Mongolia, 2008

I was working in Inner Mongolia in November 2008 on a coal concession outside Mulei. In the concession was a large fossilized Jurassic age forest which was a marker horizon for the coal measures - about 100m below the coal seams.

In the process of taking photos of the fossil tree horizon, I captured in the corner a disk-shaped object and on further scanning, of the there is also another metallic object in the sky – central upper part.

The photo was taken in the first half of November and the location was about 70 kilometers inside the Mongolian border – Chinese side – time was probably around 2:30 pm in the afternoon.

My Tibetan interpreter was on the same hill as appears in the photo, and when I downloaded the photos for the day in the evening, I asked the interpreter if she felt she was being watched when she was on the hill – the answer was “no.”

Then I brought her in to look at the screen – she was a little amazed at the photo.

The surrounding area is undulating low hills for about 60 kilometers to the west, and about 15 kilometers to the east. I examined all the photos before and after this photo, and there was nothing similar in any of the photos.

The first photo was downsized, as I was in the bush and only had limited memory on my computer and no access to additional memory space.

Camera was Lumex Panasonic with optical zoom lense 28mm to 104mm – have no idea of the setting but it was on zoom.

Weather was clear, no unusual smells and no sounds – I used to live near an army training area at Singleton in NSW, Australia and you could hear the helicopters there in the order of 35 to 45 kms from the base.

The second photo was taken by our driver at about 7am in the morning two days later with a handphone. (not shown, obvious lens flare)

The sun usually broke about 08:50 am and he had gotten up to relieve himself as you do in the cold weather – went outside and was distracted by this very bright object in the sky with a pinkish aurora around it.

I asked why he only took one photo – he thought that would be enough.