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22 Many astronomers have seen UFOs. The famous English astrono- mer, Edmund Halley, who discovered Halley’s comet, also claims to have seen a UFO. In May of 1677, he and numerous others observed a “great light in the sky all over southern England, many miles high.” The light moved “with incredible speed, and was very bright. It seemed to vanish and left a pale white light behind it. There were no hissing sounds and no explosion.” Was this a UFO or a meteor? Even Halley wasn’t sure. On July 9, 1686, German astronomer Gottfried Kirch observed a “burning globe” that was so bright “one could read without a candle.” He used a telescope and estimated that the object was 30 miles up. After eight minutes, the light disappeared. Kirch later learned that other people eight miles away observed the same object earlier that evening. Throughout the 1700s, the Gentleman’s Magazine of England re- corded numerous accounts, such as the following incredible sighting: “In March, 1719, and again on 29 August, 1738, there appeared in the sky over England at 3 P.M. in the northeast a glowing ball like a cone, with a jet of flame at the rear . . . It was like a cone of fire, ending in a sharp point, with a bright ball at the thicker end. The ball seemed to burst and go away in a jet of flame.” On January 2, 1749, three large spherical-shaped objects “like the moon” appeared over Japan, causing widespread riots. The govern- ment was forced to enact martial law to stop the panic. art that contained images of typical flying saucers. In 2003, researcher Matthew Hurley identified many examples. A fifteenth-century paint- ing by Italian artist Ghirlandaio shows the Virgin Mary with a disk- shaped object hovering in the sky. In the background, a man points at the object. Another sixteenth-century fresco shows a figure inside a flying object that is darting across the sky above a crowd of people.* UFOS AND ALIENS During this time, several Renaissance painters created works of