Mysteries over the Oxford skies: The Didcot Double UFO

We received a report from a witness EAC (pseudonym) who reported two strange objects in the skies looking from his easterly facing garden on June 28th 2026.

EAC is a retired lecturer with science background and is used to seeing a great multitude of different objects in the sky, however this double UFO appearing at exactly the same time was very unusual to the usual sky traffic.

"I am intimately familiar with the local airspace, which is routinely dense with both commercial airliners and military aircraft operating out of RAF Benson and RAF Brize Norton. I am entirely used to seeing standard planes travelling at high altitudes and leaving long, persistent vapour trails. What I witnessed during this incident was completely inconsistent with any known aviation.

While looking out into the eastern sky, a large, dark, cigar-shaped (cylindrical) object appeared suddenly. The object was substantial in size and maintained a strictly vertical orientation, pointing straight up and down relative to the horizon for the entire duration of the visual contact.

Furthermore, it was rotating smoothly and uniformly on its own longitudinal axis, flashing (possibly a sun reflection) and mimicking the exact motion of a rolling pin. The object did not behave like a standard aircraft. It travelled at immense speed, moving on a sharp trajectory from South to North (crossing from my right to my left across my eastern view). It maintained this rapid flight path for approximately one minute.

After roughly one minute of high-speed travel, the cigar-shaped object suddenly came to a dead halt and hovered while continuing to rotate for an estimated 5 to 10 seconds. At that exact moment, my attention was drawn to a second object located significantly higher up in the atmosphere. I thought at first it might have been an aircraft flying at a considerable height.

This secondary object was highly reflective and silver. Immediately upon the appearance of this higher silver object, the primary dark (brown or black), vertical cigar-shaped object vanished from view completely.

The speed and suddenness of the event did not afford me enough time to retrieve my phone, open the camera, and record the object while it was visible. However, I managed to activate my camera immediately following the disappearance. I captured an 18-second video of the bright blue sky. While the object itself is not visible, this video preserves the exact time, the pristine weather conditions, and the directional orientation of the sky at the precise moment of the encounter. The original digital file contains all intact metadata, though it unfortunately does not display the object in question.

The primary cigar-shaped object was dark (brown/black) and much less bright than the moon, though its rotating surface produced sharp, momentary flashes of sunlight. The secondary silver object high up was highly reflective and appeared as a bright, sharp point of light, more intense than the lunar surface

The primary cigar-shaped object was at a medium-high altitude, estimated at approximately 45 to 50 degrees above the horizon. The secondary silver object was positioned significantly higher up in the atmosphere, estimated at a very high altitude of approximately 70 to 80 degrees above the horizon (near the zenith).

The object appeared to my right (South) and moved across my field of vision to my left (North)."

The exact time of the sighting is confirmed by a call log:

“19:37 BST: I abruptly cut my sister off so I could record what I was seeing.

19:40 BST: I took the short video once I got myself sorted out.

19:52 BST: I rang my sister back to tell her all about what had just happened.

Because the WhatsApp call log comes straight from the network server, it bypasses any quirks with my phone's internal clock, placing the sighting right around 19:40 BST."

 EAC was able to produce a surprise bonus which was the last moments of the lower cylindrical rotating object, he has just caught its last moments before disappearing. An enlarged area was also provided to BUFORA in the case file, but it required some further work from the original to get a better definition and filtering to try and maintain a higher definition on expanding and zooming in on the footage

Stills from the video original:

After some further treatments of sharpened and various filtering, I was able to get a less pixilated original zoom plus filter enhancements, seen here before and after treatment.

The reason for this was also to add in the secondary upper object to the right top, this was the silver object rising fast into the stratosphere, whilst the lower one was disappearing more in a vertical transit into loss of view.

Both objects had disappeared within less than ten minutes possible observation time and awareness. EAC had not noticed that he has indeed captured both objects and not just the secondary lower altitude one.

EAC was very thorough in his detailing and after some finite tuning of the exact timings and some detailed investigations, these were the possible but certainly not conclusive answers:

As the sighting was not even close to dusk for night sky visible objects, satellites and the planets were not even considered.

With the two objects one disappearing and rotating and cylindrical in description and suspect heat detected in distortion around this lower object and the upper second silver object rising directly vertically with widening away from one another, the principal investigation was into rocket launches.

Space X launch timings were explored, as this type of rocket has a reusable and return-back-to-earth first stage separation. This would explain its slower descent and gradually disappearing out of view as it would start rotating or rolling to reposition itself for a controlled re-entry using its return only fuel and thruster sequences. That would also explain the upper object continuing skywards and this remaining ascending stage was all silver, whilst the lower stage had some black as well as white appearance.

However, after I conferred with EAC this possible sequence, it was realised the initial report was not quite right in the timing and once we concluded the finite time of the sighting, it put the space x launch in California that day completely out of phase with the climb and trajectory for his sighting.

The next launch was on the 29th June from Florida in the early hours of the morning from Florida, and once timeline data was applied, it also ruled these out. Even launches globally could not find one launch that fitted the sighting time, even with non-reusable stages to the rocket.

There is a possibility of a classified launch but even with sensitive payloads, the large size and transit of any rocket launch is easily seen by astronomers and radar tracking globally, so this must be surely ruled out.

The second theoretical possibility would be a launched much smaller rocket from a plane, that is not planned to reach any higher than a sub orbital velocity, for scientific research into the lower atmosphere.

The final third theoretical possibility would be a weather balloon of extreme high altitude, with a possible plane launch to give it a head start on its altitude climb rather than a ground launch, but there’s very little information of this practice and data available, the same as possibility number two.

EAC and I checked for balloon shows, and air shows but even with the nearby bases, the aerodynamics of the most agile known craft would not lend itself to constant spinning and rotating in respect of the lower object and certainly altitude limit and g force challenges of the radio rising silver object.

In view of the strangeness of this ‘false rocket’ with two stage behaviours incident, we present this witness’ account and our investigations report may help identify future incidents of this kind. Were you in the area on that day and saw something like EAC did or even further afield behaving in a similar way, either just a sighting or even capturing footage?

If so, please let us know as it may help in adding more information to these kinds of incidents to try and identify cases just like this.

For now, EACs report must remain unexplained and retain its status as a UFO sighting unsolved.

Matt Lyons

BUFORA Accredited Investigator.

August 2026