Chilean officials can’t identify a strange IR signal seen by its Navy

Enlarge / A screen grab from a Chilean Navy video showing an odd signature in the infrared. (credit: CEFAA/YouTube)

The Ars Files casts a skeptical eye on developments in the UFO community. Is the truth out there? Maybe. Maybe not. But we try to find it here.

Early on the afternoon of November 14, 2014, a Chilean Navy pilot and a technician were flying their helicopter along the coast when they saw something strange. They were going north at an altitude of 1.4km in a twin-engine Airbus Cougar when something appeared in the sky and matched their velocity of 130 knots.

As part of the flight, which took place west of Santiago, the helicopter's technician was testing the thermal imaging properties of an infrared FLIR high-definition camera. Naturally, he turned the camera on the unidentified object. After several minutes the pilot and technician observed the object make two distinct discharges of some type of liquid, or gas, which produced a very hot signal captured by the infrared imager. The technician captured nearly 10 minutes of video, which shows both visible and infrared camera views.