The visual record behind the investigation: declassified military sensor stills, FBI file imagery, NASA Apollo photographs, and the government’s own incident reconstructions. Click any image to enlarge it.
A note on what these images are. Most are infrared sensor stills, single frames pulled from military targeting cameras, rather than crisp photographs of craft. The grey fields are sky and terrain seen through a thermal sensor, the crosshairs are tracking reticles, and the black rectangles are redactions applied before release. They are shown here exactly as the agencies released them. Several images, clearly labelled, are official digital reconstructions rather than photographs — government-generated illustrations of what witnesses described.
Modern military sensor imagery
Declassified stills released with Department of Defense UAP reports between 2013 and 2026. Each is an infrared targeting-camera frame, and the black rectangles are redactions applied before release.
UAP Report: Middle East, May 2022A declassified US military sensor still released with a Department of Defense UAP report. The crosshair is the sensor’s tracking reticle. The black rectangles are redactions covering targeting and location data.UAP Report: Middle East, 2020A declassified UAP report sensor still. The grey field is terrain or sky seen through an infrared targeting camera, and the redaction blocks hide the surrounding metadata.UAP Report: Middle East, 2013One of the older sensor stills in the collection. Reports logged years before the recent wave of attention were declassified alongside the newer ones.UAP Report: United Arab Emirates, October 2023A sensor still from the UAE operating area. The UAE and Greece were two of the densest single-region clusters in the modern record.UAP Report: Greece, October 2023A Greek-operating-area sensor still. A faint dark form sits near the centre crosshair, the kind of low-detail contact these reports typically log.UAP Report: Greece, October 2023A second Greek-area report from the same month. Several Greek incidents were recorded only weeks apart.UAP Report: Indo-Pacific, 2024A sensor still from the Indo-Pacific theatre. It is one of the few major incidents in the modern collection outside US Central Command’s Middle East area.UAP Report: Africa, 2025A recent sensor still from the Africa theatre, declassified within a year of the encounter.UAP Report: Department of the Army, 2026The most recent image in the collection. In this near-dark night frame a tracked object sits in the centre brackets, with a second bright form above it.
FBI file imagery
Imagery released through FBI UAP file requests. Most are targeting-camera stills, with one illustrative rendering. Several carry burned-in timestamps reading 31 December 1999; the note below explains why that date is almost certainly not the date.
Reading the B-series clock
Twenty-four frames in this series carry burned-in stamps of 31 December 1999, evening hours. AARO provided no official event date, and the date on the frames is almost certainly a default: a camera whose internal clock was never set falls back to its firmware epoch, and for cameras of the digital era that default lands on 31 Dec 1999 / 1 Jan 2000. The date is not evidence of a 1999 event.
But a wrong clock still keeps correct intervals, and sorted by stamp the 24 frames resolve into a clean internal chronology: two continuous shooting bursts, twelve frames from 18:10:00 to 18:12:20 and twelve more from 18:18:53 to 18:21:02, separated by a six-and-a-half-minute gap. Whatever was photographed persisted, or recurred, across at least eleven minutes. The release’s frame lettering does not follow capture order, so the stamps, not the labels, give the true sequence.
Two caveats, honestly held: firmware epochs vary by manufacturer, so inferences beyond “unset clock” stay speculative; and the fact that imagery entered FBI files with no recoverable chain-of-custody date is itself a small institutional finding.
FBI File Imagery: sensor stillImagery released through FBI UAP file requests. Like the military reports, it is a targeting-camera frame, and like them the metadata is hidden behind redaction blocks.FBI File Imagery: tracked contactA sensor still with a dark contact just left of the tracking crosshair. The eight surrounding black rectangles each cover a removed data field.FBI File Imagery: over terrainA sensor still showing ridgelines along the lower frame, a measurement scale across the centre, and redaction blocks at every metadata position.FBI File Imagery: sensor stillOne of the FBI-released targeting-camera frames. The collection holds a series of these, consecutively numbered.FBI File Imagery: sensor stillA redacted sensor still from the FBI file series.FBI File Imagery: sensor stillA redacted sensor still from the FBI file series.FBI File Imagery: burned-in 31 Dec 1999 stampA sensor still stamped 31 December 1999, 18:20:22 — almost certainly an unset camera clock, not the event date (see note above). Frame belongs to the second of two shooting bursts. Two small dark contacts sit just above the tracking line.FBI File Imagery: burned-in 31 Dec 1999 stampFrom the same sequence, stamped 18:19:06 in the same burst. The default-date reading applies here too; the intervals between frames, not the date, carry the information. A single small contact hovers near the crosshair.FBI File Imagery: sensor stillA targeting-camera frame from the FBI file series, with the standard pattern of metadata redaction.FBI File Imagery: sensor stillA targeting-camera frame from the FBI file series.FBI File Imagery: sensor stillA targeting-camera frame from the FBI file series.FBI File Imagery: sensor stillA targeting-camera frame from the FBI file series.FBI File Imagery: cropped frameA smaller cropped sensor frame from the FBI release, the same imagery presented at lower resolution.FBI File Imagery: cropped frameA cropped sensor frame from the FBI release.FBI File Imagery: cropped frameA cropped sensor frame from the FBI release.FBI File Imagery: cropped frameA cropped sensor frame from the FBI release.FBI File Imagery: cropped frameA cropped sensor frame from the FBI release.FBI File Imagery: cropped frameA cropped sensor frame from the FBI release.FBI File Imagery: cropped frameA cropped sensor frame from the FBI release.Illustrative rendering (not a photograph)An illustrative rendering held in the FBI files: a stylised depiction of a disc-shaped craft over open ground. It is an artist’s composite rather than photographic evidence, and is included here for completeness.
NASA Apollo lunar photography
Surface photographs from the Apollo 12 (1969) and Apollo 17 (1972) missions, with anomalous objects highlighted by later analysts.
Apollo 12: lunar surface, 1969An Apollo 12 surface photograph. Later analysts added the yellow callout box, magnifying a faint blue form in the lunar sky above the horizon.Apollo 12: lunar surface, 1969An Apollo 12 surface frame from the same 1969 sequence.Apollo 12: lunar surface, 1969An Apollo 12 surface frame from the same 1969 sequence.Apollo 12: lunar surface, 1969An Apollo 12 surface frame from the same 1969 sequence.Apollo 12: lunar surface, 1969An Apollo 12 surface frame from the same 1969 sequence.Apollo 17: lunar surface, 1972An Apollo 17 surface photograph from the final crewed Moon landing, the latest of the Apollo frames in the collection.
NASA space-shuttle photography — Tranche 4 (1996)
A sequence of three photographs from the STS-80 Space Shuttle Columbia mission (November–December 1996), released in the fourth PURSUE tranche. Per NASA’s own description they capture a single unidentified object in low-Earth orbit across three frames: it tumbles about its major axis, “consistent with the behavior of a free-floating object,” then passes between Columbia and the Earth. Officially unidentified.
STS-80: unidentified object, frame 1 of 3, 1996Near the center of the frame, to the right of the Earth’s limb. NASA: one unidentified object in low-Earth orbit, captured across three images.STS-80: unidentified object, frame 2 of 3, 1996NASA: “appears to have rotated or tumbled about its major axis, consistent with the behavior of a free-floating object.”STS-80: unidentified object, frame 3 of 3, 1996NASA: superimposed against the Earth, “appears to have continued along a trajectory passing between Columbia and the Earth.”
Official reconstructions — Tranche 3 (June 2026)
Government-produced digital reconstructions and an analytic map from the third PURSUE release. These depict two cases, the Western U.S. “orbs launching orbs” event of October 2023 and the Colorado Springs sighting of February 2022, and were artificially generated to illustrate what witnesses described. They are illustrations, not photographs.
AARO Notional Map: Western U.S. Event, October 2023An UNCLASSIFIED AARO schematic of the four incidents federal agents reported over several days in October 2023, seen from above: “Orbs Launching Orbs,” a “Fiery Orb,” a “Dark Kite,” and a “Translucent Kite.” Positions and distances are notional and not to scale.Reconstruction: “Orbs Launching Orbs,” Incident 1A government-generated reconstruction of the October 2023 Western U.S. event: an orange “mother orb” with smaller red “orbs” emerging beside it, as the federal agents described. An illustration of the witness accounts, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Orbs Launching Orbs,” Incident 1A second reconstructed view of the orange orb and the red orbs it reportedly released. Government illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Orbs Launching Orbs,” Incident 1A third reconstructed view of the “mother orb” sequence reported by the agents. Government illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Fiery Orb,” Incident 2A reconstruction of the large “fiery orb” reported against a ridgeline at roughly 1,000 yards, with two observing agents in silhouette. Illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Fiery Orb,” Incident 2Another reconstructed view of the “fiery orb” against the ridgeline. Government illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Fiery Orb,” Incident 2A further reconstructed view of the “fiery orb” incident. Government illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Fiery Orb,” Incident 2A reconstructed view of the “fiery orb” as reported by the agents. Government illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Fiery Orb,” Incident 2Another reconstructed view of the “fiery orb” incident. Government illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Fiery Orb,” Incident 2A further reconstructed view of the “fiery orb” against the ridgeline. Government illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: “Fiery Orb,” Incident 2A final reconstructed view of the “fiery orb” incident. Government illustration, not a photograph.Reconstruction: Colorado Springs, February 2022A reconstruction of the object five Fort Carson soldiers reported over Cheyenne Mountain in February 2022: a matte, off-white, “bean-shaped” form, motionless and silent against a clear sky. An intelligence-community assessment later judged it possible sunlight backscatter. Illustration, not a photograph.
