UFOs over Berlin and Brandenburg: What is that up there in the sky?
UFOs over Berlin and Brandenburg
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What’s that up in the sky?
Unlike in the USA, there is no task force in Germany that deals with UFO sightings, mainly hobby astronomers do that. They record and investigate hundreds of sightings of inexplicable objects every year. By Anna Bordel
Thomas Bröse actually only wanted to take a short break from motorcycling on this late Sunday evening in August 2021. He drove to a rest area on the A10 near Nauen (Havelland), turned off the machine and let his gaze wander into the night sky. As he looked to the south, his eyes suddenly caught on something.
“I saw a conspicuously bright point of light in the sky,” says Bröse. “I thought it was a star.
A little further to the west, he also saw a point of light that was a little less bright but also flickered, says Bröse. He called his wife, who was in North Rhine-Westphalia at the time. She too could see the apparition. Brose filmed the jumping point of light with his cell phone. During the recording, he noticed that “acoustic distortions could be heard, like when you’re looking for a station on the radio,” says Bröse.
No German UFO task force
Many things in the sky can be mistaken for UFOs, says Stefan Gotthold, head of the Archenhold Observatory in Treptower Park in Berlin. Two to three times a week, he would receive inquiries from people describing something inexplicable in the sky. “About 90 percent of the sightings that we received are terrestrial. So objects that come from our earth, airplanes for example,” says Gotthold. Inquiries would also increase if Planet Venus were to fly to the Evening Star or if the International Space Station were to fly over Berlin.
In the US it has been in the past week for the first time a hearing on the “unidentified aerial phenomenon” (UAP) for 50 years [tagesschau.de] given in the US House of Representatives. The US military task force set up specifically for their investigation could not have found an explanation for around 140 flying objects.
Official recognition of the phenomenon is being sought in Germany. The topic of extraterrestrial life and UFOs was last on the agenda in the Bundestag in 2009: “The federal government has no information that would allow it to be certain of the probability of extraterrestrial life. According to the current state of scientific knowledge, the Federal Government considers a landing of extraterrestrials on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany to be out of the question,” said a government response to a written question from Green MP Peter Hettlich. A unit that officially deals with the topic is nothing known in this country.
UFO cases are investigative work
Brose was therefore unable to turn to an official body with his sighting. He found the Society for Researching the UFO Phenomenon (GEP), sent his video there and received a statement: “A reconstruction of the astronomical situation at the time of your observation has shown that the very brightly radiating planet appears in the direction you indicated Jupiter included,” it says.
The slightly less bright luminous point was also a planet: Saturn. The earth’s atmosphere made it appear as if it had moved. “The atmosphere then sometimes acts like a lens or a prism and breaks or scatters the light, so that unusual effects can occur, compounded by the air turbulence in the atmosphere.”
Brose is not completely satisfied with that. The acoustics, the distorted noise, were not explained at all, he says.
Hans-Werner Peiniger, among others, works at GEP to investigate UFO sightings. People can submit their sightings to him and his colleagues. They then use various programs such as weather maps, flight radars, and astronomy programs to try to figure out what IS in that sighting.
The amateur astronomer says he doesn’t think aliens will ever appear. “I’ve been doing this for 50 years, I’ve had about 5,000 cases, of which I couldn’t clear up about five percent,” says Peiniger. However, he rather believes that it is due to the lack of data and not because there were UFOs piloted by extraterrestrial beings. “I use the detective approach in this work,” says Peiniger.
Starlink satellites like strings of pearls in the sky
Peininger says he understands the term UFO in the true sense, without superstructure: unidentified flying object. According to his own statements, he has processed 18 sightings in the Berlin and Brandenburg area since 2020. One of them was by Thomas Brose.
Another 69-year-old woman, who shares with her friend at Lake Tegel, saw a crescent-shaped silvery object – like a crescent moon – emerge from behind a cloud, silently fly in a southwesterly direction and finally be obscured by a cloud again. Peiniger was able to determine that it was an alleged foil balloon, better known as a balloon.
Not only Peiniger, but also Horst Köhler identified UFOs – for the Central Research Network of Extraordinary Celestial Phenomena (Cenap). They usually received 300 to 400 sightings a year until the cases doubled three years ago, says Köhler.
Who Officially Takes Care of UFOs?
But not only amateur astronomers, but also official bodies in Germany deal with UFOs, at least indirectly. The Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection is now indirectly involved in research for so-called exoplanets, i.e. earth-like planets on which there may be life, by co-financing the James Webb Space Telescope.
Outside of research, unidentified flying objects of any kind play a role when it comes to airspace safety. In Germany, this is taken care of by the German air traffic control (DFS). However, nothing conspicuous has been seen there. “The flying objects that we see and control in our airspace can also be assigned accordingly. Exception are drones from amateur pilots,” said DFS spokesman Stefan Jaekel.
The Air Force of the Bundeswehr is also concerned with security in the airspace. “All flight movements over Germany are permanently (…) recorded and stored in the central database for actual flight operations,” the website says. It is not known whether there have already been sightings of unidentified flying objects there, which are similar to those in the USA.
Do you have extraterrestrial eyes?
Stefan Gotthold from the Archenhold Observatory says he believes that what fascinates people about UFOs is more than a need for security. “This is about something unknown and I believe that humanity has always strived to find answers,” says Gotthold.
When he works with students at the observatory, the question always comes up: Is there life in space? “You can approach this question with a lot of imagination: What would such a life look like? Has this life developed just like us?” says Gotthold. What could such a life look like? “Maybe it’s a dark planet. All such questions come into play when imagining extraterrestrial life.
Brose is sensitive to the topic not only because of his planet sighting. Before that he saw a row of lights in the sky in the garden in the afternoon and thought: Now the extraterrestrials are coming.
A little later it was clear that it was Starlink satellites. His gaze will probably continue to look for inexplicable phenomena in the night sky.
