User:Valoem/2011 Vancouver UFO sighting

The Vancouver, Washington UFO sighting occurred over two evenings in February 2011, as reported by many eyewitnesses in the Clear Meadows neighborhood of Vancouver, Washington, United States.

Description of events
Reports included purple and red flashing lights appearing on the evening of February 20, 2011, as well as a saucer shape with green and red lights reportedly appearing just before 7:00 pm to Vancouver residents on the evening of February 21, 2011. Witness descriptions of the object included hovering for several minutes with occasional darting, side-to-side motions. No noise was reported to accompany the sightings.

One photo and two video recordings of the sighting were submitted to local media organizations. A photo by Joey Studdard shows a red dot with a trail of blue lights on a black background. A video of 52 seconds in length submitted to the KATU news webpage by Sandy Curtis, shows a set of flashing red lights, out-of-focus against a black background. Due to the hand-held motion of the camera and the absence of any background imagery, size and movements are very difficult to determine. A second video recorded on March 2, 2011 is over five minutes in length. Again, motion, size and speed are difficult to determine.

Possible explanations
Peter Davenport, the director of the National UFO Reporting Center, first gave an opinion that the object spotted on February 21, 2011, was the star Sirius. Being the brightest star in the sky, Sirius is more likely to exhibit twinkling, color-changing effects. However, after viewing video of the object, Davenport later remarked: "I don’t believe it was a star. The object moved off. Stars don’t do that."

Several reader comments submitted to The Columbian, KGW and KATU websites claimed to have identified the object up close as an LED-equipped kite. Following news reports of the events, an individual giving his name only as "Mike" presented himself and his Chinese-manufactured kite as the source. The kite presented to The Columbian newspaper the week after the initial sightings stood 7 and-a-half feet tall with a 13 foot wingspan. Nearly 500 LED lights were hung from the triangle-shaped structure and were centrally-controlled to display different patterns including one depicting a flying saucer.

A kite equipped with LEDs was found to be the likely cause of similar UFO sightings in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 2010.