UFO photographed by tourists in Patagonia, February 2025

[Trailblazer]

Report in Spanish, translation below:
https://www.adnsur.com.ar/virales/u...o-fenomeno-natural-_a67a9dc8a8e7731e54f786e57

A group of tourists filmed a mysterious object in the Patagonian sky: A UFO or a natural phenomenon?

While on their way to visit a penguin colony and in the middle of a catamaran excursion, they were shocked by a phenomenon that sparked a controversial debate on social media.

Monday, February 10, 2025 08:33

This past weekend, the city of Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, once again witnessed a phenomenon that continues to fascinate humanity: sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
In this context, a group of foreign tourists on a catamaran excursion through the Beagle Channel captured surprising images that sparked an intense debate on social media.
The incident occurred when the tourists were enjoying the scenery while on their way to visit a penguin colony. At the time, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary.

However, when reviewing the photographs taken during the tour, one of the travellers discovered a round, metallic object floating on the waters of the canal. The object appears with solar reflections on its surface, suggesting that it is not a photographic defect or an optical phenomenon.

The images show the mysterious object in different positions: horizontal and slightly tilted to the right. Its tan color and shape similar to a flattened bell sparked speculation about its origin. Although it is difficult to determine its exact dimensions due to the lack of visual references in the photos.

The discovery astonished tourists and sparked heated discussions on social media. While some believe it could be an unknown craft or unidentified advanced technology, others are looking for more conventional explanations such as drones or misinterpreted natural phenomena.

It is worth noting that Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego have been a recurring scene for these types of sightings for years. The region became a focal point within the ufological world due to the significant number of similar testimonies reported by hundreds or even thousands of people.

There seem to be two different pictures here. 1 and 3 are apparently crops, with 3 being a crop of the larger photo 2. They seem to have been taken from another website as there are portions of graphics overlaid.

 

[Trailblazer]

That website gives the source of the photos as "infofuegina", a local news site for Tierra del Fuego.

There's an article here with more photos: https://www.infofueguina.com/tu-ciu...el-caso-no-deja-de-ser-interesante-80686.html

There pnly seem to be two photos of the UFO:

 

[NoParty]

So comforting to finally have a decent, traditional "flying saucer" after all these lazy orbs...

 

[jarlrmai]

The immediate question is why is the UFO not reflected in the water

 

[Trailblazer]

One thing I noticed (which is also mentioned in the second article I linked) is that despite the different angle of the object between the two photos, the lighting appears to be identical. In fact, within the limits of pixel resolution when rotating in Photoshop, they appear identical to me. Two overlaid images here, maintaining same relative size and deleting one layer to allow the second UFO to show through.

 

[Nemon]

Apparently, Patagonian aliens are currently entering the Copper Age. In the Middle East, this occurred between about 8000 and 4000 BC. Now we should heed Starfleet's prime directive and not irritate these post-preastronauts. Just leave them alone. But it would be interesting to investigate whether structural features of the Sabu disc can be recognized here.

 

[Trailblazer]

Approximating the viewpoints... first photo is looking northwest from roughly 54°50'S 68°11'W

Second photo is looking slightly north of east seems to be from a similar but seemingly not identical location.

So the object was apparently seen in totally different directions and possibly in somewhat different spots, and yet had identical lighting. Hmm...

It's hard to be sure from the fairly low-res 3D terrain whether both photos could have been taken from the same position in the water.

 

[Mick West]

One thing I noticed (which is also mentioned in the second article I linked) is that despite the different angle of the object between the two photos, the lighting appears to be identical. In fact, within the limits of pixel resolution when rotating in Photoshop, they appear identical to me. Two overlaid images here, maintaining same relative size and deleting one layer to allow the second UFO to show through.

View attachment 77222

I think this alone is enough to prove it's fake.

 

[jarlrmai]

This is why the best fakes are one image.

 

[Scaramanga]

There's a suspicious colour dividing line in both photos....literally a vertical line down the middle of the 'craft' with different colour on each side....

 

[Ravi]

One thing I noticed (which is also mentioned in the second article I linked) is that despite the different angle of the object between the two photos, the lighting appears to be identical. In fact, within the limits of pixel resolution when rotating in Photoshop, they appear identical to me. Two overlaid images here, maintaining same relative size and deleting one layer to allow the second UFO to show through.

View attachment 77222

I would say this is proof of fakery, as the solar scatter from an object cannot be the same (unless a perfect sphere) when viewed at a different angle.

 

[Trailblazer]

There's a suspicious colour dividing line in both photos....literally a vertical line down the middle of the 'craft' with different colour on each side....

View attachment 77232

That could be just a JPEG compression artifact and not necessarily evidence of fakery. The colour often varies between different "squares" of compressed images.

 

[Calter]

I took that same boat tour just last year and I didn't manage to see any saucers, what a bummer.

At the time, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary.

However, when reviewing the photographs taken during the tour, one of the travellers discovered a round, metallic object floating on the waters of the canal.

How exactly did they accidentally manage to capture pictures of the same saucer while changing the angle without noticing it?

I get the general reasoning of "the UFO was travelling so fast that I completely missed it while taking this one picture" (even if I distrust it), but a second picture means they took their time to line up the second shot and the UFO must have been moving slow enough to still get captured in the second picture. Yet a boat filled with people that have nothing better to do than to look out at their surroundings completely missed it.

With that said, does anyone know the original source for these images? Furthest I've found is this article from about a week ago (also in Spanish)

https://www.infofueguina.com/social...beagle-causan-asombro-desconcierto-80651.html

It says

According to the surprising photographic material sent to this media, one or more unknown objects can be seen in a series of photographs recently taken by tourists who were on an excursion aboard a catamaran.
[...]
According to the testimony to which InfoFueguina was able to access along with the photographic material, the event dates back to a couple of weeks ago when foreign tourists were on an excursion aboard a catamaran to go see the penguin colony.

so, I assume it's where it all started.

 

[JMartJr]

despite the different angle of the object between the two photos, the lighting appears to be identical.

The angle at which we see the slightly-Adamski-style undercarriage also looks identical. Which seems unlikely. Looks like a single UFO asset (pre-made bit of digital imagery you can buy) was shopped into a couple of images.

 

[jarlrmai]

Could be that app that inserts a variety of UFOs into your photos for you

 

[Mendel]

Compare also https://www.metabunk.org/threads/cl...p-hovering-above-the-patagonian-plains.13119/

 

[deirdre]

Apparently, Patagonian aliens are currently entering the Copper Age.

i'm glad you made them metal in my mind. to me they look like soft sea skin (like manta ray or something) but in a shape and soft underbelly that will grab onto your face like in Alien.

 

[Trailblazer]

i'm glad you made them metal in my mind. to me they look like soft sea skin (like manta ray or something) but in a shape and soft underbelly that will grab onto your face like in Alien.

One of those linked articles did suggest the possibility that it could be a leaping dolphin, and if there was just one image I would wonder whether it could be a glistening wet sea bird somehow (although the shape looks all wrong). But I think the fact there is an identical shape in both images rules the wildlife theory out.

 

[FatPhil]

The immediate question is why is the UFO not reflected in the water

What kind and clarity of reflection would you expect?
That might be easier to answer if you address these two first: What kind and clarity of reflection of the mountain would you expect? Is that what we get?

 

[jarlrmai]

The sort of stretched vague colour reflection you tend to get in rippling water, more a hint of of the colour/darkness of the the object.

Like this but smaller and coppery brown

 

[deirdre]

One of those linked articles did suggest the possibility that it could be a leaping dolphin, and if there was just one image I would wonder whether it could be a glistening wet sea bird somehow (although the shape looks all wrong). But I think the fact there is an identical shape in both images rules the wildlife theory out.

yea i noticed immediately the things were identical (so photoshopped in), but the texture still reminds me of a sea animal- as far as what is the ufo made of. i looked they have seals (or sea lions actually if there is a difference) and whales ..and some whales with a white under tail and black trim..but i didnt see any dolphins.

the tail is a good match for belly*..but not really seeing a tail angle for the top of ufo even if i erased the sides of the tail. i guess you could use the transform tool. the shine matches a wet animal.

*certainly could just be a coincidence

 

[JMartJr]

The immediate question is why is the UFO not reflected in the water

I would say this is proof of fakery, as the solar scatter from an object cannot be the same (unless a perfect sphere) when viewed at a different angle.

It seems odd, but maybe not impossible, that we can see that it is a cloudy overcast day, except on the UFO where we see that bright highlight. It is always possible that the UFO happens to be in a sunny spot with convenient breaks in the clouds for both pics -- but there does not seem to be a bright sunlit spot under it (or beyond it, if the Sun is lower in the sky.)

but the texture still reminds me of a sea animal- as far as what is the ufo made of. i looked they have seals (or sea lions actually if there is a difference) and whales ..and some whales with a white under tail and black trim..but i didnt see any dolphins.

The back of a blue whale is a bit reminiscent, ain't it?

Or the forehead "melon" of one of these:

"Swim With Dolphins" excursions, in the wild or in a tank, are popular excursions for cruise participants...

 

[FatPhil]

I agree with the sealife skin idea, the first thing I thought of was that it could be a ray

 

[jarlrmai]

Surely at this wide an angle we'd see the exit splash, and the same ray caught twice without anyone noticing?

Mobula rays tend to be limited to tropical waters as well.

 

[FatPhil]

Surely at this wide an angle we'd see the exit splash, and the same ray caught twice without anyone noticing?

Mobula rays tend to be limited to tropical waters as well.

I'm not saying it's any less fake than the other sealifers, rays are just as photoshoppable as cetaceans!

 

[JMartJr]

Surely at this wide an angle we'd see the exit splash, and the same ray caught twice without anyone noticing?

I'm not saying it's any less fake than the other sealifers, rays are just as photoshoppable as cetaceans!

Yeah, my thought was maybe somebody noticed "Oh look, this bit of whale/dolphin/ray/whatever in my vacation pics from cruising off Patagonia looks sort of like one of them flying saucer things! If that don't beat all!" And then they remembered they have PhotoShop on their computer... and the rest is history.

Though an effects asset feels more likely to me, it looks SO much like a classic UFO saucer. But people with PhotoShop can get amazingly creative... so maybe.

 

[purpleivan]

The sort of stretched vague colour reflection you tend to get in rippling water, more a hint of of the colour/darkness of the the object.

Like this but smaller and coppery brown

View attachment 77291

But only one feature in the scene is visible in the reflection in this way, that being the upper part of the central mountain and that is many times the size of the object. The surface of the water is a bit too rough to provide even vague reflections of most of the scenery, let alone something as small as the "flying object".

To me these images look like the result of a simple bit of image manipulation to insert the object into a couple of scenic photos. Possibly part of the reason for these specific photo being chosen was the choppiness of the water, which would remove the need to add some kind of distorted reflection in it, which would have taken more time and skill than just inserting the object itself.

Additionally, if the reflection of the object was seen in the water, it would not be copper/brown colour of the top part of it (at least not most of it) that would be there. Instead it would be mostly the darker underside colour that would be seen reflected, as that's the part of the object that would mostly be visible at the angle of reflection.

 

[PublicStranger]

The structure underneath the saucer looks agape and you can clearly see an opening with 2 points at the bottom. This points to it being some kind of sea life that was caught at just the right moment by the photographer to make it look like a saucer. Could definitely be a ray of some kind.

Edit: Could it also be some kind of unusually shaped frisbee? But again, the lighting is unusual like as already mentioned, so it could be manipulated and inserted into the photo.

 

[jarlrmai]

The structure underneath the saucer looks agape and you can clearly see an opening with 2 points at the bottom. This points to it being some kind of sea life that was caught at just the right moment by the photographer to make it look like a saucer. Could definitely be a ray of some kind.

Except mobular rays are tropical.

 

[AmberRobot]

The immediate question is why is the UFO not reflected in the water

I think it would depend on the distance to the object. Its reflection may not be expected to be seen within this field of view.

 

[Ann K]

The immediate question is why is the UFO not reflected in the water

To know where to expect a reflection (that is, assuming (1) its a real object, and we are skeptical about that, and (2) the water is still enough to show a reflection of a small object, which it doesn't appear to be in this case), you would first need to know where the thing is. That means knowing how far away it is too, and there is nothing about this photo that would tell us that distance. If, say, the thing is an object twenty feet away and the water is only seen in the photo from a distance of forty feet away, there would be no reflection visible. Any reflection it might have would be outside the frame of the photo itself.

I see @AmberRobot said the same thing more succinctly. My apologies!

 

[Scaramanga]

These photos are taken looking north. The blue building on the side of the hill is the Arakar Ushuaia resort.

According to Google the boat departures for the penguin colony are at 5pm from October to March, and in the photo with the Arakar Ushuaia Resort they are barely at the start of the sea trip.

At 5pm the sun is due west... while the boat heads south east at roughly 105 degrees. So the part of the 'UFO' pointing to the sun would be rotated around by 15 degrees or so. I was hoping to catch the 'UFO' out by the location of the glint of the sun...but it would appear that it is actually correct !

 

[JMartJr]

At 5pm the sun is due west... while the boat heads south east at roughly 105 degrees. So the part of the 'UFO' pointing to the sun would be rotated around by 15 degrees or so. I was hoping to catch the 'UFO' out by the location of the glint of the sun...but it would appear that it is actually correct !

In both pics? My sens is that the UFO is at very different directions to the boat in the two pics -- like in:

o the object was apparently seen in totally different directions and possibly in somewhat different spots, and yet had identical lighting. Hmm...

If the object were real, wouldn't the geometry of the reflection of the Sun be different in the two pics?

 

[Trailblazer]

These photos are taken looking north. The blue building on the side of the hill is the Arakar Ushuaia resort.

Kind of, but one is looking northwest, one is looking northeast. The two photos don't have any overlapping scenery, and if you put them side by side there is actually a decent amount of "missing" landscape in between the two.

So in one case (the photo with the town visible) the UFO would be somewhat west of the ship, while in the other it is somewhat to the east of the ship. I don't see how the reflections are consistent with that?

 

[Scaramanga]

Kind of, but one is looking northwest, one is looking northeast. The two photos don't have any overlapping scenery, and if you put them side by side there is actually a decent amount of "missing" landscape in between the two.

So in one case (the photo with the town visible) the UFO would be somewhat west of the ship, while in the other it is somewhat to the east of the ship. I don't see how the reflections are consistent with that?

The photo with the town....the blue building on top of the hill is the Arakar Ushuaia resort....which I have circled in red below . The ship would be roughly where I put the purple circle ( on the actual dotted line boat route ). It has barely left dock. So, the resort is due north of the ship, and the UFO is maybe 15-20 degrees east of due north....where I have put the green circle....

The sun is due west...which means it is actually reflecting off the UFO just right.

 

[Trailblazer]

The photo with the town....the blue building on top of the hill is the Arakar Ushuaia resort....which I have circled in red below . The ship would be roughly where I put the purple circle ( on the actual dotted line boat route ). It has barely left dock. So, the resort is due north of the ship, and the UFO is maybe 15-20 degrees east of due north....where I have put the green circle....

View attachment 77433

I tried to recreate the ship's location using Google Earth in post 7 and I got a rather different location by lining up the scenery.

If we assume that both photos were taken at a similar time (ie the boat was in more or less the same place) then the ship couldn't have been where your circle is, because the view in the second photo (with the town not visible) is impossible from there.

So either the ship was further out to sea, or the UFO appeared twice at very different locations?

 

[Scaramanga]

In both pics? My sens is that the UFO is at very different directions to the boat in the two pics

Certainly in the pic with the town in the background....as I explain to Trailblazer above. My understanding ( which may be wrong ) is that the other pic is simply further along on the same shore...and thus also facing north.

 

[Trailblazer]

To show what I mean: I am on my phone so can't do this properly here but this is the photo with the Arakur resort. It is to the left of the large peak in the background.

Whereas from your purple circle it would appear to the right of that peak:

 

[Scaramanga]

If we assume that both photos were taken at a similar time (ie the boat was in more or less the same place) then the ship couldn't have been where your circle is, because the view in the second photo (with the town not visible) is impossible from there.

No....I'm supposing the the two pics are taken at entirely different times along the route...with the one with town in background being first. We do not know the time interval, but I suppose we could roughly guess ship speed and distance between the two points.

 

[Trailblazer]

No....I'm supposing the the two pics are taken at entirely different times along the route...with the one with town in background being first. We do not know the time interval, but I suppose we could roughly guess ship speed and distance between the two points.

That seems even more implausible, that an identical UFO could appear at two totally different points?

In any case the boat must have been much further out from the port for the first photo to get the correct relative alignment of the blue resort building (blue circle here) to the left of the higher distant peak (Cerro Esfinge, yellow circle).

I believe somewhere in the red circle would allow the correct viewpoint for both photos. The yellow stars are the approximate directions of the UFO in those pics (marking background features that appear behind the UFO - not suggesting it was actually over the shore itself).

Do we have a map of the route the boat trip takes? Where is the penguin colony?