UAP Case Archive

Shapes / Irregular

Irregular

Amoebas, propellers, pickles and jellyfish: objects that fit no clean geometry. The page splits in two. The small odd shapes are Air Force unknowns seen up close. The huge glowing jellyfish are mostly rocket launches lit by the sun after dark.

    Petrozavodsk, 1977: a shining "jellyfish" over the city before dawn. Drawing for reference only.
    Each irregular shape is one case, colored by status. Select one to open it below.

    Start with Petrozavodsk.

    The most famous jellyfish in the record. It frightened a city, worried two neighboring governments and started a Soviet research program. It was also, almost certainly, a satellite launch.

    At about four in the morning on September 20, 1977, residents of Petrozavodsk, near the Finnish border, saw a bright star-like light grow over the city into what the Soviet press called a shining jellyfish. For several minutes it sent rays of light down toward the town, then shrank into a crescent and moved off over Lake Onega.

    Reports came in from across Karelia and Finland. Nordic governments wrote to the Soviet Academy of Sciences asking whether it had been a weapons test, and the event helped start Setka, a Soviet research program on unusual things in the sky.

    James Oberg and Finnish astronomer Pekka Teerikorpi later tied the display to a satellite, Kosmos 955, launched from the Plesetsk spaceport minutes before the sightings began.

    How the jellyfish was explained

    • ExplainedThe launch of Kosmos 955 from Plesetsk at about 3:58 a.m. local time.
    • FitsThe light appeared minutes after launch, before dawn, when a rocket climbs into sunlight above a dark sky.
    • DisputedNot every Soviet scientist accepted the explanation at the time.
    • ResultThe event helped start Setka, a Soviet program studying unexplained things in the sky.

    What the record shows.

    Eleven cases from 1948 to 2018. These patterns run through them.

    Rocket jellyfish are the biggest single source.

    When a rocket climbs out of the Earth's shadow into sunlight after dusk or before dawn, its exhaust glows in a huge branching shape while the ground is dark. Petrozavodsk, Moscow, Norway and Southern California are all this.

    Timing gives them away.

    These displays happen 30 to 60 minutes from sunrise or sunset, under a clear sky, and match a known launch. A sighting at midnight or noon can't be a rocket jellyfish.

    The older odd shapes are small and close.

    The Indianapolis propeller, the Oak Ridge bean, the Kadena bottle and Sanderson's pickle were compact objects seen at short range by careful witnesses. None has an explanation.

    "Jellyfish" now means two different things.

    In 1977 it described a giant glowing launch plume. In 2018 it described a small object with dangling parts seen in infrared. They are not the same kind of report.

    The witnesses carry weight.

    An aircraft illustrator, a Colorado state senator, two Air Force staff sergeants and a naturalist all appear in the Air Force's unknowns.

    Often told wrong.

    Several of these stories have grown in the retelling.

    The story you may have heardWhat the record shows
    The Petrozavodsk jellyfish has never been explained.
    A Soviet satellite, Kosmos 955, was launched from Plesetsk minutes before the sightings began, and two researchers tied the display to it.
    The 2009 Norway spiral was a portal or a HAARP beam.
    Russia admitted the next day that a Bulava missile test from the White Sea had failed in its third stage.
    The Pentagon confirmed the Iraq jellyfish video.
    The Defense Department declined to comment. The claim that it is officially a UAP comes from filmmaker Jeremy Corbell.
    The 1954 BOAC "flying jellyfish" belongs here.
    The nickname came from a magazine headline. The case is on the Motherships page.

    All irregular cases.

    Listed oldest first. Use the wave filter to read the rocket jellyfish together.

      How a rocket becomes a jellyfish.

      Just after sunset, or just before sunrise, the ground is in darkness but the sky high overhead is still in sunlight. A rocket climbing through that line suddenly lights up, and its exhaust spreads into a huge, glowing, branching cloud.

      From the ground it can look like a jellyfish, a spiral or a comet, hanging silently for minutes. Southern California sees it often, from launches at Vandenberg. Checking the launch schedule is the fastest way to solve one.

      sunlight above this line viewer in darknesslaunch site

      Left off this page.

      These are sometimes filed as irregular shapes, but are on other pages.

      • BOAC, 1954Nicknamed the "flying jellyfish," on the Motherships page.
      • Calvine and Cash-LandrumDiamonds, on that page.
      • Fort Belvoir and Leamington SpaBlack smoke rings, on the Rings page.