Kaikōura lights
Cargo-plane crews, Wellington radar and a TV crew recorded strange lights over New Zealand's Kaikōura coast in December 1978.
1978 CE · -42.40, 173.68 · status: disputed
The account
On 21 December pilots of a Safe Air Argosy saw lights tracked by Wellington radar; on 30–31 December an Australian TV crew aboard a similar flight filmed bright lights, and the footage went worldwide. Physicist Bruce Maccabee judged one object large and very bright.
The sceptical view
Astronomers suggested Jupiter or Mars, and New Zealand's DSIR attributed the lights to squid-fishing boats' lamps and said filming through the aircraft window distorted the images; critics also questioned the radar evidence.
The researched reading
Film, radar and aircrews make this one of the better-documented light cases, but each strand has a strong ordinary candidate: squid boats, Venus and radar ducting. A modest unexplained remainder stays.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something known, misidentified | 45% | Japanese squid boats, whose huge lamps light the sea off Kaikōura, and Venus rising brightly explain many lights the crews saw; the DSIR review called the film an out-of-focus image of Venus. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 25% | Government analysts found conditions favourable to anomalous propagation; under such ducting, radar shows spurious targets and lights from beyond the horizon appear in the sky. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 17% | Bruce Maccabee argued some film segments and radar contacts resist conventional explanation; the case is not fully resolved. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 6% | A few radar-visual correlations remain hard to tie to boats or planets; poorly understood atmospheric lights are a minor option. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 3% | The crews were professional, but the TV reporter’s excitement framed the second night. |
| Secret human technology | 3% | No secret aircraft programme fits the New Zealand coast in 1978. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 1% | Radar logs and several crews rule out staging. |
Official position: A New Zealand Defence/DSIR review attributed the reports to radar anomalies, squid-boat lights and Venus, though released documents show officials could not explain everything.
Connections in the atlas
- Elizabeth Moreland, Blenheim
- Bruce Cathie's Auckland sighting and 'harmonic grid'
- Japan Air Lines 1628
- Bass Strait
- Frederick Valentich disappearance