Astronomers at Ukraine’s Main Astronomical Observatory say they spotted more than 20 anomalous objects racing near the Moon. Some allegedly stretch the length of Manhattan. Before you update your group chat, know this: the study is a non-peer-reviewed preprint, and the same research team had previous work formally discredited by their own national academy. That context matters more than the headline.
What the Astronomers Say They Saw
High-speed telescope footage from rural Ukraine captured faint, fast-moving specks that the team interprets as enormous craft.
Using a high-speed camera shooting 20 frames per second at an observatory in Vinarivka, Ukraine, Boris Zhilyaev and colleagues recorded footage on September 7 and August 16, 2025. They classified objects as “atmospheric” — appearing anchored to the lunar surface — and “continental” — streaking across it at speeds reportedly reaching 11 km/s.
Size estimates range wildly from 440 meters to 15–25 miles wide, depending on reflectivity assumptions the team openly admits they cannot verify. In raw frames, these supposed Manhattan-sized craft appear as specks just a few pixels across.
- Objects flashed in repeating patterns lasting 0.1–0.5 seconds; two objects hundreds of miles apart reportedly flashed in sync
- Ring-shaped structures estimated at 22–36 km across allegedly rotate every three minutes, producing centrifugal forces exceeding twice Earth’s gravity
- The authors propose the Moon “serves as a base for UFOs” and that objects could reach Earth in roughly 20 minutes
- Size and speed calculations are entirely model-dependent — composition and true reflectivity remain unknown
Why the Scientific Community Isn’t Convinced
The team’s prior UAP research was officially criticized for distance errors of roughly 10x — and the new study shares the same structural weaknesses.
In 2022, Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences concluded that earlier UAP work from this group contained “significant errors” and “did not meet professional standards for scientific publication,” according to reporting by The Debrief. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb argued the team’s distance calculations were off by a factor of about 10, turning their supposed giant phantom craft into something far more mundane — likely artillery shells. That’s the scientific equivalent of mistaking a blurry streetlight for a spacecraft — a reminder that instrument resolution matters as much as interpretation.
The Moon preprint inherits the same structural problems:
- Single-station data
- No parallax distance measurements
- No independent replication
- Signals only pixels wide
NASA and US government UAP offices maintain that no confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial technology exists. Without multiple telescopes and rigorous peer review, “giant craft” remains an interpretation built on assumptions, not a finding built on evidence.
Whether unexplained objects exist near the Moon is a legitimate scientific question worth rigorous investigation. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence — and a few ambiguous pixels in an unreviewed preprint don’t clear that bar.
