My UFO Sighting

photo copyright 1995 Natural Light Productions

This is not my UFO sighting.  I found this photo amongst all the others we've been sorting through while trying to get our house organized.  I scanned it while Marcy was napping, without her permission, worse yet without the copyright holder's permission.  Bob, please notify me if you want me to take it offline.  By the way, excellent PhotoShop work!

My wife Marcy was camera operator for various public access cable TV productions, most via Cincinnati Community Video, one of the best of which was UFO Update Live.  It consisted of a panel of experts who  discussed UFO & paranormal topics and took live phone calls from the viewing audience.  What a cool circle of people I met!  I recall Tom Mulroy, Bob Leibold, Jeff Sindiong, Terry Endres, the late Pat Packard, who was the regional MUFON representative, the late Kenny Young who replaced Pat in the MUFON chair.  Joedy Cook & George Clappison covered cryptozology.  The late Roger Olson was in there too. The late Jerry Black & his wife Peggy also made some interesting contributions.  I know there had to be more but my memory fails me at the moment.  These guys were way ahead of the curve compared to the current Ghost Hunter disciples, no offense intended towards sincere investigators.  Kudos to all who make the effort; we need more.

My own UFO sighting happened a few years ago, when I still worked for Hewlett Packard at Procter & Gamble's headquarters in downtown Cincinnati.  Us HP folks had our offices up on the 8th floor in what we called the Sycamore Building at the corner of 6th & Sycamore.  One afternoon there was a break in the action and a handful us chatted about business in one of the offices that had windows facing north.  I stood with Keith W. gazing out the window at the bright clear afternoon sky, discussing laptops, customers, etc.  By the way, that's how guys chat - we are generally are side by side looking at something else as we talk, whether it's a campfire, a TV, a work project, with occaisional eye contact at appropriate points.  The ladies seem to go for more facing, more eye contact.  I read that it's a Mars/Venus thing.  Well, as Keith and I talked computers, my eye wandered high in the clear blue sky and I spotted a dot and I thought some kid must have let go of a balloon.  However, as I kept watching it did not continue to rise as I would expect a balloon to do.  My second thought was maybe a lightweight plastic grogery had got caught in some odd thermal updraft from the sun on the asphalt or some such.  We kept chatting and I now had my eyes locked on this dot high in the clear sky.  I did not see it move at all, as I would expect from an object in an updraft.  I refused to take my eyes from the dot.  Was it a helicopter?  How could something in the sky not move at all?  After several minutes of staring at this thing I had to mention it.  "Keith, I don't mean to be rude or ignore you but I've been watching something.  What do you make of it?"  Now here's the thing.  Keith W. is retired from the Air Force, a captain I believe, and he was on the team that launched the GPS satellites, so he knows a thing or two about things in the sky.  He always used to joke about our job:  "This ain't rocket science, I've DONE rocket science."  Once I pointed out the dot, he had no trouble spotting it, and as I told him my thoughts about balloon/bag/helicopter he agreed.  He also had his eyes locked on the dot now and we both pondered what the heck it could be.  That dot never moved.  Finally his Blackberry buzzed and we had to abandon this mystery of the cosmos unresolved to attend to some executive's mundane computer problem.

What do you think it was?  I often hear about UFO sightings being dismissed as the planet Venus.  I'm open to the idea in this case but I have observed the sky a lot and have witnessed planets only near the horizon around sunrise or sunset.  This was in midafternoon, high in the sky, from a north-facing window.  How about it astronomers, could it have been Venus?