Houston is ablaze with people reporting a UFO flying over their city on the evening of 11 Aug. Images of what appear to be a circle of lights, hovering in the clouds, are being distributed on social media, including Twitter.
Other images of the mysterious sightings include one of the objects, apparently on its side, putting on a light display for onlookers. While some pictures show the flying object in clouds, other shows it against plain sky.
"I think the trick in UFO's is figuring out what else they could be. It's easy to say that could be the aliens," Carolyn Sumners, vice president for astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, said.
Sumners investigates UFO's, and is in the process of writing a show about the controversial subject.
Proponents of the idea that aliens are visiting the Earth, as well as skeptics, let their voices be heard on social media.
Stormy weather in Houston could be partly responsible for some of the unusual sightings, although the underlying cause remains a mystery. There is also a streetlight in the area that looks much like the reported flying saucer. Some observers believe the lights seen in the sky were really just a reflection of that fixture on clouds. Another theory holds that residents of Houston saw an experimental aircraft, designed for either the military or NASA. Johnson Space Center is located in Houston.
"All the way back to recorded history, there are going to be things we can't explain. That's what makes it exciting," Sumners told the press.
Due to the large number of observations, there is little chance the images are deliberate hoaxes. However, several fake pictures, and at least one video, have been seen online, likely made in response to the dozens of actual pictures taken by residents of Space City.
A Facebook page for the Texas UFO Sightings already has more than 1,800 likes.
The same night the ring of lights appeared over Houston, a skygazer in southern Texas reported seeing a mysterious triangle of lights hovering over the Lone Star State. The observer goes by the user name stxufohunter on YouTube. This lone video, with poor audio quality, has not been supported by any further sightings, unlike the Houston sightings.
In another bizarre twist to the story worthy of Halloween, Houston lies 666 miles away from Roswell. It was here where a mysterious object crashed in 1947, which many people claim as a disabled alien spacecraft.
