Heathrow, Airport - 10-13-09

I was looking through photos to see if I could find photos for the known objects idea we talked about and I found this photo of what surely must be a cylinder shaped UFO!

On 13 October, 2009, my partner and I had stopped for a journey break at London Heathrow airport (at the end of runway 27-Left) and I took a number of aeroplane photos with a new compact camera, to test it. This photo is of an Austrian airways Fokker 100 jetliner on short finals to 27L. The time is 2.48 pm (1.48 pm gmt). It is flying on a heading of west with the sun shining from the south - behind and to the left side of the camera.

In the top right of the photo there is a cigar shaped object. There was lots of over fly traffic over Heathrow at the time going west-east and all these airliners were lighted brightly. None were below 15,000 feet. This object appears to be painted grey or black as it is not reflecting any bright sunshine, even on the nose area. The left side is lighter than the underside (which corresponds to the position of the sun lighting a dark object).

I tried to enhance the object without great success (maybe others will have better skills than me). The enhancements show an object with no wings. They also show the JPEG pixilation pattern is standard throughout the image area, (because I didn't fake this image.)

At the time I didn't see this object because to take photos I have to take my distance glasses off (to see the camera viewfinder). I believe 'almost' every photo of anomalous flying objects can be explained by misidentification. But frankly, I cannot explain this as something common to the skies.

I have never seen anything like this before in 35 years of working in aviation and of taking sky photos. (For what it is worth, I am a former pilot and took my first flying lesson in 1972. I still fly up around the clouds but these days I get there with a paraglider.) The sky is a very familiar place to me but this image has me without answers.

I know other pilots who have seen or chased UFOs (a friend was a first officer in a Boeing 737 cargo flight into Heathrow from Luxembourg, who was asked by ATC one night to chase a ufo over Europe.

The ufo was described to me as a 'mother ship', so I know these things are not all misidentifications. Just most of them. :)

Susan