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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 |
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Edinburgh ufo a mirage?
September 30, 1986. Edinburgh, Scotland.
"Yvonne Westgarth looked out of a north-facing window of her house in south Edinburgh. She was amazed to see a white cylindrical object like a missile travelling westwards just above the roofs of houses opposite (as she thought). She called her husband who also saw the object. Their sketches of what they saw are shown in Fig. l. Although their descriptions differ slightly, they agree that the 'missile' had a black band around its centre. They watched the object for a period of between 0.5 min and 1.5 min (period uncertain). It was first seen almost due north and it disappeared in the west-northwest. No noise was heard."
No one else reported seeing the object. A real missile was considered very unlikely. However, the object appeared in the direction of the glide path of the Edinburgh airport, where two aircraft had landed at about the time of the sighting. The witnesses were adamant that the UFO did not look at all like a plane; and that it was much higher in the sky than planes on normal glide paths, which were to be seen just above the horizon between the houses.
S. Campbell, who investigated this event, suggests that the Westgarths saw an enlarged distorted mirage of a Boeing 757 landing at Edinburgh. The timing and direction were right. Mirage action would elevate the image. By assuming that both an erect and inverted image of the aircraft were projected one above the other, something looking like a missile could be imagined. The black band would have been the doubled image of the wing. (Campbell, Steuart; "Mirage over Edinburgh," Journal of Meteorology, U.K., 12:308, 1987.)
Comment. As in many explanations of UFOs, one must decide whether a string of somewhat strained scientific assumptions is preferable to believing that a "real" UFO was sighted. In this instance, however, probability seems to be on the side of the scientific explanation.
 | "Missile" seen over Edinburgh on September 30, 1986, by Y. Westgarth (top sketch) and her husband (bottom sketch) |