Brazil's Official Night of the UFOs (Noite Oficial dos OVNIs)

Monday, 19 May 1986. For about five hours, lights and radar contacts appeared across São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Goiás. Controllers in Brasília, São Paulo and Anápolis logged 21 radar plots. No aircraft were scheduled. Brazil would remember it as the Noite Oficial dos OVNIs. The Official Night of the UFOs.

Sergeant Sérgio Mota da Silva was 28 and on duty in the São José dos Campos tower. Shortly after 6 pm he saw a light high in the north-west. "I compared it with the stars around it and it was much brighter," he later recalled. Over the radio he described a little beacon. Not climbing. Not dropping. Just sitting there. When the runway lights were turned up or down, the lights seemed to respond. "They behaved intelligently," he said.

At 21:08 a Xingu aircraft, PT-MBZ, neared the city. On board was Colonel Ozires Silva, founder of Embraer. He saw big, red stars and flew toward them. "As I approached, he began to disappear." Later he added: "The difference is that a star doesn't appear on radar."

Then the Air Force scrambled. Two F-5E fighters took off from Santa Cruz and three Mirages from Anápolis. First Lieutenant Kleber Caldas Marinho, Jambock 17, found a white light below him. "The object was moving from left to right and then began to climb." He followed it out over the Atlantic until he reached minimum fuel. The light changed from white to red, then to green, then back to white.

Captain Armindo Sousa Viriato de Freitas, Jaguar 116, made five radar contacts. Zigzags. Ninety-degree turns. "Suddenly, the blip disappeared from my radar scope." Years later he put its speed at Mach 15.

Captain Márcio Brisolla Jordão, Jambock 07, heard ground radar count the distance down. "20 miles, 15, 10, 5." Then there were 13 objects behind him. Six on one side. Seven on the other. He turned 180 degrees and saw nothing.

23 May 1986. Air Force Minister Octávio Júlio Moreira Lima faced the press beside his pilots. "The signals on the radar were quite clear," he said. Technically, he admitted, they had no explanation. On 2 June the Air Defence Command concluded that the phenomena were solid and reflected a certain intelligence. They could follow observers, keep their distance and fly in formation. A US Defense Attaché cable agreed there was "too much here to be ignored."

Brazilian astronomers and scientists proposed a meteor shower, a reflection of the full moon, ball lightning, radar malfunction, space debris or spy planes. Geoffrey Perry pointed to debris from the Soviet Salyut-7 station. Brigadier José Cavalcanti objected that falling debris always travels in the same direction. Rodrigo Moura Visoni later proposed plasma clouds stirred up by coronal mass ejections from the Sun. Sergio Sacani suggested sprites. Sceptics point to radar faults. No one has claimed the event was faked.

The report was declassified on 25 September 2009. In October 2015 the National Archive released 16 audio recordings, eight of them from that night. Fantástico aired them for the 30th anniversary. In May 2026 the 40th anniversary brought the night back into the news.