Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

Watch the peculiar video above, and pay attention to the wandering point of light that comes from the upper right to the bottom, when it suddenly splits, giving out a straight intense ray-like shoot. Now, what was that?

Was it an alien spaceship with a drunk driver expelling some excess fuel? Or rather a giant meteor braking up in the atmosphere, in low speed? Perhaps a ginormous insect firing a laser gun? Check below a graphic showing the intriguing trajectory and sequence of events:

If we had that video alone, perhaps people would be wondering for good what exactly that was. Luckily, that was not only captured by the previously mentioned UFOcapture software, it passed over Japan where a network of UFOcapture stations are active. It was simultaneously filmed by three different stations, distant many kilometers apart.

It was identified as to what it really was. The answer, plus some thoughts, after the jump.

First, without much ado, the answer. It was an insect. AND a meteor.

By an amazing coincidence, an insect passing near the camera was being filmed, and almost exactly at the right time and position, a meteor showed up. The insect and the meteor, of course, had no relation besides the sheer mind boggling coincidence that to that peculiar camera, the meteor seems to come out from the insect.

The other two videos of the same meteor captured miles afar don’t show anything bizarre, don’t have any wandering insect – or drunk spaceship driver – before or after the nice meteor show. You can check them here, and the UFOcapture software also triangulated the position and even computed the previous orbit of the meteor.

This is such a beautiful case, and a nice lesson for all of us interested in UFOs. Again, if there was only the original video, perhaps the more skeptical minds would suggest that that was just an insect and a meteor in a bizarre coincidence, but people would then object endlessly as to how absurd and unlikely, even “desperate”, that explanation could be.

Unlikely, yes. Absurd, perhaps. But in this particular case, that was exactly what happened.

As Spanish fellow Manuel Borraz, who called attention to this, put it, “when something is strange, very strange, we may resort without much fear to the improbable explanations”.

And by “improbable explanations” Borraz was not referring to alien spaceships or giant insects. But simply to prosaic things in extraordinarily improbable situations.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we should be resorting to all sorts of bizarre coincidences to explain away everything, but we have to have in mind that before resorting to seemingly simple hypothesis that involve unproven assumptions, we must consider first the more complex ones, even though they may look improbable at first. We do know that insects and meteors exist.

Oh, this also teaches that the UFOcapture software is extremely valuable to UFO research. Once again, I must sound like salesman, but since the post about it, I came to know that besides the many astronomical setups around the world, there have been some initiatives focused in UFOs and the like, such as “Operation SURICATE” in France and Project Hessdalen (in Italy).

Roberto Labanti, from CIPH, also told me that a similar setup was responsible for recording the first “gigantic jet” over continental North America (PDF). By accident! James Bunnel, dedicated mainly to Marfa Lights research, didn’t realize what he had captured until Oscar van der Velde found the image in the Internet and called his attention to it. They’re co-authors of the published paper, along with others.