Farhan Akhtar, deputy general manager of a ceramic company, chanced upon a burning object in the night sky, travelling from the east to west and immediately reached for his handycam to capture the image shortly after 3 am. To his surprise, by the time he began filming the ‘intelligently guided craft’ (which UFOs are often called) from his bedroom window at the E M Bypass apartment in the eastern part of the city, it changed its shape and size into various forms and remained stationary for a prolonged period.

“Initially, the object was circular, having a central white core surrounded by a reddish patch. Then, it assumed a trigonal form before turning into a pyramid type. Shortly thereafter, it took a cylindrical shape and then, finally appeared like a thin thread before dissolving in the morning sky,” Akhtar told a private TV channel here on Monday.

He handed over the entire footage of the object to the channel.

The debate now is whether it is an optical illusion; but the point remains an optical illusion cannot be captured in a digicam so brilliantly and brightly and for such a prolonged period when the object was assuming myriad forms. he channel is being flooded with phonecalls from people from various parts of the state who claimed to have sighted the object.

However, Akhtar’s brother who tried to capture the bright object with a digital still camera, could not produce the quality footage which Farhan amazingly did. According to Akhtar who kept the digicam constantly on the charge during his nearly three-hour “close encounter” with it, the mysterious object was often changing its altitude as red, blue, green and violet flames of light emitted from the UFO while it changed shapes.

“Had it been a comet, it would have been constantly travelling towards earth, it would not have remained static as the object at times appeared and again rose up to gain height. Moreover, a comet does not necessarily change shape and that too, to a defined shape. I have no explanation for this bright object,” Director of Birla Planetarium Debiprasad Duari observed.

The debate currently raging is whether it is an optical illusion; but the point remains an optical illusion cannot be captured in a digicam so brilliantly and brightly and that also, for such a prolonged period when the object was assuming myriad forms.

The channel is being flooded with phonecalls from people from various parts of the state who claimed to have sighted the object at the night sky. “It completely disappeared in the morning sky around 6.20am,” Akhtar added. It remains to be seen if the air traffic control at the Dum Dum International Airport had recorded anything mysterious moving object in its radar during that period.