Last night (May 11), five of us sighted what appeared to be a UFO from the Montesueños observation deck at about 9 pm towards the West South West (infividual reports follow). Regarding previous sightings, Meredith and I had slept through one massive long-duration UFO apparation in Vilcabamba in June 2004, the night after an all-night ceremony in which we were committing to buying our property here. This prior event had involved several dozens of people sighting many ships, and a resultant power failure in the town for 16 hours. After moving in here, once we had seen lights moving irregularly in the sky above Mandango, and once, during a moist misty dusk, my camera picked up what appeared to be orbs in the foreground in a photo of the village and Mandango. Vilcabamba residents and visitors have seen many UFOs through the years, with the number of sightings dwindling in recent years, perhaps related to the growing gringo influx we’re now experiencing.

Last night, five of us were stargazing from our deck. The visibility was good with about 10% coverage of wispy high clouds partially blocking the stars. I then noticed a bright bluish light about ten degrees above the horizon to the left of Mandango and just to the right of some eucalyptus trees higher on our land. At first I thought it might be Venus, but then noticed a distinctly different behavior: the light was not at all steady (like Venus) seemed to twinkle (like a star) and flash sometimes like a lighthouse beacon. The light appeared to move around a small area, dropping and moving leftwards towards the trees and sometimes rightwards and upwards with an erratic, jerky motion, and limited to a degree or two. This seemed to have been classical UFO behavior, albeit apparently pretty far away.

I ran back into the house to get my field glasses, and the five of us observed the phenomena for about 20-30 minutes. Then, the object moved downward towards the horizon and got fainter. I don’t know whether this was a westwards “setting” and/or whether it was moving further away and downwards. The phenomenon never actually disappeared behind any clouds. Two of the others of the five of us noticed some finer detail on the object itself (a “grid” and “honeycomb” structure as seen through the binoculars). Neither my visual acuity nor color vision being that great, I only occasionally noticed a disc shape with the erratic, sparodic motion and beacon effect superposed. In my view, this was our first definitive UFO sighting here, and moral of the story is to stargaze more often and keep looking!

P.S. After observations the following night, I felt it was possible that the object in question was simply the star Sirius significantly scintillating (Sirius was calculated to be nearby but likely to be behind the trees and perhaps also behind some clouds near the horizon at the time of observation the previous night). While that interpretation cannot be eliminated, it is highly unlikely because the observed jump of the object in question around the sky and multicolored manifestations were unlike those of a twinkling bright star.

Report of Anomalous Light Observed on evening of 5/11/09 by Paul Von Ward

Five of us returned to Montesueños after dinner between 9 & 10 pm and mounted stairs to the upper balcony to search for the Southern Cross and other constellations. In searching the horizon Brian O’Leary called our attention to a bright, blinking “star” in the southwest to west a few degrees above the horizon. Its position in the sky was easy to define due to the low position and proximity to two tall trees.

Over the course of 15 or so minutes of observation, the object shifted (in my perspective) both lower and closer to the trees as seen as 1 and 2 below:

Trees ________ * 1
Trees _____ * 2
Trees

The object did not move dramatically or rapidly, however the blinking nature included what appeared to be the almost constant rotation of a red and blue-green light. I did not see them making circles of light. It was more as in alternating from moment 1 to 2 and back again.

*1 red/white/blue
*2 blue/white/red

The lights were not static and perhaps rotated, but that was not clear to me. I mentioned to the group that they were not like airplane lights, but more like port and starboard on a boat, and they kept exchanging places. My view through handheld binoculars did not reveal any significant difference from the description above.

Report of an object observed in the nighttime sky on Monday 11 May, 2009
Tonette T. Long, Ph.D., USA

Brian O’Leary noticed, while the rest of us were discussing the stars, that one bright object was not a star. Previously we had been talking about the constellations in the southern sky and trying to identify them—no mention of UFOs or the history of sightings in Vilcabamba—thus no autosuggestion played into the situation.

I was able without binoculars to see colored lights slightly off the rim of the object. However, when binoculars were produced, I was able to see its surface. It was round with a tendency toward oval. On the surface I observed a pattern that could be called a “grid” or, perhaps more accurately, a “honey-comb” pattern. I was able to re-focus the object three or four times, each time observing the pattern and the shifting lights from the rim. The object seemed to dim significantly and to shrink, perhaps to collapse, significantly and the surface patterns disappeared.

Leiani Vevang’s observations:

On the evening of May 10th 2009, in Vilcabamba, Ecuador; at the home of Brian O’Leary and Meredith Miller, I observed an unidentifiable object in the western sky. Originally, Brian invited us all to go up on to his roof deck to look for the Southern Cross. After Brian located the Southern Cross, some one in the group noticed an overly bright star in the western sky. I looked over and noticed it was sparkling like a star, but twinkled with different colors. Soon everyone agreed, they too, could see the changing colors. My husband, Kevin found his 8 power binoculars, returned to the roof deck, and let each of us peered through them to try and get a closer look at the sparkling object. Brian also brought a pair of his binoculars up to the deck, which he shared with us. For me, with the aid of binoculars, the star became a circle, with geometric shapes inside. Paul von Ward’s wife, Tonette, described the shapes inside the sparking circle as “honey comb like”, I agreed, (or maybe more like double cross hatch, see attached drawing). The inside “honey-comb” sparkled with the same vibrancy as the exterior portion of the circle, but with waves of bright blue, red, and green, moving randomly through or across the continually sparkling shape. I say shape, because at one point the circle, started changing into a square, and then became more squatted into a horizontal rectangle, and then up again into a square, and back to a circle. I was so surprised I handed the binoculars to Tonette, and she confirmed she saw the circle change its shape also. After about 20 to 25 minutes the object appeared to begin to move away from us, we watch a few minutes more and then descended from the roof deck.

Kevin’s observations:

Star gazing on Brian O’Leary’s Roof Deck. It was a clear night in Vilcabamba, Ecuador around 9:00pm on 5-10-09 my wife, LeiLani, and I had just come back from town, and shortly after we arrived Brian O’Leary and his wife Meredith, Paul van Ward and his wife Tonette pulled into the driveway and invited us to go up to the roof deck and look at the stars. We were being shown the Southern Cross by Brian who of course is a like having your own personal Astronomer.

Paul, Brian, or Tonette spotted a very bright light to the West, at first glance I thought it could be a jet flying directly towards us or away from us, but after a few minutes of no obvious change in location and size we discounted the possibility it could be a jet.

In order to have a closer look Brian and I rushed downstairs to grab our binoculars. What I could see without binoculars was a large bright white light with blue, green, and red lights blinking. When observed through the binoculars the large white light appeared to be round and the colored lights were blinking around the edges and randomly changing locations.