing my initial attention, but seems to dive into the woods at the end of it all for some reason.Naturally, had I noticed the second object at the time, I would have unleashed another burst of shots upon the scenery - but alas, it was not to be (remember, there is a reason why there are exactly 10 frames in the animation - it's a camera setting, not foul play). In any event, the second object does not re-appear on any of the later photographs (from what I can tell).- There is an inactive military airbase not too far away, as well as a very active one all the way in the other direction (object was heading E-NE, latter airbase is NW from my position). Neither one seems likely to have been used by whatever this object was.- The skies were pretty clear that night (notice the stars in the animated attachement), however it would seem impossible to see all the way to yet another airbase (AWACs) dozens of miles away, especially given the formerly-mentioned abundance of light surrounding the sports complex. It would also appear strange for an AWAC to randomly re-emerge nearby without making any noise at all.- There's a small A/C-plane runway just a stone's-throw away from where the object(s) first appeared. I've held onto the possibility of these things being remote-controlled airplanes to this day. However it would seem extremely irresponsible to take-off/land in the utter darkness whilst endangering regular air traffic by using such brightly-lit planes (if such a thing exists) at a time considered off-limits to any A/C plane/helicopter.- Helicopters do pass overhead here every few weeks. I guess that, in combination with a very powerful searchlight, such a situation could amount to such a sighting. But again I have to ask, where's the noise? Needless to say, I know by now what a terrible racket these things can produce even at semi-long distances. Also, you'd figure there had to be some reason for such behaviour whereas none was published during the next days and weeks.- Checked for iridium flares through Heavens-above - ironically, not one hit for that day + location at all.- Flares in general seem unlikely, given the velocity and trajectory of these thingies.- Believe it or not, more or less the same thing has happened before (adding plausibility to earthly explanations somehow beyond my grasp). Even more unbelievable: I have pictures to back up that particular statement too. Somewhat more believable: those pictures are blurry as ever.Anyway, I think that should do it for now. Being a sceptic doesn't have to mean that I'm not receptive to other people's observations, and MUFON seems the right place to investigate/gather this kind of material for future reference. If they are genuinely interested, I could supply them with the rest of the pictures (24 in total) and even more details concerning the situation. If anyone else happened to have seen the same thing, well, just add your own sighting to the pile and we can go from there, I reckon.

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