UFO Sightings: What Coloradans Have Witnessed In 2020

While it may feel like tempting 2020 to look at the skies for signs of an alien invasion, others in Colorado and around the country are doing it anyway.

So far, the only result is thousands of new witness accounts of unidentified flying objects submitted to the National UFO Reporting Center. In fact, 160 reports of UFOs have been filed so far this year in Colorado.

The idea that we’re not alone and aliens from another galaxy are circling the planet in strange-looking spacecraft has long fascinated us, and most of the reports on the National UFO Reporting Center’s website are filled with colorful accounts of the sightings.

Take this one from Thornton, reported in early August, for example:

"My brother's girlfriend went to let the dogs outside. She looked up and thought it odd that there was such a bright star in the daylight. My brother got his telescope and shouted for the rest of the family. I was making food and my mom dragged me outside to look into the telescope. Upon looking into the lens I saw a dark grey circle with square lights around the edge. There was one spot in each side of the circle across from each other that was a gap in the light. We proceeded to take photos and videos in the sky and through the telescope. Looking with the naked eye or phone camera it looked like a star. However the telescope showed its true form. Higher than the planes in the sky, it stood in the same spot. Not moving an inch, it seemed to flex from circle to oval shaped. We all sat staring until around 8:36 pm when the clouds covered the craft from sight. Thick dark clouds obscured the object, however it was visible here and there through spaces in the cloud. A small storm rolled in and the craft completely disappeared from sight. Around 9:13 the storm had passed and looking into the sky the craft was gone."

Intrigued? Don’t be jealous of those folks in Thornton. Here’s what others in Colorado have reported:

Reported Aug. 15 in Colorado Springs:

"Two objects. One above, one below moving rapidly in tandem. Both were black, round and moving against the western wind. Bottom object definitely had a form, crescent shape to its top. The top object had a bottom looking as if were to fit the bottom objects crescent space. No propulsion signs at moved linear style, very steady altitude. Star Wars BB-8 as two separate objects that are one."

Reported July 18 in Littleton:

"Same 2 crafts, same spot in the sky and same distance apart every night between 11-1 for about 2 weeks. Two crafts about a thumbs lengths apart from the ground, each craft is composed of five lights in a .•.•. pattern. Seen in the exact same place and same distance apart in the sky between 11pm and 1am every night for about 2 weeks now. Appears and vanishes faster than a blink but always in the same time frame. Neighbors dog goes crazy every time they appear and stops when they vanish."

Reported June 24 in Boulder:

"My girlfriend and I were stargazing at about 2:30 am on a field with good skies. Fast moving clouds temporarily blocked view after about 20 minutes but otherwise good conditions. We noticed a light somewhat brighter than any star in sky was moving erratically directly above us. Returning to almost exactly overhead and stopping many times, moving in all directions and changing, but did not seem like a helicopter. Difficult to gauge height from ground or size. Seemingly subsonic speeds, but otherwise difficult to gauge speed without distance. Did not make any noticeable sound. There was a faint deep purple tint to the highest and wispiest clouds around it. Did not know if it was between the highest clouds and us or behind them, but was above the lowest and fastest moving clouds when they came in. We took several videos on our phones, but it was hard to make out a reference point or star in the videos so the camera footage is questionable unfortunately. It was ! larger than any star in the sky, and the light did not look exactly like a point source. It was almost like a light strip but far away. It pulsated occasionally with slightly brighter white and was purple on and off around wispy clouds (sometimes it did not give off the purple glow). Went inside eventually because we got cold."

UFO hunting has been a popular pursuit in the United States since the mid-20th century, when Kenneth Arnold, a businessman piloting a small plane, filed the first well-known report in 1947 of a UFO over Mount Rainier in Washington. Arnold claimed he saw nine high-speed, crescent-shaped objects zooming along at several thousand miles per hour “like saucers skipping on water.”

Although the objects Arnold claimed to see weren’t saucer-shaped at all, his analogy led to the popularization of the term “flying saucers.” And since then, Americans have been more or less obsessed with the idea that alien life is among us.

It may be easy to scoff at some of the eyewitness accounts on the National UFO Reporting Center, but the idea of intergalactic travel got a boost when information emerged from the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a $22 million, multi-year program that began in 2007 to investigate "unidentified aerial phenomena," according to reports by The New York Times and Politico.

Related: UFOs Are Real, Retired Navy Pilot Suggests Of Weird Aircraft

Now-former Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid slipped in an earmark for the program into the Pentagon budget. Nevada, of course, is the home of a U.S. Air Force facility known as Area 51, the source of multiple alien conspiracy theories, including claims that interstellar visitors are held there; that the 1947 Roswell crash wasn't a weather balloon at all but a Soviet aircraft piloted by mutated midgets; and that the 1969 moon landing was filmed by the U.S. government in one of the Area 51 hangars.

The Pentagon program was defunded in 2012. But in a report released in late 2017, the investigators detailed an account by retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor, who was conducting a training mission off the coast of California in 2004 when he saw an oblong craft flying erratically through his airspace at incredible speed, maneuvering in a way that defies accepted principles of aerodynamics.

Fravor described the wingless object, about 40 feet long and shaped like a Tic Tac, as other-worldly.

“I can tell you, I think it was not from this world,” Fravor told ABC News in 2017. “I'm not crazy, haven't been drinking. It was — after 18 years of flying, I've seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close.”

Fravor's account is convincing. When he saw the object from the air, controllers on one of the Navy ships on the water below reported that objects were being dropped about 80,000 feet from the sky, then headed "straight back up."

He could see the disturbances on the water below and breaking waves on the surface, "like something's under the surface," he told ABC.

The radar jammed, and as Fravor flew closer, the craft rapidly accelerated and zoomed upward and disappeared. Once the object was gone, the ocean below was a still sheet of blue with no evidence of disturbance. Infrared scanning also showed no evidence of an exhaust trail, he said.

"I don't know what it is," he said. "I don't know what I saw. I just know it was really impressive, really fast, and I would like to fly it."