Minneapolis Police Officers Observe Lights in the Sky

Mick West

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External Quote:
Three Minneapolis police officers observed a spherical UAP composed of six interlocking rings of changing colored lights hovering at 10,000 feet, moving with both slow and hypersonic acceleration, and exhibiting positive lift without noise. The object interacted closely with a nearby helicopter before rapidly ascending and relocating north. A second, similar UAP was recorded months later along the Mississippi River near Anoka, MN, traveling at high speed before descending behind trees.

Witness Background

The witnesses were three Minneapolis Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs). They observed the UAP from a parking garage using binoculars, with one officer later driving their squad car toward the object while the other two continued monitoring from the garage. Their observations were supported by both visual and video evidence recorded during the incident.

Event Narrative

Three LEOs stationed on a parking garage clearly observed under binoculars a spherical UAP at 10,000' MSL descend and ascend both slowly and extremely rapidly over a 25 minute period. 25 minutes in, a helicopter flew in near proximity to the UAP. The UAP responded by rapidly moving approximately 40 miles north within 5 seconds. The UAP remained in the general location for an additional hour, moving "lethargically". One of the LEOs drove their squad car in the direction of the UAP and was able to consistently observe the object while the two other witnesses continued to monitor from the parking garage.

An additional observation occurred on July 7, in Anoka, MN and was recorded approximately one mile from the witness. A similar UAP traveled along the Mississippi River at approximately 400 knots. The object then abruptly slowed down without noise and descended behind nearby trees.

Source: https://www.safeaerospace.org/reports/civ-2025-742 (Free account required)

The first observation looks like a star.

The second one looked like a satellite pass, specifically the ISS, as there's nothing else bright enough.



There's a pretty much perfect match at 10:49 PM EST on July 7, 2025
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...mazonaws.com/1/Anoka 07_07/20251021_074551.js
 
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External Quote:
Three LEOs stationed on a parking garage clearly observed under binoculars a spherical UAP at 10,000' MSL
In my opinion any witness testimony that quotes the altitude of an object in the sky without any indication of how that altitude was determined is immediately suspicious. Especially when the observation was supposedly made with binoculars, which don't have any means of determining the distance of an unknown object.

If a witness isn't aware that you simply cannot gauge the altitude of a moving object in the sky if you don't know how big it is, then they are not a reliable witness.
 
Well, this is interesting.

The above error was because I'd deleted what I thought was a bad version with the wrong date. But it turns out there was a creation date in the video file of 2025-07-09 04:28. I'd set the sitch to 7/7 (July 7) as that was the specified date, and there was an ISS pass the morning of 7/7

But due to a bug in my code, the asynchronous loading of the the video would sometimes overwrite the date with 7/9 (July 9) and the exact time of the video.

Turns out there was an ISS pass at the exact time the video says it was created, one that looks almost exactly like the one on 7/7.

Except this one has two stars that match, and the date/time is encoded in the video.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...com/1/Anoka 7_9 video time/20251021_075912.js
 
My mistake was to set a location before loading the video, that old Sitrec I'd established a sitch and so it ignored the time in the video.

If I'd just dropped in the video it would have set the time perfectly. I could then set the locations of Anoka, loaded the satellites, set the ISS at the target, set camera to point at target, and bingo, that's pretty much all you need.

So this video is 100% of the ISS on 7/9. It's possible they ALSO saw it on 7/7 (the reported date).
 
Metadata from the original file showing when recording started:

https://www.metadata2go.com/result#j=a76a363d-3cbc-4935-8cac-7f083ff7520e
1761041555845.png

Nice screenshot from the Sitrec (link) a few seconds later showing the ISS and the stars Altair and Tarazed in frame and matching the video.
1761041785778.png
 
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If a witness isn't aware that you simply cannot gauge the altitude of a moving object in the sky if you don't know how big it is, then they are not a reliable witness.
I'd maybe soften that slightly -- they might be in general very reliable and good witnesses, for things inside their area of experience, they are not reliable UFO witnesses.
 
I'd maybe soften that slightly -- they might be in general very reliable and good witnesses, for things inside their area of experience, they are not reliable UFO witnesses.
Yes, that was what I meant. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

I've never understood why so many people who witness UFOs rush to put exact numbers on the height, size and/or speed, when there really is no way of doing so unless you see the object actually pass in front of something a known distance away.

I was watching planes from my garden the other night and trying to estimate altitude. Even knowing they were planes I didn't do very well. (I was seeing if I could flip my perception from large plane a few thousand feet up to small drone low to the ground, but didn't really manage it!)
 
I've never understood why so many people who witness UFOs rush to put exact numbers on the height, size and/or speed, when there really is no way of doing so unless you see the object actually pass in front of something a known distance away.
Somewhere on Metabunk in the past, I've posted on an experiment in a dark tunnel, where participants were asked to determine which of two lights was closer. Beyond a distance in the 10s of meters, this is almost impossible. When we estimate longer distances in real life, we do it by using frames of reference that are absent when we see an unknown object against the sky.
 
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I've never understood why so many people who witness UFOs rush to put exact numbers on the height, size and/or speed, when there really is no way of doing so unless you see the object actually pass in front of something a known distance away.
I wonder if this is an artifact of filling out reporting forms in some cases, which may ask for such things...
 
I wonder if this is an artifact of filling out reporting forms in some cases, which may ask for such things...
For example. the online form for reporting a UFO sighting to NUFORC (https://nuforc.org/reportform/) on page 2 (after first assuming that the sighting was a "craft," interestingly...) asks:

External Quote:


Estimated Distance to Object at Closest Approach
0 of 50 max characters.

Estimated Size
0 of 50 max characters.

Estimated Speed

The opportunities to assign hard-sounding numbers to vague impressions with little basis in reality here seems great...
 
Another video of this sighting has been shared on Twitter by Ryan Graves...


Source: https://x.com/uncertainvector/status/1980800627492999474?t=1X5mfuPxpuLlGNEBVVQQ0g&s=19

The video has been added to the case on the ASA website:

https://www.safeaerospace.org/reports/civ-2025-742

The ISS was visible at exactly this time, and moving just like the light in the video.
1761129567302.png


Looks like the metadata has been stripped form the video. But comparing when the 'orb' disappears and the ISS enters the earths shadow (at the 1m15s mark) I'd suggest the video starts at 20:47:50hrs local.

Perfect match in Sitrec: (might take a while to load because the video is so large)
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...zonaws.com/15857/LEO_ISS_2/20251022_111701.js
1761132026528.png
 
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...it's still presented as unexplained.

Maybe Ryan Graves and ASA want to raise awareness of the dangers that the ISS poses to American airspace and aircraft.
Or would do, if they could actually identify the ISS, like @flarkey did here.

It still being "unexplained" doesn't say much for ASA's ability to identify objects in the sky (conversely, maybe it says exactly what we need to know).
There are lights in the sky. Some people misidentify them, or think they're something that they aren't. By failing to rule out false positives (i.e. identified lights in the sky), it would seem ASA are content to amass numbers of inadequately checked reports in order to make their case, as opposed to any testing of evidence that they have anything to be concerned about at all.
 
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