UAP sightings, the Moon and planetary conjunctions

Are UAP sightings affected by Moon phase and height over the horizon? In order to try to answer to this question I tried to select the data that seem more relevant to the entire UAP phenomenon, namely the so called "structured cases": triangular, rectangular, diamond, boomerang and chevron shapes (see Fig. 0). These shapes are well distinct and detailed, much more than the more classic disk or oval shapes. How can the Moon light affect the sighting of these flying aerial structures? We might first depict the following two scenarios:

1. If these shapes are just dark or without any illumination it is clear that they can be seen much more easily when the Moon is illuminating the sky.
   
2. If the same shapes are just marked as precise "geometrical shapes" by some kind of illumination system (at the vertexes of these objects and/or all over the object) then it is evidently much easier to see them (and in much detail) when the Moon is not consistently illuminating the sky. This is just a question of classical signal-to-noise ratio [Refs. 24, 35], which in this case is given by the ratio of the object luminosity and the luminosity of the sky background.

Reports of UAP sightings deal with the second case for the very most part [Refs. 50, 96], therefore we must deduce that such alleged structured aerial objects have to be sighted much more likely when moonlight is low or absent.

Figure 10A. Moon Height vs. Moon Phase at the time of structured UAP sightings reported in the Ontario area in the last 60 years (182 data points in total).

If we look at Fig. 10A, this perceptive effect is slightly confirmed, in fact these objects are seen more favourably when the Moon is low over the horizon and when it’s phase is far from being full [Ref. 65]. This effect is expected to be exactly the same if these objects are really anomalous or if they are a simple misinterpretation of the illumination system of some normal airplanes. How these two components are mixed together and in which percentage, this is not known yet. But it is quite well known that some perfectly human aircrafts may effectively show those shapes due to the geometric disposition of their illumination system and to some particular view angles from which they are seen. The general ignorance of normal citizens concerning the "things of the sky" (aircrafts and astronomical objects) does the rest. Therefore this inevitable mixture of a possible "signal" with a very probable "noise" renders any search for an hypothetical "UAP visit strategy" impossible to evaluate.

What is, rather, interesting are the specific dates in which some of these specific UAP sightings have occurred, when compared with specific astronomical configurations [Ref. 65]. In fact 53 out of 182 of all the plotted data points (about 30%) are just referred to dates in which planetary/cometary conjunctions (of quite little separation) were present in the sky at the same time in which this particular kind of structured UAP sighting was reported (see Tab. 1). Certainly this might be a good opportunity to attract the attention of people towards the sky. At the same time some UAP sightings were effectively reported. Any speculation here is licit, including the possibility that “someone” might often decide to appear in the sky at acceptable conditions of visibility and also when people are expected to look more at the sky. If we now do the same chart as the one of Fig. 10A including only the data points of Tab. 1, we in fact obtain a correlation that is 10% better than the previous one (see Fig. 10B).

Table 1. Dates at which UAP sightings were reported at the time of astronomical conjunctions.

Figure 10B. Moon Height vs. Moon Phase at the time of structured UAP sightings reported in the Ontario area in the last 60 years and at the time in which planetary/cometary conjunctions were present in the sky (53 data points in total).

Anyway all this is not at all sufficient to confirm that the selected data are really due to true alien visitors [Ref. 17] that wanted to appear just at the time of astronomical conjunctions. Some of these selected data points might be a coincidence with misinterpreted airplane lights. Maybe something that is really peculiar might be present just hidden inside these data too. Anyway the relatively high percentage of UAP reports at the times of celestial conjunctions is quite interesting.