11th September 2016 - Leicester - Anomalous White UFO Photographs
- Chairman Dave
- Oct 1
- 7 min read
Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Year: 2016
Last Updated: 01/10/2025
Sighting Details
On the evening of 11th September 2016 Andy was walking his dog in Aylestone Meadows Local Nature Reserve, an area of open countryside just outside of Leicester.
He had his Nikon D5200 camera with him to catch a few shots of the countryside. The camera has a 70-300mm zoom lens.
At 5:38pm he noticed a couple of low flying planes. He put a telephoto lens onto his camera to take a photograph of them as they passed.
A minute later something unusual in the sky caught his eye. It appeared to be a stationary shiny crescent-shaped object. It seemed to be at an altitude of around 20000 feet, similar to the other aircraft he had observed. He did not think too much of it initially, so went through the process of taking the lens cap off his camera, which took between 10-20 seconds.
When he looked back up at the object he now noticed it appeared to be spinning at approximately one revolution a second in a very consistent manner. At this point he began taking photographs of the strange object. Over the next 90 seconds he took many photographs of it. During this time the object remained completely stationary in the sky, and the speed of rotation did not change at all.
Below are the photographs which Andy initially took between 5:39pm and 5:40pm, according to his written statement. Some of them he has cropped in order to highlight the odd shape of the object:
He then noticed a second crescent-shaped object, again at a similar altitude. This second object seemed to be travelling at great speed towards the initial object, considerably faster than the speed high altitude planes would fly at.
He aimed the camera towards this second object but it disappeared behind some cloud before he could get a photograph of it. It did not reappear. He looked back at the initial object, which was still present, and took another couple of photographs. As he did so the object suddenly accelerated and moved rapidly towards the horizon on a steady consistent path.
Below are the final two photographs Andy took. He believes the second image was taken after the object had started moving:
After about 10 seconds it had vanished into the distance! Once it had disappeared he again looked for the second object but it appeared to have left the vicinity. He remained in the area for a while longer and took several more photographs of low flying aircraft.
Metadata Analysis
Original photographs have lots of hidden EXIF metadata stored with them when taken on a camera or smartphone. While this metadata varies per camera, it provides lots of useful information including camera make and model, settings, lighting conditions and precise timings for when the image was photographed. It can also be used to determine whether images have been tampered with or not.
I examined the images on using an online EXIF metadata viewer. Below is the metadata for the initial image as an example:
However in counting the number of photos Andy sent me, and studying their metadata, a number of glaring discrepancies between his written statement and what the photos seem to show have become clear:
- In his statement Andy said he took 20 photographs in total. There are in fact 24 photographs.
- In his statement Andy said that the incident took place on 11th September 2016. According to the metadata the photographs were all taken on 14th September 2016.
- In his statement Andy mentioned that he first photographed the object at around 5:39pm. However in the above example metadata, extracted from the first photograph, it can be seen that the time states 8:13:23am
- In his statement Andy said that he took the majority of the photos over a period of 90 seconds, before taking a final two soon afterwards. However the metadata of the photographs states that the main sequence was taken between 08:13:23am and 08:26:38am, a much greater length of time.
Regarding the number of photographs, it is probable that Andy just mis-counted the number of images he’d taken. It is also possible that he got the date when the incident occurred wrong when thinking back to it to write his statement. However, the other discrepancies are harder to explain.
According to Andy he visited the nature reserve in the evening not the morning, and the sighting was relatively short as opposed to over 13 minutes in length. While it is possible he got the date wrong it seems unlikely he would get the time of day completely incorrect, or how long he photographed the object for as it sat rotating in the sky.
There is the possibility that the metadata has not recorded the date and time of the images correctly for an unknown reason, although everything else appears correct, and it should be noted that I have not seen this happen before. The specific date and time saved in the metadata is based on whatever time has been set for the clock on the camera software. However, even if this was incorrectly set, this would not have affected the length of time between the individual photographs.
It should also be noted that the colour of the sky looks more like early evening rather than morning, which fits with his testimony. It is possible that the dates and times recorded against these photos are not when they were originally taken but when they were either viewed or stored at a later point. If Andy was taking a number of seconds to look at each of them this would make sense. Unfortunately, he has not got back in touch despite efforts to reach out to him to discuss the dates and times discovered in the metadata. For now I assume that the timings mentioned in his testimony are correct, and those discovered in the metadata are for some reason incorrect.
Despite the glaring discrepancies regarding the dates and times, I certainly believe that the photographs are genuine and un-doctored. When images are edited in computer image editing software such as Paintshop Pro, the metadata changes in quite a number of ways. This varies by camera make and model. Below is a comparison between the metadata of the first photograph, and an intentionally modified copy of it, with metadata titles & values of particular note highlighted:
When Nikon camera images are altered, the following metadata changes occur:
- Some of the metadata values change their order
- Software changes from a version number to the name and version of the picture editing program
- Exif IDF Pointer and GPS Info IDF Pointer numbers change
- Padding, YCbCrPositioning, XPAuthor, MakerNote, Interoperability IFD Pointer, OffsetSchema and InteroperabilityVersion all vanish
- YCbCrSubSampling, ICC_Profile and IPTC-NAA appear
As you can see from the comparison, these changes have occurred on the intentionally modified image, but not the original photograph sent to me from the witness. While it is possible to alter metadata, most people do not even know it exists let alone how to amend it, and it is difficult to do so entirely, certain differences usually remain in place. Therefore, I feel that these photographs are extremely likely to be un-doctored.
Google Lens Analysis
I tried running the images on Google Lens to see if any similar pictures were available online. It did not come up with any direct matches, however it did locate numerous videos and pictures reminiscent of it.
Below is a link to a video posted on an alien-themed Reddit group in June 2025. The witness, “azzanrev”, believes that it may be a chrome coloured balloon:
As you can see in this video, the object is brightly reflecting the sunlight making it appear white in colour, similar to the photographs Andy took. It is also rotating continuously in an air current, just as Andy reported. Obviously this object drifts as the video progresses, where as Andy said that the object he saw did not move position until the very end of the sighting.
The Google Lens results also displayed numerous photographs of the crescent moon in a blue sky, such as the below photographs posted to TikTok by Mdhrithik Hossen:
While the colour and shape do look a little similar, I do not believe this was what was photographed by Andy due to the wildly different shapes seen across the sequence of photographs.
Conclusions
From the metadata we have established that the photographs have not been tampered with using a computer paint package and appear to be real. But what exactly do they show?
The colour of the object appears white, I believe the orangey tint seen is very likely to be the evening sunlight reflecting off it. The changing shape of the object from image to image is very likely down to the rotation Andy described. It’s a shame he did not take any burst shots to get a better view of this rotation.
The object appears to be flattened, and symmetrical horizontally, almost bat-shaped, with a clearly central “stem” and folds along it at various points. It is possibly made of a thin material and semi-translucent.
The object Andy has captured is certainly unusual, and at present, even after contacting numerous other UFO researchers for their opinion, I do not have a definite answer regarding what it is. I did consider whether it was a bright star/planet which had been warped due to instability of the camera, however the symmetry seen in some of the images points away from this explanation.
That said, does not really look like a structured craft. It seems more likely that it was some kind of novelty inflatable, with air currents causing it to constantly rotate. However, Andy did state that it retained its position in the sky as he took the photographs, but then suddenly flew away quite fast, which sounds more like it was under intelligent control than drifting.
As you can see there are certain aspects of this incident which point away from the object being a balloon. These aspects, combined with the anomalies between the witness’s testimony and the metadata of the photographs, make it a compelling mystery. If you have any information regarding what this object definitely was, or could possibly have been, please get in touch.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2025
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