EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
* Several authors have looked at the link between sighting time-of-day
and longitude.
* We find the NUFORC database -- mostly for US sightings -- has the
same link.
* We can use the correlation to determine the average direction of UFO
movements and an equivalent over-ground speed.
* The direction and speed discount the "average UFO" being a
satellite, star, planet or conventional aircraft.
* When we divide UFO sightings up by shape/color some do not show the
correlation but others do. No type examined shows a significantly
different correlation value.
* Converting time-of-observation to GMT shows a large fraction of
sightings across the US (and, we infer, around the world) seem to
occur around the same time of day.
* The distributions suggests a certain longitude may be some kind of
UFO hub. Locations along the longitude band have been seen in
"suspect" lists before.


I remember skimming a paper by Vallee that found a link between
sighting times and longitude in UFO incidents.
This has been explored further in <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252518312_Time-Series_Analysis_of_a_Catalog_of_UFO_Events_Evidence_of_a_Local-Sidereal-Time_Modulation>

I have run a similar procedure across the NUFORC database.

The first run also found a significant correlation between sighting
time (in local time) and longitude.

The basic data for sightings 1900-2021 looks like this:

Hr Count
0 2507
1 3002
2 1924
3 1950
4 1703
5 2153
6 1762
7 1098
8 1007 <-- min
9 1176
10 1343
11 1284
12 1252
13 1104
14 1092
15 1231
16 1547
17 2636
18 4535
19 6551
20 9592
21 12949 <-- max
22 11359
23 7790

When we regress the local time of observations against the longitude
of the sighting we find an interesting correlation:

y = 0.0164073*x + 17.9961
beta in 0.0164073 +- 0.00575247 90% CI
T-test: P(beta>0.000000) = 0.999985
r2 = 0.41384872

This allows us to determine that the "average UFO" appears to be
moving across the US and may be sighted several times in its journey.
While many of these objects may be "mistakes", we will find the
apparent speed of motion of the average object is both far greater
than conventional aircraft, but much slower than satellites or the
speed of rotation of the earth (i.e. observations of stars or planets).

Supposed it's 3am in LA and 6am in NY. If an object moves from LA to
NY over a period of 1 hr it might be observed in LA at 3am and then
in NY at 7am (i.e. 1 hr after it left LA in eastern time). The
equivalent value of the above \beta -- "hours per degree" -- would be
approx 4/(118-74) = .091.
(Where the longitude of NYc is taken as ~74E and the long of LA is ~118W).

If the object travelled from NY to LA in 1 hr it might be seen in NY
at 6am and in LA at 4am i.e. an equivalent \beta of 2/(118-74) = .045.

In fact we can "see" that the value of \beta 3/(118-74) = .068 divides
the population into 2 halves -- on average eastward moving; on average
westward moving.

Given the \beta we have measured is less than .068 we deduce the
"average UFO" may be observed multiple times and is generally moving
from the E to W coasts.

We can take the observed \beta and calculate an equivalent over-ground
speed. .016 hrs/degree represents around 6900 kph (almost Mach 6).
This is much different from the rotational speed of the earth -- 15
deg/hr == 1665 kph (around Mach 1.5).

So it seems the average UFO is not a star or planet, nor a satellite
that normally moves from the west to the east to get the rotational
boost to reach orbital velocity.

From the NUFORC database we can also break down objects by "type"
("shape") and color and find some object this link between
time-of-observation and longitude, and others do not. This might
indicate some types of objects are more reliably "unusual" while
others are mostly "mundane" but it also could indicate there is some
other division between the different sighting types -- e.g. some
objects are related to the earth while others are related to outer space.

But a far more interesting pattern appears when we translate sighting
times to GMT. We find a fairly clear Gaussian curve with a maximum
between 2am and 3am GMT -- suggesting a significant chunk of UFO's are
being seen all over the earth at around the same time. If their
average speed is Mach 6 then no real wonder. :)

The dataset is as follows:

Hr(gmt) Count
0 3916
1 6442
2 8243 <-- max
3 8131 <-- ~max
4 6754
5 4838
6 3271
7 2072
8 1694
9 1509
10 1588
11 1457
12 1193
13 1062
14 910
15 948
16 894
17 982
18 864
19 918
20 1017
21 1141
22 1600
23 2470
(Some sightings that were reported long after the sighting was made
were ignored in this tally -- it's less likely the time-of-observation
will be very accurate if someone is recounting something they saw 5-10
or more years ago).

But one interesting consequence of this clustering-by-gmt is it opens
up the prospect of locating a "UFO base" here on planet dirt. In much
the same way as a previous study looked at trying to model flight from
solar planets to explain the observed date of sighting related to
lagged planetary movement (e.g. close approach of various planets to
Earth), we might use the time-of-day of sightings to establish a
longitude that may be the "average origin" of a good% of UFO's
that are sighted.


In the troll-hunting biz one rule of thumb used to locate habitual
social media posters is the time distribution of their posts. It
turns out many (still) post during the local daylight hours meaning
the average time-of-posting will be roughly their local midday.

If a cluster of UFO sightings happen at 2-3am GMT then a longitude
roughly 130E is around midday. The longitude passes through a number
of interesting locations including islands in Siberia, the Asian
version of the Bermuda Triangle, Australia, and East Antarctica.

Well, we may not have narrowed down the "big base" but at least we've
seen the items on the suspect list before.


--
"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
- Marie Curie

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