A Yorkshire man said he captured a single photograph of a saucer-shaped object flying low over hills near Skipton, a picture that has drawn curiosity and a mixture of skeptical explanations from experts.
Photographer John Tunnah told the Daily Mail he took about 10 to 12 pictures from a roadside vantage point outside Shipton, near Silsden, with a recently purchased Pentax Optio SVi camera. The object appears in only one frame, he said, and was not noticed by him at the time he shot the sequence.
Tunnah said he had pulled over after seeing what he described as a "perfectly formed arch of cloud" on the horizon. By the time he had set up the camera the arch had begun to dissipate, he said. When reviewing images later that evening he found the anomalous object on the far left of one photograph. "I'm not a 'flying-saucer', or 'alien visitation' freak, but whatever it was deserves the term UFO," he told the paper.
The object in the photograph has an elongated, round shape commonly associated with classic "flying-saucer" imagery. Tunnah speculated that it could be a previously unseen Skunk Works–type aircraft, or a fast-moving animal closer to the lens.
Nick Pope, who previously ran a unit at the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence that investigated unexplained sightings, suggested more prosaic explanations. When anomalies appear in images that were not seen in real time, "I suspect either a glitch with the camera, or a fast-moving object like a bird or an insect, close to the lens," he told the Daily Mail.
The U.S. Department of Defense declined to comment on the image. Officials and analysts typically use the term "UFO" in its literal sense — unidentified flying object — and note it does not by itself imply an extraterrestrial origin.
Recent government and crowdsourced reporting has documented a range of unexplained aerial phenomena in the last several years, often with mundane explanations offered after investigation. A Pentagon document published in 2023 said the most commonly reported shapes in U.S. submissions included spheres, disks, ovals and triangles; it also noted that reflective qualities can make objects appear to have lights. Separately, a crowdsourced platform tracking sightings reported more than 8,000 reports across the United States between December 2022 and June 2025, including several hundred describing metallic orbs near military installations.
Photographs that show an object in a single frame, especially when taken on a camera unfamiliar to the operator, are frequently subject to scrutiny by photographers and investigators. Experts typically examine camera settings, lens defects, motion blur, the timing of exposures and the possibility of a foreground insect or bird creating a remote illusion of a distant craft.
Tunnah said he showed the photograph to friends, who told him the object "appeared to be travelling at speed" away from the dissipating cloud arch. He described the image as the first set of pictures taken with the new camera. Beyond his account and the single published image, no corroborating radar or additional photographic evidence has been made public.