The first UFO sightings recorded on the moon's surface took place in 1668 when a Colonial Preacher by the name of Cotton Mather observed a strange shape on the moon’s surface.
A report dated Nov. 26, 1668, describes a “bright starlike point” seen on the Moon’s dark side, one of the earliest entries in a NASA technical catalog of unusual lunar observations. The item appears in the agency’s 1968 reference work, the Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events, compiled to document historical claims of short-lived lights, bright spots, and other transient changes on or near the lunar surface.
The entry has been recirculated for decades in popular UFO writing as an early “UFO sighting on the Moon,” often linked to the name of the colonial minister Cotton Mather. The NASA catalog does include Mather in its reference trail, but it does not present him as the original observer.
What the NASA catalog actually records
The 1968 catalog, produced as NASA Technical Report R-277, lists the 1668 event under the date “1668 Nov 26,” with the feature/location given as the Moon’s “dark side” and the description summarized as a “bright starlike point.” The observer line attributes the observation to “several New Englanders,” and the references include John Josselyn, Cotton Mather, and later writers.
That structure matters. The catalog is not an “archive of NASA sightings” in the modern sense, and it is not an assertion that a specific physical phenomenon was confirmed on the lunar surface. It is a curated list of reported events, assembled from older publications, meant to help researchers track patterns in what later came to be called transient lunar phenomena.
Cotton Mather is frequently described as the person who saw the light through a telescope in 1668. But Mather’s documented biography makes that timeline hard to sustain. He was born in 1663, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, which would have made him a child in 1668.
That does not mean his name is irrelevant to the story. The NASA catalog’s reference trail indicates that Mather later mentioned the event in print, which is consistent with how many early astronomical anecdotes traveled: an observation is reported by one set of witnesses, then repeated, summarized, or preserved by later writers with broader reach. In that sense, Mather functions more like a transmitter of the account than its originator, at least as the NASA catalog frames it.
A 17th-century lunar “UFO” claim
Modern UFO language did not exist in 1668. The catalog entry is a plain description of a light that seemed out of place, recorded long before aircraft, satellites, or spaceflight. That is one reason it continues to attract attention: it appears to describe an anomaly in a context that seems, at first glance, insulated from modern technological explanations.
Another reason is the Moon itself. Compared with Earth, the Moon looks stable and unchanging through small instruments. When an observer reports a moving or hovering point of light against the lunar disk, it reads as a violation of that expectation, even if the effect can arise from more ordinary causes.
Plausible explanations that do not require anything “alien tech”
The simplest explanation is also the most stubborn: early telescopic observing is vulnerable to misperception, especially when the target is bright and the optics are limited.
Seventeenth-century refracting telescopes were still close to the beginning of the instrument’s history. The telescope is traditionally associated with early 1600s Dutch lens-makers such as Hans Lippershey, and Galileo’s improvements quickly turned it into a tool for astronomy, as described in Britannica’s overview of the Galilean telescope. But early refractors suffered from optical limitations that could produce spurious points, flares, and distortions, especially when observing high-contrast objects like the Moon.
Then there is Earth’s atmosphere. Even with modern instruments, turbulence in the air above an observer can shift and blur incoming light. NASA’s explanation of why space telescopes avoid this “twinkling” distortion offers the basic mechanism: shifting pockets of air bend and smear light before it reaches the lens, limiting resolution from the ground, as described by NASA Science. The European Southern Observatory describes the same effect in straightforward terms: atmospheric turbulence makes stars twinkle and frustrates high-precision observing.
A bright point near the Moon can also be something not on the Moon. A background star near the lunar limb, a planet in the same line of sight, or a brief alignment during the Moon’s motion across the sky can create the impression of a “light on the Moon,” especially if the observer is not expecting to see a background object close to the lunar edge. In addition, internal reflections within the telescope, glare, or momentary scintillation can make a point source appear to brighten, fade, or jitter.
None of these explanations can be proven for a specific observation made in 1668, because the account is short and filtered through later retellings. But they fit the kinds of observational hazards that the 1968 NASA catalog itself acknowledges in its introductory discussion of the difficulty of evaluating historic reports.
What NASA’s catalog was for, and what it was not
The 1968 catalog was assembled during a period when lunar science was accelerating toward Apollo, with growing interest in any phenomenon that might signal active processes on the Moon. Its authors compiled reports spanning centuries, from naked-eye observations through the telescope era and into the period of modern photography and spacecraft monitoring. The goal was coverage and traceability, not certification.
That is why “preserved in NASA’s archives” can mislead. The report is preserved as a citation in a government technical publication, not as a validated incident with instrument data. The catalog is valuable precisely because it separates observer, description, and references, letting later readers see how the story was passed along and where it came from.
What can be said with confidence, and what cannot
It is accurate to say that a NASA technical catalog includes a 1668 entry describing a bright, star-like point seen on the Moon’s dark side, attributed to “several New Englanders,” with later references that include Cotton Mather. It is not accurate to present Cotton Mather as the 1668 eyewitness, given his birth year.
Beyond that, the event sits where many early sky reports sit: between observation and interpretation. A brief description survives, and it is unusual enough to have been recorded and recopied. Whether it was atmospheric distortion, optical artifact, a background object near the Moon, or something else entirely cannot be resolved from the surviving summary.
What remains is the durable fact that people were reporting odd lights around the Moon centuries before spaceflight, and that modern compilers considered those reports worth indexing. The Moon may be airless and geologically quiet by Earth’s standards, but human observing conditions rarely are
