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On the night of Monday , Nov. 8 , a lensman in Zurich , Switzerland , who goes by the Twitter handle@Eavix1Eavixaimed his photographic camera at the sky and snap several pictures of what he aptly identify as a " doughnut UFO . "
compose of several bright - blue concentric rings , the fly object looked as much like a spacecraft as a breakfast kickshaw . The lensman mistrust he had really glimpsedSpaceX ’s Endeavour capsule , which was schedule to deliver toEarththat night with four astronauts who had just concluded a 200 - Clarence Day check on the International Space Station . British yellow journalism siteThe Daily Maileven included the eery photos in a roundup of Endeavour sighting the next daylight .
The ‘doughnut UFO’ spotted over Switzerland appeared the same night as SpaceX’s Endeavor capsule reentry.
But there ’s a problem with this account : When the Endeavour ejection seat sprinkle down a short after 10:30 p.m. EDT that night , it bring half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico — more than 5,000 miles ( 8,000 kilometer ) from Zurich .
@elonmusk hopefully was the spaceX dragon capsule and not a doughnut ufo invasion … . 😂 😂 pic.twitter.com/Ie542DMEuoNovember 9 , 2021
While spectators in Louisiana , Alabama and several other Gulf states sawclear views of the capsulestreaming across the sky , it is almost inconceivable that anyone in Switzerland would have been capable to see the guile ’s reentry , Marco Langbroek , an amateur artificial satellite tracker and donnish research worker at Leiden University in the Netherlands , told Live Science in an email .
" Any passes [ of Endeavour ] over Switzerland prior to landing that night would have been altogether in Earth ’s shadow , i.e. it would not be illuminated by the sun and hence not seeable , " Langbroek said . " Reentry itself was over Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico , and would not have been seeable from Switzerland . The deorbit burn mark , prior to reentry , was over the Indian Ocean , so also not visible from Switzerland . "
So , if the donut UFO was n’t a SpaceX craftiness , then what was it ? concord to Langbroek , the unidentified flight target over Switzerland may not have been flying at all ; it could have been the garbled effigy of a remote virtuoso .
" I am pretty certain that the ' donut UFO ' on the Swiss range is an out - of - focus mental image of a bright star , " Langbroek said . " It quite look like it . "
Still , other imagesthat the lensman snap that night seem to show a zig - zagging lead of light behind the object . Langbroek advise this pattern is a solvent of camera movement . However , there may be other account for the object .
According to Jonathan McDowell , an astrophysicist at the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts , it ’s possible that the doughnut UFO was the upper stage of a rocket — that is , the small , uppermost subdivision of a roquette used to propel a craft into electron orbit — reentering the atmosphere and burn up .
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However , without a accurate time frame for the photograph , it ’s difficult to tie the mysterious lights to any lie with object that was in the sky that night , McDowell told Live Science in an email . ( Live Science requested time stamps for the mental image , but the lensman was unable to provide them . )
Star , projectile or something else entirely ? For now , the doughnut UFO over Switzerland is keeping its secret — and remains a truly unknown flying object .
Originally published on Live Science .
