Case file · Sighting
Basel celestial phenomenon
A Basel broadsheet reported large red and black balls 'fighting' in the sky before sunrise on several mornings in 1566.
1566 CE · 47.56, 7.59 · status: account
The account
Samuel Coccius's pamphlet describes strange sunrises and sunsets in late July and August 1566, including spheres that moved together and turned fiery. Like the Nuremberg sheet of 1561, it read the sight as a religious warning. Ufologists later cited it as an aerial battle.
The sceptical view
Historians and meteorologists point to sun halos, sun dogs and dust or smoke in the atmosphere, described in the moralising language of the time.
Connections in the atlas
- Stralsund 'air ships'
- The Wickiana prodigy chronicle
- Joseon court records of 1609
- Magonia, the land of sky ships
- Nuremberg celestial phenomenon