What happened
On 11 July 1991 the longest total solar eclipse of the twentieth century swept across Mexico, and at about 1:24 pm the Moon's shadow reached Mexico City. Millions of people were looking up at the darkened sky at the same moment. Some of them, and several people filming the event on home video cameras, reported a bright object hanging in the darkened sky that they took to be a craft. Television journalist Jaime Maussan gathered the videos and broadcast them, saying his phone lines were jammed by thousands of callers reporting sightings. The footage made Maussan a household name and helped launch his long-running UFO television career. Mexican ufologists have since described the eclipse day as the start of a wave of UFO sightings across the country. TIME later listed Mexico City among the world's best-known UFO hot spots because of the eclipse reports.
The official explanation
Critics, including the Mexican skeptics' site Alcione whose catalogue of Maussan cases was summarised by Hipertextual, identify the main eclipse object as the planet Venus, which was bright and close to the Sun and became visible to the naked eye during totality. TIME's 2011 round-up also wondered whether some viewers were simply seeing spots after looking at the Sun without eye protection. No government body examined the videos.
The anomalous case
The eclipse created a rare natural experiment: a huge population watching the same patch of sky at the same instant, many of them with cameras running. Supporters argue that this is exactly the moment when a genuine anomaly is most likely to be recorded by many independent people, and Maussan said he received thousands of calls. Ufologists also point out that, by their account, reports did not stop with the eclipse but grew into a wider wave of sightings. To them, the eclipse marks the opening of a wave rather than a single misidentification. Even sceptics agree the footage is real video, so the debate is over what it shows. Until each clip is matched point for point against Venus's position, proponents say the case remains open.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- 11 de julio de 1991: El gran eclipse de México Chilango
- 6 UFO Hot Spots Around the World: Mexico City TIME
- Jaime Maussan y sus fraudes Hipertextual
Witness reports elsewhere
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