An Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) enthusiast has discovered in a panoramic Mars photo taken by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover what he believes is possibly a crashed flying saucer. Or a strange looking, “massive” rock. But other UFO enthusiasts agree that it is an alien craft of some sort.
Streetcap1, a prolific UFO spotter with dozens of YouTube videos to his credit, posted a video clip this week of what was referred to as — while not exactly a UFO in that the object in question was not “flying” — an unidentified “anomaly” with “windows” seeming at rest on top of a hill on Mars. Entitled “Martian Hill Anomaly,” the clip shows a rocky hill jutting out over the Martian landscape with what looks to be a darker form set on top, near where the hill appears to suddenly drop off.
“This looks a bit unusual,” Streetcap1 wrote on the posting. “Doesn’t really fit in with the surrounding rocks. It is at the summit of the mountain and very far off, so if it is a rock then it must be massive. Also it looks like there are windows on it.”
The anomalous object stands out from the rocky terrain not only because it is somewhat darker, but also because, at least from the camera’s perspective, it seems to have a familiar shape readily identifiable to even the most casual UFO researcher or dabbler. Succinctly, it looks like it could be circular, with a raised area at center, making it look like a hubcap — or a flying saucer.
Scott Waring, who operates the blog UFO Sightings Daily , was quick to agree that the flying saucer anomaly might be alien. Referring to it as a “disk,” Waring wrote on his blog that the object “looks to be made of the same material as the surroundings, and could be a flying disk that has landed, or it could be a building built there on purpose to get a better view.”
Waring, who is prone to imaginative alien speculations, went on to say that he found “a few other anomalies” in the NASA Mars photo (a GigaPan composite photo uploaded to GigaPan.com by Neville Thompson on September 19). In a show of blatant anthropomorphism, he claimed the find looked like a “male figure kneeling or praying” as seen from behind, “petrified from some monstrous weapon.” After posting a highlighted photo of this figure, which Waring admitted might be a statue (it is estimated to be only 4-6 centimeters tall), he wrote that, before being turned to stone, the “person” might have been begging for their life.
NASA photos have been a rich source of discovery material for UFO hunters over the years, and Mars photos are no exception. As the Houston Chronicle reported in December, the UFO YouTube user UFOvni2012 purportedly found a strange, elongated, smoothly flattened “U” — apparently the remains of a UFO crash site — carved into the Mars landscape and suggested it was created by a “ giant disc shaped UFO ” that had, according to the blog, Area Zone 51 UFOs , might have crashed , then later left the crash site.
In March 2015, YouTube user Mars Moon Space TV passed along the Gigapan photo compiled from data transmitted from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In the video, narrated by Thomas Jensen, it is noted how a disk-shaped object stands out, seemingly embedded at the top of a declivity in the Mars terrain.
As the video “ Mars Orbiter anomaly nr 1 ” goes through a series of closer zooms, Jensen stated, “Now you see it very clear… This is not a rock. This is an artificial, constructed building, facility, craft, house built by intelligence by beings on another planet. How much more proof do we need?”
Given the comments, although there are several that find the image worthy of alien speculation, more proof than what is presented in the UFO video clip will be needed. While one viewer blatantly called the disc a photoshopped image, Don Davis wrote that the anomaly wasn’t anomalous at all, just an enlarged view of linear sand dunes and “claimed to be remarkable out of context is shown to be a variation of something seen repeatedly nearby…”
So are the NASA photo images simply interpretations of rock structures or formations presented by UFO enthusiasts who are seeing only what they wish to see? Or are they cases of pareidolia, the psychological go-to of the human mind where disparate objects are placed into familiar patterns (think: animal-shaped clouds or constellations like “The Big Dipper”)? Or are the UFO enthusiasts seeing something the more skeptical and analytical are not seeing — evidence of UFO crashes or landing sites on Mars?
[Featured Image by SSSCCC/Shutterstock]