At least one New Guinea resident says the bright light that promenaded through the night sky Thursday was not a UFO but a satellite reentering the atmosphere.
According to the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, the largest national daily in the Australasian nation, a resort manager said he doesn't think the object was an alien vehicle.
"I don't think it was a UFO," John Mcleod told the newspaper. "I thought it was a meteorite in the first place, but it looked more like a satellite falling out of orbit."
On Thursday, the Post-Courier reported that "thousands" in the remote Gazelle Peninsula and Baining mountain ranges had seen an object "about 200 meters long, 50 meters wide and ... lit up like a city in the sky" that moved "very slowly across the sky, making a quiet puffing noise."
For those with an interest in cross-cultural UFO reports, the sightings of the people of the remote Baining highlands were perhaps the most interesting. Cut off from television and other mass media influences as the Bainingo are, the object appeared to them as "lit up all around like a red hot stone in an oven pit."
However, Mcleod's "satellite" hypothesis seems supported by the general run of sighting reports. As in the two-part September wave of North American sightings, New Guinea residents reported the object as a bright fireball moving relatively slowly across the sky, seemingly "bouncing" or skipping as it fell.
Mcleod, who manages a seaside resort, theorized that the object eventually sank into the ocean after traversing the island on a north to south-southeast trajectory.
Whether the object was in fact a falling satellite or some other, more mysterious type of space vehicle, most witnesses agreed that the sight was indeed "spectacular," in the Post-Courier's words.
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