Pretoria - Reports of orange unidentified flying objects (UFOs) seen over parts of Centurion on Monday night have been flooding into the Pretoria News.
While celebrating the start of the new year and looking to the night sky, some city residents did not see fireworks but a display of another kind.
Centurion resident Louise Schoeman said she saw the first orange orbs at about 8pm, followed by dozens more through the course of the evening.
“The lights appeared in formations of two or three at a time. They glowed orange but did not twinkle or flash,” she said.
“They appeared to be moving quite quickly, from the north, east and west, and would travel for a few minutes and then disappear. They were not conventional aircraft, they moved in a linear fashion and were definitely not fireworks.
“We watched one that stopped in mid-air, turned white and appeared to stay in the same spot for approximately an hour. It did not twinkle like a star. The object was gone when we looked again at 1am.”
Another city resident asked: “Did the Mayans perhaps get the date wrong?”
Twitter and Facebook were abuzz with reports of similar sightings locally – including Johannesburg and Durban – and internationally.
- UFO sighting in Elk Grove, California, on January 1, 2013 – four red-orange lights – Akashar Kentaloon
- Orange UFOs over New Port Richey, Florida. Burning orange pulsating lights moving erratically, hovering, disappearing – ufostalker.com
- happy new years everyone seen #orangelights in the sky tonight kinda freaky – Anna Peters
- Did anyone else see three consecutive orange lights in the sky? Flying too high to be planes or helicopters. Woah. Insane. – Rachael Cantu
- These 5 orange lights directly up in the sky moving around and shining then dissapearing and yes i am sober! – nuuch’
Is there a logical explanation? Were they simply Chinese lanterns or flares? Or perhaps the result of one too many festive beverages?
You be the judge.
Please let us know if you saw this strange phenomenon. – Pretoria News