Slightly distant encounters of a known kind
Written by Phil Cerroni
By Phil Cerroni
There will always be mysteries in our lives: desire, passion, love and aliens. As one of the brightest stars in Texas, Irving may have caught the attention of some celestial travelers according to Pabitra Shrestha who posted a video of what he believes to be a UFO taken on June 5 outside of his Irving apartment.
“Me and my wife were watching TV, and I decided to go out and smoke. I thought the first time I saw it that it was a star. It’s shining really bright; it was moving from one location to another location,” Shrestha said, recounting the night he saw a strange light in the sky. “It had different colors: green, red, yellow, all kinds. I saw those lights were far away, so I decided to go inside and grab my camera. I have my camera handy all the time because this kind of stuff really interests me. It was right over 161 and Rochelle.
“Actually, I was really curious. On the next day I went to take a look at the same spot in the sky and I saw the same object right over there,” he said.
Shrestha was convinced it could not have been any manmade object.
“I analyzed all sorts of possible things. Some people say it could be an RC plane, but it couldn’t be that far. I don’t think any remote control would fly that high in the sky.
“It cannot be an airplane because it has the multicolor, and it’s not blinking like an airplane,” Shrestha stated firmly. “Airplanes have definite colors blinking, but this one is not blinking. If it had been an airplane it would have been fast – it was actually moving really slow in one direction.”
This is not a new pursuit for Shrestha. He has been keeping tabs on the sky for quite some time.
“I am pretty much fascinated by this kind of stuff, because I’m more into science and astronomy. So I keep looking into the sky,” he said. “I recently bought this camera, because I’ve been seeing this kind of stuff, strange things, in the sky.”
Besides being the chair of the physics department at the University of Dallas, Dr. Richard Olenick has had an illustrious career as an astronomer. He did not agree with Shrestha’s conclusion that the object was of mysterious origins.
At first, Dr. Olenick thought the object in the video could be a satellite, but he quickly dismissed this possibility.
“There are things called Iridium Satellites that if they’re at a certain angle with the sun already set, they appear really, really bright because they’re very reflective, and you see this bright light appear and disappear,” Dr. Olenick said. “It wasn’t that because there wasn’t one visible on the fifth. And also those last for maybe a few seconds; he had a minute [of video].”
After watching the video a couple of times, Dr. Olenick concluded that it was most likely an airplane.
“You’re getting these colors over here probably because of the heat. It’s fairly low so you’re getting distortions in the atmosphere a little bit,” he said. “It’s going through enough atmosphere and heat to give you that shimmering and colors.”
Another aspect of the airplane theory is that Shrestha’s apartment is only a few miles from DFW airport.
“Next thing is I would say that most likely is an airplane that was approaching,” Dr. Olenick continued. “I’ve seen this happen with planes in Love Field. They’re flying, and they’re coming towards you and suddenly you see a bright light for a while. Then they’re moving maybe at an angle away from you, and you see it slightly disappear.”
The last thing Dr. Olenick mentioned was that the object’s erratic behavior was most likely caused by how far Shrestha zoomed in on the object.
“When you’re zoomed in you’ve got very little field and therefore any slight motion moves it around a lot,” he said.
Despite any incredulous viewers, Shrestha insisted this is not the first unidentified object he has seen in the sky and been unable to explain.
“I’ve seen four or five different incidents,” Shrestha said. “I was with my brother; it was morning. It was a big object, because all of us saw it: my brother, my friend and me. They didn’t believe this stuff; they were not really interested. I do believe.”
“If I tell this kind of thing to my friends, they’re baffled. They don’t really believe all these things. They say, ‘You are really crazy,’” Shrestha said. “I think it’s a UFO, definitely. Some people do believe – and they see it; they believe it – but when they don’t’ see it with their own eyes, they don’t believe it. I don’t know if you believe it.
“Strange things happen in the sky. We don’t normally notice them; we don’t look up in the sky so you don’t actually notice. If you keep your eyes open on the skies, you see strange things.”
To see Shrestha’s video on YouTube, visit UFO sighting from Irving, TX on 09/05/12.
