TORONTO -- A Russian cosmonaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has shared footage of what he describes as 鈥渟pace guests,鈥� or UFOs, that made an unexpected appearance in a time-lapse video he captured of the southern lights.
On Wednesday, Ivan Vagner posted showing the 鈥減eak鈥� of the Aurora Australis as it moved between the Antarctic and Australia.
鈥淚n the video, you will see something else, not only the aurora,鈥� he teased in the post.
, Vagner directs his audience to look closely at the nine to 12 second-mark in the video to spot the unidentified flying objects.
鈥�5 objects appear flying alongside with the same distance. What do you think those are? Meteors, satellites or鈥�?鈥� he wrote.
Those five bright objects appear in a straight line just above the curve of the Earth in the night sky for what seems like only a brief instant in the time-lapse video; however, they were actually visible for 52 seconds, Vagner explained.
鈥淭he frames were captured 1 per sec and later assembled in a video with 25 frames per sec rate. Meaning, the real observation time is 52 sec,鈥� he wrote.
It鈥檚 unclear when exactly the footage was captured and if Vagner saw the UFOs when they appeared or later on the video.
While there has been no public comment from NASA about Vagner鈥檚 video, Russia鈥檚 space agency, Roscosmos, with the accompanying caption: 鈥淎n interesting and at the same time mysterious video made by the cosmonaut of Roscosmos Ivan Wagner from the International Space Station.鈥�
, Vagner said he sent the video to Roscosmos management, Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash), and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences for further analysis.
A spokesperson for Roscosmos was quoted by the Russian news agency TASS as saying that experts were studying the video to determine what the objects in it might be.
鈥淚t is too early to make conclusions until our Roscosmos researchers and scientists at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences tell us what they think,鈥� . 鈥淚t was decided to hand over those materials to experts, who will tell us what that was in their opinion.鈥�
Vagner has been working aboard the ISS with fellow Russian Anatoli Ivanishin and American commander Chris Cassidy since April.
According to a recent , Vagner was 鈥渆xploring ways to improve Earth photography techniques鈥� on Wednesday before he posted the time-lapse video. A subsequent blog post from the space agency did not make any mention of the footage and the apparent UFOs.
