The Plates

Forward-looking infrared of the object USS Nimitz pilots pursued in 2004. Officially released by the Pentagon in 2020 — the modern benchmark for provenance.

A rotating object tracked by USS Theodore Roosevelt aircrews. The first UAP video the US government cleared for public release.

An object skimming low over the ocean, tracked by targeting sensors. The apparent speed is disputed — parallax may exaggerate it — but the footage is authenticated.

A tracking camera on the Nevada test range locks onto a lumpy, four-lobed object while the operators ask each other what it is. Before Gimbal, the most detailed military UFO footage the public had seen.

An eight-pointed star of contrast slides through an infrared frame trailing a looping white line, drops out of view, and is picked up again.

Nine seconds of infrared holding a football-shaped body with three projections dead centre in the crosshairs: the sharpest shape in the whole release.

An F-16's infrared camera holds on a small object over Lake Huron. Twenty seconds in, it is struck and bursts apart.

A phone filming an AC-130J gunship's infrared screen during a live-fire exercise: small dark orbs dart around the reticle.

Four dark objects with bright wakes cross an infrared frame together over water off Iran; a fifth enters from the corner.

An infrared sensor tracks an elongated shape that, zoomed in, becomes a line of points moving together; it follows them for a minute as they recede.

A tight group of small bright objects crosses an infrared frame over the sea and is tracked for forty seconds.

Infrared from a civilian aircraft: a small round object crosses the frame over coast and sea and is gone in twenty seconds.

A phone records a Navy infrared screen: a dark round object hangs in the reticle just above the sea, then fades into the background.

A dark round object glides across a cloud deck, shown at original speed and again zoomed and slowed by whoever uploaded it.

A bright object is held at frame centre over Syrian terrain; when the sensor stops tracking, it streaks out of the frame.

Four bright objects move together low over water in infrared, replayed through filters and zooms for eight minutes.

A bright round object is tracked past clouds for nearly four minutes, slipping in and out of frame.

An irregular bright form over the sea, sped up eight times by its uploader to show 'possible changes of shape', then five minutes in real time.

A round white object holds above rippling water for three and a half minutes.

A bright object is tracked across mottled terrain for nearly five minutes; zoomed in, it becomes an irregular glowing shape.

A phone video near Karaganda airport: a brilliant point above the horizon throws rays of light across the night sky.

A diamond-shaped craft beside a military jet, handed to the MoD and suppressed for 32 years before resurfacing in 2022. Photographic analysis found no sign of manipulation.

Captured automatically by a government mapping camera at altitude — no witnesses, no obvious hoax. One of the most credible photographic cases on record.

Among the most analysed UFO images ever taken. Skeptics favour a small model or a mirror hung from the wires; defenders argue the photos hold up.

A Saturn-shaped object shot from a Brazilian Navy vessel. Baraúna was a skilled trick photographer, which is the crux of the enduring hoax argument.

One of the first UFO motion films. The Air Force suggested reflections from two jets known to be nearby, which the footage's defenders reject.

V-formations of lights photographed by a student and witnessed by university faculty. The Air Force's bird-reflection theory never fully settled it.

A highway inspector's Polaroids of a disc and a lingering smoke ring. Never definitively debunked, and defended by later technical re-analysis.

Taken weeks after the Arnold sighting that began the modern era; studied by Air Force intelligence. Its authenticity has never been resolved.

A former police officer's photo of a small humanoid figure on the moor, taken during a reported missing-time episode. Much argued, never resolved.

Shuttle video of specks that sharply change direction. NASA attributes them to ice particles reacting to a thruster firing, though it is still widely circulated.

Crisp daylight photos of a domed disc, widely regarded as a hoax made with a small model — a textbook example of the era's fakes.

The iconic photo of the Belgian triangle wave. The photographer confessed in 2011 that it was painted styrofoam — even though the wider wave had radar and pilot witnesses.

Grainy clips of a grey-type being, posted in 2011 as alleged leaked KGB footage. The uploader was never identified, no creator has ever claimed it, and it has never been conclusively debunked or authenticated.

The 17-minute black-and-white 'Roswell autopsy' that gripped 1990s television. Santilli admitted in 2006 it was staged in a London flat, while claiming it 'restored' genuine lost footage — a claim nothing supports.

A 15 cm skeletal figure found in a ghost town, circulated for years as a possible alien body. Whole-genome sequencing in 2018 identified a human female fetus with severe skeletal dysplasia mutations.

A daylight snapshot of Templeton's daughter with what looks like a suited figure standing behind her. Analysis reads it as his wife, over-exposed and facing away — though Templeton never accepted that.

Elaborate images of an ornate 'alien drone', tied to a fabricated leaked-document backstory. Regarded as a sophisticated, deliberate hoax.