United States.Colorado · a police officer films a flashing light on his phone

At some point in October 2023, a local police officer in Colorado was on an interstate highway, westbound, and began filming with the rear camera of a commercial mobile phone. The highway number and the mile marker were redacted in the declassification. He filmed four times: a clip of one minute and nineteen seconds, one of fifteen, one of twenty-seven and a last one of one minute and forty-two, some three and three-quarter minutes in all. He then sent his report to the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The Department of War made it public almost three years later, on September 18, 2026, in PURSUE, its program for releasing documents on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

The release includes, alongside the four videos, a transcript of what the officer was saying as he filmed. In it he gives the date, the time, the mile marker and the interstate number, all redacted, and his direction of travel, westbound, which survives. He describes what he sees: "I am watching another orb that is flying approximately... 300 feet up off the ground. I did check radar, there is no aircraft flying in the area." Fifteen seconds later he adds: "This has been flying stationary for about 15 minutes." A minute in, as a large truck goes past: "Okay, the craft is flying closer to me now. I can see it." There the published transcript ends.

On the four video records AARO adds the officer's own description of the phenomenon: "silent" and featuring "red, blue, and green flashing lights." The office also altered the images: it blurred the bottom half of the frame (in the third and fourth clips, only for the first two seconds) to obscure information that could affect privacy or commercial interests.

The same AARO comment appears at the foot of all four records: cellular devices of this type "employ autofocus and other automated image-processing functions that may distort the apparent morphological and kinematic characteristics of distant subjects, particularly at high magnification." The shot breakdown confirms the magnification was used: in the first clip the camera "increases and decreases its level of magnification several times"; in the third it zooms in and stays there. On the fourth, the record notes twice that an approaching vehicle "influences the camera's automatic image-processing filters, including autofocus."

By this entry's own reasoning, not that of any official document, what is described (a light source that stays motionless until the last minute, silent, shifting between red, blue and green, filmed on zoom from a roadside) fits what a bright star or planet often produces under atmospheric turbulence: scintillation splits the light into colors, and a phone's autofocus can distort the apparent shape and motion of a point. The transcript does not say which radar the officer checked; either way, a radar check can rule out an aircraft, not a celestial object. And the "300 feet up off the ground" is an estimate with no range information: a light without references gives no way of knowing how far away it is, so the altitude is the witness's impression, not a measurement.

The declassification removed exactly what would test that reading. In October 2023 two very bright bodies were in the Colorado sky: Jupiter, which would reach opposition (when it sits opposite the Sun and is visible all night) in early November and dominated the night, and Venus, which reached greatest western elongation, its widest apparent separation from the Sun before dawn, on October 23. With an exact bearing and time the hypothesis could be checked against the positions of the bodies in minutes, but neither the direction of gaze nor the time survived the redactions. The public material yields no date within the month, no point on the highway, no direction of gaze and no elevation.

Two data points remain that the astronomical explanation does not cover without strain: the officer says "another orb," which suggests it was not the first he had seen, and in the final minute he says the craft is coming closer.

The case reached AARO from a local police force, with a phone camera and a witness's eyeball estimate in place of a calibrated sensor with a chain of custody. That limits what the material can prove, but it leaves the account of a witness who recorded while he was watching.

AARO published the case under the heading "Unresolved UAP Report" and, in the same document, named a mechanism that can distort the apparent shape and motion the video recorded: the phone's autofocus and automated image processing. The label means the office did not close the case; it does not claim the case resists a conventional explanation. AARO names no celestial body.

The transcript records what the witness said while he was watching, not a later reconstruction. In it the officer says "I did check radar" and "this has been flying stationary for about 15 minutes" at the moment he is watching it, with trucks going past in the background. He also says "another orb," two words that suggest this was not the first time.

Protecting the witness came at a cost: the redactions, made under the Freedom of Information Act exemptions (b)(7)(A) and (b)(7)(C), which protect law-enforcement proceedings and personal privacy, erased the direction of gaze, the time and the place, exactly what would be needed to test the astronomical reading against the positions of the stars and planets.