All summer, after sunset, look northwest for the most commonly reported UFO

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report last week on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, describing the most common explanations, but left out the item that is most often labeled a UFO: the planet Venus.

Posted 4:49 p.m. Jun 28, 2021 — Updated 5:06 p.m. Jun 28, 2021

Tony Rice

, NASA Ambassador

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report last week on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), more popularly known as UFOs. The document summarizes 144 reports by U.S. Navy and Air Force pilots of sightings between 2004 and 2021, generally during training exercises, which lacked sufficient detail to say what they were with any confidence.

Eighty of those reports "were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation" leading the report to conclude that these were physical objects being observed. It also notes that a single explanation for all these events is very highly unlikely.

U.S. Has No Explanation for Unidentified Objects and Stops Short of Ruling Out Aliens

The intelligence community categorizes UAP into one of 5 categories:

"Airborne clutter" including birds, balloons, recreational unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) or airborne debris like plastic bags
Natural atmospheric phenomena including ice crystals, moisture and thermal fluctuations that "may register on some infrared and radar systems."
Classified programs under development by the U.S. government and its contractors
Technologies being developed by foreign governments or other adversaries
Observations that lack sufficient data and/or we lack sufficient scientific knowledge to explain what well may be natural phenomenon.

The CIA has acknowledged No. 3 on that list in the past.

The object most often reported as a "UFO" by people with their feet more firmly planted on the ground is the planet Venus.

Venus is the third brightest object in the sky behind the Sun and Moon, so bright it can be visible in the daytime sky. It is also hands-down the top answer to “what is that thing in the sky?” questions, even when it doesn’t seem to be at first. Case in point:

I was recently contacted by a meteorologist in Fort Wayne, Indiana. A viewer had contacted that station with questions about a "moving light in the sky."

They described seeing a bright in the northwest after sunset. We both immediately thought Venus, but there was more to the story. Over the next 60-90 minutes, the light moved. Still in the same general area, but definitely higher.

My meteorologist friend did all the right things, checking to see if the International Space Station (ISS), Chinese space station, and even if any StarLink satellites were passing over at the time. Only the ISS is bright enough to be visible that soon after sunset, and it moves through the sky over a period several minutes, not more than an hour.

So what was it?

They were seeing Venus shining brightly through the civil twilight, but as they looked again an hour or so later, Venus had set. They were then seeing Mars, which was there all along but lost remaining sunlight.

Only Venus, which is about 160 times brighter than Mars, can shine through the civil twilight. Mars is further dimmed by all the atmosphere you are looking through in that part of the sky, about four times as much as when looking directly overhead.

You can see Venus after sunset in the northwest throughout the summer. Mars will become visible around 10 p.m. up and to the left of Venus though mid-July when the pair will be only a few degrees apart.