A grainy, black-and-white video of a star-shaped object moving erratically across the sky has taken the internet by storm. But this is not a scene from a science fiction film. It is a declassified US military recording, and the government has no explanation for it yet.
On May 8, 2026, the US Department of War released its first tranche of declassified UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) files under President Donald Trump’s transparency directive, as part of an initiative called PURSUE, which stands for Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters.
Among the dozens of records published was one that stopped everyone in their tracks: a one-minute-and-46-second infrared video of an eight-pointed, star-shaped object drifting and jittering across the Middle Eastern sky.
It was recorded in 2013, and it remains unresolved to this day.
WHAT DOES THE VIRAL UFO VIDEO ACTUALLY SHOW?
The footage, officially catalogued as DOW-UAP-PR38 by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, the US government’s dedicated UAP investigation unit, was captured by an infrared sensor aboard a US military platform operating in the Middle East on January 1, 2013.
An infrared sensor, unlike a regular camera, does not record visible light. Instead, it detects heat. Objects that emit or reflect heat appear bright against a cooler, darker background. This is why the footage looks monochrome and ghostly.
According to AARO’s official description, the video depicts an area of contrast resembling an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length. At around the ten-second mark, the sensor zooms in on the object.
It then moves within the frame, leaving a visible trail behind it, before exiting the bottom right of the screen.
After what appears to be a cut in the footage, it reappears and eventually exits from the top left of the frame. No eyewitness description was provided alongside the recording. The case has no radar data, no corroborating sensor information, and remains officially unresolved.
IS THE STAR-SHAPED UFO ACTUALLY ALIEN?
Probably not, and here is why.
The most compelling scientific explanation points to a military parachute illumination flare, a type of flare commonly used in conflict zones.
These flares descend slowly on small parachutes, burn at extremely high temperatures, and drift erratically in the wind. When captured by an infrared sensor, a burning flare creates exactly the kind of starburst pattern seen in the video.
The pulsing, elongating arms are not physical structures. They are the result of a phenomenon called thermal blooming, where a very hot point source of heat overwhelms the camera’s detector, causing it to spike outward in a star shape.
Multiple technical analysts have noted that the side-to-side jitter, the visible heat trail, and the overall behaviour of the object are entirely consistent with a drifting flare, not an exotic craft.
WHAT ABOUT THE APOLLO-ERA UFO FILES?
The May 8 release also included files tied to Nasa’s Apollo programme, which sparked considerable excitement online.
However, space historian and author Amy Shira Teitel, known for her extensive documentary work on the Apollo missions, pushed back firmly on the hype, and her argument is worth understanding carefully.
Teitel pointed out that virtually every document, photograph, and transcript included in this portion of the release has been sitting in public archives for decades, freely available to anyone willing to look.
Take the Apollo 12 image being circulated as a new UAP revelation. It comes from Magazine 46/Y, Image 6847 (AS12-46-6847), a photograph that has been accessible through Nasa’s archives for years. There is nothing new about it.
Then there is the so-called Gemini 7 bogey, a reference to an unidentified object spotted during the Gemini 7 mission. This incident was documented in the official Nasa history published in 1977, nearly 50 years ago. It has never been a secret.
Perhaps the most striking example involves Apollo 17.
During the mission’s transposition and docking manoeuvre, a technique from Apollo-era space missions where a spacecraft separates from its rocket, turns around, and docks with a payload, the crew separated from the S4B rocket stage to retrieve the lunar module stored inside it.
This process naturally sent debris floating in all directions around the spacecraft.
Lunar Module pilot Jack Schmitt described the sight by saying it looked like the Fourth of July outside fellow astronaut Ron Evans’s window.
The crew then took seven photographs of the particles, catalogued in Magazine NN. One photograph even shows the lunar module itself, still surrounded by the floating debris. Every one of these images and transcripts has been publicly downloadable from Nasa for decades.
What the new release appears to have done is repackage old, already-published material under the UAP label. The framing is new. The information is not.
IS THIS THE PROOF OF ALIEN LIFE EVERYONE WAS WAITING FOR?
Not yet. AARO has consistently maintained that, of the thousands of UAP cases it has reviewed, none have produced verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial life or technology.
Most sightings are concluded to be drones, weather balloons, sensor glitches, or, as may be the case here, military pyrotechnics.
What the May 8 release does represent is a genuine shift in government transparency.
The files are real, the footage is real, and the fact that the government is now saying here is what we filmed, and we still cannot explain it, is significant in itself.
The truth, as always, is still out there.
– Ends
