Official · Video · Local Law Enforcement
Officer Reports Silent, Multicolored Light
A phone camera zooms in on the light and keeps it in focus for 27 seconds.
Released to the public September 18, 20262 min readALIENS editorial
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A phone camera zooms in on the light and keeps it in focus for 27 seconds.
A Colorado police officer reported a silent light flashing red, blue, and green. The phone zoomed in, but the source of the light remains unidentified.
A distant light. The phone camera zooms in and focuses on it throughout the video.
It did not identify the source. It noted that automatic processing on a phone may alter the appearance of a distant object.
A distant light appears in a video from Colorado. The phone camera zooms in and focuses on it, staying trained on the light until the video ends.
A local police officer reported a silent light flashing red, blue, and green. The 27-second video does not clearly show what produced the light. The more the image is enlarged, the harder it is to tell what is actually visible.
The incident took place in Colorado in October 2023. A local police officer filed a report about an unidentified phenomenon and included a video recorded on a phone. The officer described the phenomenon as silent and the light as flashing in three colors.
The video opens with a small light in the frame. The camera then zooms in and focuses on it. It stays focused on the light throughout the video. For nearly half a minute, the footage shows the same point of light again and again.
The U.S. agency that reviewed the report explained that phones use automatic processes to focus and process images. These processes help the camera produce a clearer picture, but they can also alter the appearance and apparent movement of a distant object. The effect can be especially pronounced when an image is heavily enlarged.
A video of an enlarged point of light, then, does not necessarily show exactly what the distant object looked like. The footage records the light, but also the way the phone processed the image. Those are two things to separate when trying to understand what is visible.
It is not known what produced the light, and the agency that reviewed the report did not identify it. The agency noted that phone image processing could alter the appearance and apparent movement of a distant object, but did not determine the light’s source. In the video, the camera stays trained on the point; what lies behind it remains unclear.