Ladakh Unidentified Luminous Objects at Pangong Tso (2012 to 2013)

Thakung sits on the south bank of Pangong Tso, at about 4,715 metres, in eastern Ladakh. A mixed Army and ITBP garrison watches the Line of Actual Control with China. The air is thin. It is very clear.

1 August 2012. The ITBP unit at Thakung began to see lights it could not identify. By 15 October it had logged more than 100 sightings. Its reports to headquarters in Delhi and to the Prime Minister's Office called them Unidentified Luminous Objects, seen "at day and by night".

The witnesses described yellowish spheres, "orange-yellow luminous flying objects on the horizon over the Pangong Lake". They would "lift off from the horizon on the Chinese side and slowly traverse the sky for three to five hours before disappearing." The ITBP took hazy photographs. Army officials who studied them ruled out UAVs, Chinese drones and low-orbit satellites.

The Army's 14 Corps kept watching. Between August 2012 and February 2013 troops logged 329 sightings. Officials believed the objects crossed the LAC 155 times. One soldier, Lance Naik Sheminderpal Singh, recorded a steady four minute daily shift in when the first object appeared.

September 2012. The Army moved a mobile radar and a spectrum analyser to a mountaintop near the lake. The radar did not detect the object being tracked by eye. The analyser picked up no signals. A reconnaissance drone flew towards the light, reached its maximum altitude, and lost sight of it. "Something is clearly wrong, if our combined scientific resources can't explain the phenomena," a senior Army official said.

Astronomers at the Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle studied the lights for three days and reportedly judged them "non celestial". The Army, ISRO, DRDO and NTRO all searched for an answer. A preliminary verdict, reached with Indian Air Force experts, pointed to Chinese lanterns. ISRO was asked to send scientists to Leh to confirm it.

Then two astronomers came from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore. "Our task was to determine whether these unidentified objects were celestial or terrestrial," said Tushar Prabhu. With a theodolite they measured each light. One appeared around 6 pm and stayed until about 5 am. The other rose around 4 am and faded by about 11 am. Their answer, reported by The Telegraph on 24 July 2013, was Jupiter and Venus, made unusually bright by the thin, clear air. N. Ratnashri of the Nehru Planetarium had suggested light-reflecting objects carried by balloons.

4 August 2013. Troops in the Lagan Khel area of Demchok reported the lights again. Defence Minister A. K. Antony told Parliament "there is no conclusive proof of sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) over the Sino-Indian border". It was unclear whether the Army and government leadership accepted the planets.

India Today's Sandeep Unnithan broke the story. The Register later ran it as "Indian military pondered attack on Venus and Jupiter". Questions linger. The Hanle call contradicts the Bangalore verdict. The radar and drone results were never reconciled. The photographs were never published. Commentator Nancy Thames argues the "UFO" label merged several different phenomena. Online, the case is often folded into the separate legend of a UFO base at Kongka La.