29-year-old Zfort Ertfay quickly interrupted a brisk walk on the Qawra sea-front in Malta when he spotted an unidentified flying object hovering over the horizon last week and took this photo with his mobile phone.
He was unable to make out what it was, except that it was triangular in shape, dark and flying at high speed.“I was out walking, when, all of a sudden, I saw something appear in the sky. It disappeared in a matter of a few seconds,” said Mr Ertfay, from Romania, who is in Malta visiting friends.
The sighting happened last Thursday evening, at dusk. Mr Ertfay estimates it was sometime around 8 p.m.
The Armed Forces of Malta said that an elaborate military exercise took place off Qawra on the day using the Augusta AV212 helicopter. However, it is recorded to have taken place at about 10 p.m., a couple of hours after the sighting. The helicopter took off at 9.05 p.m.
The Malta Air Traffic Services, which monitors whatever is in Maltese airspace, said: “From an air traffic management perspective, all aircraft flying at that hour were accounted for”. They received no reports about any abnormal sightings.
Amateur astronomer David Pace said that the UFO in the picture looks very similar to the “traditional” flying saucer shape. “It’s almost too good to be true,” he said, adding however, that it could be anything. “You can safely call it a mysterious thing.”
This was not the only sighting in recent days. Last week, another UFO was spotted off San Ġwann at about 1 p.m.
Edward Zammit, 29, was on the roof of his house in Birkirkara when he spotted a triangular red object speeding away.” It was like three blobs of light speeding away. It can’t have been flares,” said Mr Zammit.
The UFO Reporting Centre database released yesterday in the UK said that people most commonly see a light, circles, spheres and an oval when they witness unidentified flying objects, with the most common shape reported to be a triangle.
In Zfort Ertfay’s photo the sea and what appears to be part of Comino in the distance is sharp and in focus. The aerial object is not, it being blurred. That is because it was too small for Mr Ertfay’s camera to automatically focus on, it naturally locking on to the largest subject it could visually detect, literally the sea.
The object was probably closer to Mr Ertfay than he had time to realise, especially if it was fast moving. It is triangular in shape and appears to be aerodynamic. If it was moving – in what direction? Mr Ertfay’s description suggests it was under controlled flight – by what?
There is the possibility that the UFO is what is known in aviation as a Triangular-shaped UAS. One such aircraft is the IAI Harpy:
Mr Ertfay’s UFO might have been a UAS but, if so, who was controlling it remotely?
Was it privately owned and flown? Or could the Armed Forces of Malta know something about it, especially if they were conducting an exercise in the same area that same evening? If it was a UAS, it seems that whoever was remotely flying it didn’t ask Malta Air Traffic Service’s permission to fly it in Maltese airspace.
Source: The Malta Times
Your second photo isn’t a Harop, it’s the earlier Harpy.
Thanks Ken – text changed accordingly !
For most cameras, including phone cameras, “infinity” focus works for anything over about 10 m away. That the point of land and the chop in the sea are relatively in focus implies that the phone camera is using infinity focus. That the UFO is blurry all around (not just blurred in a possible velocity direction) implies that it is closer than 10 m. A bird, perhaps? or a very close insect?
I once had an encounter with an MIB. It was many years ago i think was 17 at 2am. I was entering home and he was under a light spot waiting. I think we are not alone if there is this organisation around