Did This Astrophotographer Snap Images of a Massive UFO Over Argentina?

While shooting the stars, an astrophotographer in Argentina captured a massive while light overflying the region where he was sky-gazing.

Argentinan astrophotographer Gaston Marquez was shooting the stars and capturing the Great Conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn when a massive bright light–UFO?–photobombed his images. I have many friends, many of whom are in South America. After all, I spent most of my life living there, and those are the props of traveling a lot. Although I haven’t been there for several years, I actively stay in touch with my friends in North, Central, and South America. I was speaking to one of my friends in Argentina recently, and we discussed, among other things, the UFO phenomenon and how rarely we see a crystal-clear images of UFOs.

Have you seen a UFO?

While many of us have seen UFOs in the sky, recording evidence of the encounter isn’t as easy as expected. My friend pointed out a recent “sighting” in Argentina. However, an astrophotographer in Argentina, Gaston Marquez, may have snapped one of the better photographs of UFOs in recent times. Or at least that’s what people in Argentina think. As revealed by newspaper LM Cipolleti, Marquez and his colleague Beatriz Rodriguez were out in “Valle de la Luna Rojo” near Rio Negro in Argentina, shooting the stars and enjoying a rare, unpolluted night sky when a massive bright light overflowed them.

Valle de la Luna

The astrophotographers had traveled to “Valle de la Luna” to witness the Great Conjunction and take a few shots of the night sky. I can’t blame them. I would have done the same if I had had clear skies where I currently live. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to snap some amazing photographs of Comet NEOWISE, one of the brightest comets visible to the naked eye in recent years. As revealed by LM Cipolleti, Marquez and Rodriguez witnessed on Tuesday something that you don’t get to see every night; a massive bright light that overflew the region where they were shooting the stars.

UFO or not?

For several hours it was considered that the object they had managed to photograph was a UFO,  which is the best description for the mysterious object that photobombed their Astro picture. However, once more people saw the image. Eventually, astronomers saw it, and although not one hundred percent confirmed, the odd appearance may have an explanation. As explained in an article by LM Cipolletti, Denis Martinez, an amateur astronomer currently based in Las Grutas, revealed in an interview that at first, they considered the possibility that the object seen in the photograph was a drone, but as they later found out that it had been seen in different parts of the country at the same time, the idea was discarded.

Space junk, rocket?

The second option was that the bright light was space junk, so they began to investigate records about this type of material’s entry into the atmosphere. However, it did not yield conclusive results, so the analysis continued. But the analysis finally yielded satisfactory results. After a long night of searching, the astronomer came up with one of the most viable hypotheses: the mysterious light was very likely the “Long March 8” rocket, China’s new, state-of-the-art rocket which took off from Hainan, China, on Tuesday, December 22 at 12.37 in the afternoon–2.37 in the morning in Argentina.

The rocket theory holds water

The rocket entered a polar orbit around the Earth later. But why such a weird, bright light? Speaking to LM Cipolletti, the astronomer explained that the light seen in the photographs was from the rocket engines during one of the take-off stages. At the same time, the cloudiness observed below came from the gases it released during combustion. Meanwhile, the movement that many saw was because it was going on the rise.

Whether the mysterious light observed over Argentina was indeed the Long March 8 rocket remains to be seen. To confirm it, we would need to obtain the trajectory of the rocket to verify that it passed above Argentina, information that the Chinese agency could provide, but that has still not been obtained. You can check more images of the curious encounter here.