A viral photo showing a UFO over Australia turned out to be a lamp shade in Wyoming.
Australian UFO
The photo above was first sent to us a by a Facebook reader. It shows a large illuminated object emerging from the clouds over a lake and mountain. A popular caption read, “This photo was taken in Australia, get it out there as Facebook are trying to remove it.”
The photo amassed hundreds of thousands of shares in just a few days.
Lamp Shade
As it turns out, the “UFO” is nothing more than a reflection of a lamp shade in a photo overlooking a lake in Wyoming.
A big hats off to the Skept!cal Blog, which performed an impressive piece of investigative journalism to uncover the true source of this photo, aided in part by a discussion of the photo on Reddit/Imgur.
With the help of some locals in the area, the location of the photo was tracked to Signal Mountain Lodge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The UFO itself? Nothing more than the reflection of a light fixture from inside a cabin. One Imgur user referred to the “object” as a UFO: Unidentified Fancy Ornament.
Bottom Line
The “Australian UFO” which was posted on Facebook appears to be nothing more than the reflection of a lamp. It was taken from the window of a cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, not Australia. The fake backstory about the UFO – along with requests to share before being removed by Facebook – was likely just a ploy to gain likes by the person who posted it.