My UFO Sighting: Bisti Badlands, New Mexico
Including an illustration and visual references.
I’m including my read-aloud audio version for free in this one. Enjoy.
August 26, 2024
My brother and I were taking photos in the Bisti Badlands. It was a stop on a road trip through New Mexico and I wanted to see the amazing landscape.
The area was lit with moonlight, and the closest lights around us were from a cluster of buildings far off in the distance. I was looking up every now and then and I saw a couple of shooting stars.
The UFO
Around 12:01am, I saw an orange dot almost directly above me. It appeared in the sky the size of my smallest fingernail at arm’s length.
Over the span of two seconds, the orange dot moved from directly overhead to about 30 degrees towards the horizon in front of me, and then vanished with no other movement. The only sound I could hear was a faint machine noise from the buildings far off, and a very gentle breeze.
There were only a few things I could tell about the object. I knew its appearance, its angular size, its visible duration, and I knew that it was silent. I didn’t know its actual size, distance, speed, and its direction (I could have determined its direction at the time, but I don’t recall it now).
Angular size is measured in degrees and fractions of degrees called arcminutes and arcseconds. One arcminute is 1/60 of one degree, and one arcsecond is 1/60 of one arcminute. The object had an angular size approximately equal to the moon, which is about 0.5 degrees or 30 arcminutes in diameter.
There is a range of possible combinations of distance and size the object could have. For something to appear the same size as the moon in the sky, it could have been about 0.87 meters long (a large yoga ball) at 100 meters away, to 87 meters long (almost a football field) at 10 kilometers away, or a combination in between.
This Angular Size Calculator will do the math between object size, distance, and angular size.
Criteria of a UFO
There are only so many man made objects that can float or fly, so it’s rare to find one that doesn’t fit into known parameters. The Five Observables list describes performance traits of UFOs and UAP that separate them from known flying objects. The list was introduced by Lue Elizondo, a DoD official who helped establish the threat narrative of UAP that we see today in the mainstream press. The observables don’t include things like lens bokeh, atmospheric phenomena, or non-solid objects. It’s more useful as a guide to tell if the object is a known aircraft or something else.
Positive Lift- Objects maintain altitude, hover, or maneuver with no evident aerodynamic control surfaces (wings/rotors) or thermal exhaust plumes consistent with known propulsion.
Instant Acceleration- The object exhibits abrupt, high-G changes in velocity or direction beyond the performance envelopes of known aircraft, apparently without the transitional behaviors (banking, energy bleed) seen in aerodynamic flight.
Hypersonic Velocities without Signatures- Apparent Mach 5+ (or otherwise extreme) velocities without sonic booms or thermal/ionization signatures normally associated with such speeds in the atmosphere.
Low Observability or Signature Management- Objects appear to minimize radar cross-section, infrared, optical, and/or RF signatures, sometimes evading tracking or presenting as low-contrast/low radar cross-section targets while still maneuvering with high performance.
Transmedium Travel- Objects operate seamlessly across air, space, and water (or pass from air to water) without visible performance penalty or transition signature.
What I Observed
Positive Lift- Observed
The object appeared as a sphere or near sphere shape with no visible wings, rotors, or other flight surfaces.
There was almost no wind at ground level. If the object was propelled by wind (like a balloon), the wind speed was significantly different at the object’s altitude.
Instant Acceleration- Not observed
The object made no turns or noticeable changes in acceleration.
Hypersonic Velocities without Signatures- Not observed
The object did not move at a hypersonic speed (unless it was enormously large and at a vast distance).
Low Observability or Signature Management- Possibly observed
The object was clearly visible from the ground.
The object was emitting light evenly across it’s entire visible surface. This made it difficult to determine details, depth, or complex form of the object.
The object was silent.
The object disappeared instantly- possibly by turning off its light source or otherwise disappearing from view.
Transmedium Travel- Not observed
The object was only viewed in the air.
Other Notes
Illegal Non-Regulation Lights- The object did not have FAA required position lights or collision lights. Both types of lights are legally required when flying at night.
An Unlikely Prosaic Explanation- If the object was an internally lit balloon, it was moving extremely fast without wind I could feel at ground level, and it had nothing directly under it to obstruct the view of the evenly lit surface. If the balloon was in tow from another aircraft, I didn’t see or hear that aircraft at all.
Orbs are Common
Orbs, spheres, and other round lights in the sky are some of the most common sightings people report. One woman I spoke to in October of 2024 recognized my story and showed me a video that her mother recorded of a white orb moving in the sky that looked like the one I saw.
The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has thousands of cataloged eyewitness reports of various shapes of UFOs. NUFORC also receives hundreds of reports every month from around the world. January had the most in 2025 with 581 reports, while the lowest amount reported that year was in December with 259. Many reports include photos, videos, or witness illustrations. Certainly not all cases are exotic phenomena, but it’s hard to imagine such a consistent stream of data is 100% hoaxes and misrepresentations of normal objects.
Most light sources (lasers excluded) radiate in a round shape, so it makes sense that many of the luminous shapes seen at night are circles, orbs, ovals, etc. Witnesses don’t always see the shape of the craft in the darkness, they may only see its light sources. In my case, I saw an evenly lit orange surface, not a point source with a bright center and dimmer edge.
Link to the NUFORC Image Gallery
Since seeing the orange dot UFO, I’ve seen two instances of SpaceX rocket debris burning up in the atmosphere, and they were far more spectacular. Both times I saw them as I was camping in California less than 100 miles from Vandenberg Space Force Base where they are launched. Both times the debris streaked across a lateral 90 degrees of the sky over a duration of about 2 minutes. This video looks almost identical to both events that I saw.
While I hope to someday see more UFOs, I’m not expecting to. The phenomenon defies scientific observation because it isn’t predictable and reproduceable, among other things. Ironically I was out in the badlands to take photos, yet in the moment I saw it, I didn’t want to pull out my camera. I don’t remember if I had my camera in-hand at the time, but even if I did, having two seconds to frame it and shoot it is no time at all, especially since I didn’t expect it, and I didn’t know how long it would be visible.
Photos of UFOs today unfortunately are not very convincing. Any photo you find on the internet can be plausibly generated with AI or edited to look like anything at all, and videos aren’t much better. We’re in a weird situation where any image, digital or printed, is potentially fake, and in a world that weighs the possibility of exotic phenomena vs doctored imagery, the doctored imagery always comes out on top.
The phenomenon doesn’t start or end with photos. There’s a good chance that if I did photograph the object, it would have looked exactly how I described it- an orange dot in the sky. What good would that have done? Photos alone just leave people with more questions, but maybe that’s exactly the point. Imagery isn’t the destination, it’s the journey. Photos won’t tell you what the object is, they only get you to ask more questions. And if you’re a curious person, they propel you forward.