Birmingham UFO Group Case Report
Author: Dave Hodrien
Release Date: 19/07/2020
Last Updated: 22/07/2020
In July 2020 I was contacted by Amar Hussain from Walsall who wanted to inform me of a recent UFO sighting he had also managed to capture on video. In discussion it also became apparent that he had had a number of earlier sightings too, some of which had also been videoed. This report covers his experiences in depth, including analysis of the footage.
Winter 2014 – Green Orb Sighting
On a Saturday in the winter of 2014 Amar and his family were in the process of moving house. He and his wife had driven over to Bilston to have a look at a potential property on a new housing development close to the canal (He cannot recollect the exact road name).
It was late evening when they arrived at the address. He parked the car and got out for a quick cigarette. There were streetlights on the side of the road where he stood but on the far side of the road it was darker. Suddenly he noticed what appeared to be a dark green glowing orb of light or energy. It was on the far side of the road about 30 feet from his position, and was about 20 feet off the ground. It was drifting along very slowly to the right in front of the houses! It appeared to be about the size of a football.
He watched the orb fascinated by it for about 35-40 seconds. Then without warning it split into three smaller orbs. One continued on the same path, the other two began separating off at diagonals. This continued for about 10 seconds and then all three faded out.
Amar is a Muslim and wondered if the experience had a religious explanation of some kind, so soon after he spoke with an Islamic scholar about what had happened. The scholar believed it was linked with the Djinn in some way. Followers of Islam believe Djinn (genies) are supernatural mischievous spirits, and the colour green has some significance to them.
What Amar saw certainly sounds unusual. It could not have been a lit inflatable of some kind due to the way in which it split into three. Also Amar said that it did not look like a solid sphere. A reflection of a light also seems very improbable as he watched it for a good period of time as it slowly moved along. This fact, combined with the low altitude it was at, also puts a meteorite out of the realms of possibility for the sighting. There is a chance that this was an earth light, however these are quite rare and tend to appear over rural areas not in urbanised locations.
20th May 2020 – White Orb Video
At 11.43pm on the evening of 20th May 2020 Amar stepped outside the front door of his house for a smoke. It was a beautiful clear night, with the stars fully visible. Looking up at the sky he suddenly noticed a glowing blue-white orb of light moving slowly towards his location from the North West West. It appeared to be at an altitude of about 100 feet. He immediately got his iPhone out and began recording it as it moved silently towards him.
After watching the object for about just under a minute he moved back towards the door. He then continued to film the object for about 10 seconds. He then decided to call his daughter Eshel to come and see the object. By the time she came outside to join him, the orb had passed over the roof of the house and had begun to move away from their location. He stopped filming it at this point and he and Eshel then stood and watched it until it had vanished from sight behind the housing.
Below is the video footage which Amar took of the orb:
As you can see it shows a brightly glowing orb of white light with a slight tinge of blue to it, which is especially obvious when he tries zooming in on it.
Zoomed view of the orb (58 seconds):
Same zoomed view with edge find:
Zoomed view of the orb (1 minute 9 seconds). The rings of colour seen are down to blurring caused by the camera, they do not show the true shape of the object:
Metadata is electronic information automatically stored alongside any recorded videos or photographs. Here is the format metadata for the footage:
The metadata shows that it was shot on an iPhone 6, and suggests that it has not been modified using any video software package. It also confirms the date and time that it was taken. While it is possible to manually alter metadata, I have no reason to believe that this video is not genuine.
They remained outside a while longer after the UFO had disappeared and continued looking up at the stars together. Amar says they then began to notice roughly half a dozen other moving lights at very high altitude moving in different directions. Some of these lights would stop and change directions. He attempted to record these on his phone too but they did not come out.
20th May is several days before the end of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. According to Islamic law, the last 10 nights of Ramadan are significant, and are supposed to be when angels descend to Earth. Amar wonders if what he and his daughter saw was linked with this in some way.
I initially proposed that the orb may have been a lone LED balloon launched to celebrate Ramadan. However I now believe the most likely explanation for the orb is that it was the International Space Station. This appears like a very bright orb of light slowly crossing the sky over a couple of minutes.
In checking the ISS Tracker website it can be seen that the ISS was crossing the UK at the time the video was taken. Below are three screen grabs showing the position at 11.43pm, 11.44pm and 11.45pm:
At the start of the video the ISS was over Southern Ireland. However due to its distance from Earth it is possible to see it hundreds of miles away, and so it would have been seen to approach from the West, pass over and move away to the East as shown in the footage.
Here is another Youtube video of the ISS passing overhead for comparison:
I put this possibility to Amar. His thoughts on this were "It is an interesting theory but honestly it was low enough to discount that. It was lower than what you may explain as the ISS. You can just make out my roof and the blue orb not too far above that."
Another complication is that Amar says this is not the first time he observed the object. Speaking about this previous sighting he says "If memory serves me correct I noticed the same light anomaly two or three mornings before just before Sehri ends (eating food before fasting commences) which would have been about 3am to 3.20am. It was my wife who talked me out of it that it’s probably nothing, she wanted to get back to bed, so against my better judgement I went back in."
When the ISS Tracker is checked for the days leading up to the 20th May at 3.00am the only day on which the ISS Tracker is crossing the UK at around this time is the 15th May at 2.55am. It is possible that Amar is mistaken on it being only a few days before, after all he is not exactly sure of the night of the previous sighting. It is therefore possible he observed the ISS twice.
Due to its brightness the ISS can sometimes appear to be much lower down and in the atmosphere rather than out in orbit. I have personally witnessed this one on of our sky watches at Cannock Chase. I therefore continue to lean towards this as the most probable explanation for what was observed and recorded.
The distant moving objects observed later on are certainly interesting. As they were changing speed and direction at times they could not have been satellites or meteorites, and very high alitude aircraft or helicopters also seems unlikely. It is sometimes possible for birds to reflect lights after dark and appear as moving points of light in the sky. This remains a possibility, but they are currently unexplained. It is a shame Amar's phone camera did not pick them up.
24th May 2020 - Silver Orb Sighting
Four days after the white orb was seen and recorded, at 10.30pm, Amar once again stepped outside the front of his house for a cigarette. It was another beautiful clear night.
On the far side of the road lies a railway line surrounded in trees behind a wooden fence. Suddenly a glowing silver coloured orb appeared just over the top of the fence and moving to the left extremely fast in a Southerly direction! The object appeared about the size of a football and appeared to be dripping molten silver or sparks. It shot extremly fast for a brief moment and then vanished within 2-3 seconds.
Photograph of the sighting location with the object's path indicated:
Amar was gobsmacked at what he had just witnessed. As it was the night of Eid in the Islamic calendar, he took this to be a religious experience of some kind.
What could the object have been? It was too low down to be a meteorite, it was clearly quite close as it passed in front of the trees rather than behind them. However due to it being the night of Eid there is definately the possibility that it was some kind of firework. Many fireworks are launched on this night to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Clearly it was not one being set off in the distance, but it is possible that someone was nearby on the other side of the fence and launched one. I feel that given the circumstances this is the most likely explanation, but this of course not conclusive.
11th July 2020 – Flying Triangle Video
It was the early hours of the morning of Saturday 11th July 2020. Amar had settled down to bed, but his son Daniel was still up playing video games in his bedroom. He had the blinds to his room half open and happened to glance out of the window towards the East. He noticed what appeared to be a glowing yellow light over the roofs of the houses on Midland Road. He went through to his parents room and woke up Amar saying “Dad, there’s a UFO!”
Amar and his wife got up and went through to Daniel’s room to see what he was referring to. The yellow light was still visible. It was moving slowly to the North, too slow to be an aeroplane. Nor did it appear to be a helicopter. They began to lose sight of it so went through to Eshel’s room to see if it was visible through her window. At first it seemed to have vanished, but then it slowly came back up into view.
Returning to Daniel’s room, Amar got up on the bed giving him a higher vantage point. He then started to record the light on his iPhone. It was very dark in the direction of the object as there were no streetlights and due to the time of night all the houses had their lights off. On camera Amar was surprised to find that the object appeared to be made up of three points of light in a flattened triangular configuration rather than the single point of light which it looked like to his naked eye.
Aerial map of Midland Road, showing the sighting location and possible route of the lights:
He recorded the lights for 42 seconds before stopping filming. Shortly after they moved out of sight behind the housing. They appeared to be quite low down, less than 50 feet up and sometimes descending to below 30 feet.
Below is the video footage that Amar took:
Zoomed view of the lights (13 seconds):
Zoomed view with edge find:
Zoomed view with negative colours:
Video format metadata:
Like the orb video, this metadata suggests that the video is genuine and taken on an iPhone 6 at the date and time confirmed my the witness.
Although Amar had a hard time sometimes keeping the camera stable, it is obvious that there are three distinct points of light. Two bright yellow lights on the right, and a dimmer (potentially more hidden from view) light to the left. I do not believe this is a single point of light being replicated due to camera blur.
This lighting is inconsistent with a helicopter, which would usually have white, red and green lights and a strobing white light. There is clearly no strobing occurring here, and it also seems unlikely that a helicopter would fly at such low altitude at that time of morning, although of course this would be possible.
There is a possibility that the three lights are Chinese lanterns which have been launched. While these tend to be more orange in colour, they can sometimes appear yellow like this. There is a slight inconsistency to the brightness of the lights, which could imply flickering flames. This is not substantial enough to confirm. Towards the end of the footage the lower right light vanishes, possibly suggesting that one of them has gone out. However It could have just been hidden from sight due to an obstruction or angle of view. Also lanterns are quite hard to purchases these days due to the fire hazard risk they pose, and it also seems rather late to be launching such things.
The configuration remains consistent throughout the footage, which is why I feel that these are more likely to be three lights attached to a single solid object rather than freely drifting. If this is the case, it is too dark to make out any body of this object between the lights, even when using software to enhance and brighten the footage.
One of the more commonly reported types of craft are Flying Triangles. These are usually black or very dark in colour, with a light at each corner (and sometimes other lights too). I feel there is a chance that Amar may have managed to capture one of these craft, moving at a slow speed over his neighbourhood. However this is far from conclusive, and unfortunately due to how dark the footage is there is no point of reference to judge distance or speed of movement.
Conclusion
Amar and his family have had some interesting sightings over recent years. I certainly feel that there is enough evidence to conclude that the white orb was the ISS, however the other two sightings are more mysterious. Whether you feel these incidents have a religious explanation will be down to your own particular beliefs. While none of the sightings are conclusively advanced craft, they are certainly intriguing. It is great that Amar managed to capture two of the objects on video too. If he has any further sightings I hope he will let me know so they can be added to this report.
Copyright Dave Hodrien 2020