The solar eclipse may have been overshadowed in Texas by a UFO soaring through the skies over Arlington. Footage captured a darkened sky as the moon traveled in front of the sun, but also featured the shadow of a a long, narrow object shooting through the clouds.
The video has made waves on social media , with some proclaiming it as a close encounter of the third kind or even a dragon. However, many other users came forward with what could be a more reasonable explanation – it was the shadow of a high-altitude plane.
Texas was deemed the ‘hotspot’ on the solar eclipse path of totality that started in The Lone Star State and extended to Maine.
Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to Texas because the eclipse was predicted to be visible for three minutes and 51 seconds. And many of these visitors have shared pictures and footage of the celestial event – with one capturing something that some claimed was out of this world.
The footage shows glowing clouds hanging in a darkened sky when the object appeared to be swimming by. ‘What is that,’ several people can be heard saying, then ‘ aliens ’ could be heard loudly. ‘Something is flying through the air,’ another spectator can be heard.
The surrounding crowd appeared baffled by what they had witnessed – and so did many social media users. The object appeared to fly back and forth in the area of the sky where the sun and moon had met. Comments on the video shared on X suspected the object was a helicopter due to how fast it appeared.
‘It’s literally a helicopter shadow coming through the clouds,’ one user posted. ‘Seen this several times with airplanes.’ But an Arizona man who claimed to live near Luke Air Force Base said ‘helicopters don’t move that fast.’
Others suggested that the shadow was from a plane. ‘I thought aircraft shadow when I saw it. Not that it couldn’t be a UFO shadow, but probably not anything that fun,’ another user shared. One X user posted that it was ‘clearly a plane,’ citing the outline of the engines were visible in the video.
Another shared: ‘Shadow on the clouds from an higher altitude airplane. I have seen this many times as an aviation spotter.’ They continued to explain that the shadow disappears when the plane moves into part of the sky without clouds – and that the shadow appeared similar in size to the craft.
One X user noted that the ‘video [was] created for entertainment clicks.’ But solar eclipse spectators spotted another plane flying across the event in McKinney, which is about 50 miles from Arlington.