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A bizarre, jellyfish-shaped object filmed moving through the sky near a major U.S. military base in Anchorage, Alaska, has sparked online speculation, but the Pentagon’s former top UFO investigator says there may be a much simpler explanation.
Video recorded June 15 shows a dark object appearing to hover along a mountainside near a rainbow, with several long strands dangling beneath it.
The object appears to pulse and shift in the air as the strands rise, fall and wave beneath it. As it moves toward the left side of the frame, the strands trail behind before the object moves back toward the right.
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Sara Jane Osborn recorded the unusual sighting and posted the video to Facebook the following day.
A dark, jellyfish-shaped object with strands hanging beneath it was captured on video in the sky near Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on June 15, 2026. (Peter & Sara Jane Osborn via Storyful)
“It looks like a friggin alien. I don’t like it,” Osborn can be heard saying as she records the object.
“It’s moving very weirdly,” she says moments later.
Fox News Digital reached out to Osborn for additional details about the sighting.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson confirmed to Fox News Digital that officials are aware of the footage.
“We are aware of a video circulating on social media regarding a reported aerial sighting near Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson from June 15, 2026, but have no additional information to provide at this time,” the base’s 673d Air Base Wing Public Affairs office said in a statement.
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Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on April 19, 2023. (U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services)
Sean Kirkpatrick, who led the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which investigates unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, cautioned against relying on social media footage to assess unexplained sightings.
“I don’t usually make any assessment from an online video,” Kirkpatrick told Fox News Digital. “First, as I’ve said many times, social media is not a good source of data for anything, let alone UAP sightings.”
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“The video, if authentic and not generated, is compressed and cannot be used for data analysis. It’s too easy to make up video now and cover your signatures,” he added.
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Kirkpatrick said the footage alone does not provide enough information to determine the object’s size, altitude, distance or actual movement.
He did, however, point to a possible explanation for what appears in the video.
“The motion is similar to a kite with streamers, particularly the waves,” Kirkpatrick said.
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Historical weather observations show there was plenty of wind in Anchorage around the time of the reported sighting.
Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, is seen against the Chugach Range. (Getty Images/Getty Images)
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Winds were blowing from the west at 16 mph at 9:55 p.m. on June 15 and from the west-southwest at 15 mph at 10:55 p.m., according to Weather Underground. The sighting was reportedly recorded at about 10:15 p.m.
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The wind data alone does not establish that the object was a kite or moving with the wind, since the video does not make clear which direction the camera was facing or exactly where the object was located.
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Despite the bright sky, the reported time of the sighting is not unusual for Anchorage in June, when daylight stretches late into the evening near the summer solstice.
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A sign marks the entrance to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 13, 2025. (Mark Thiessen/AP)
The base did not say whether the object was detected by military personnel or equipment, whether it entered military or restricted airspace or whether any known activity could account for what appears in the footage.
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Kirkpatrick said determining what was actually in the sky would require more information than the video alone can provide.
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“If it was a real video and not generated, I would add kite with streamers to the hypothesis category and then do some local research on whether there was any sort of celebration or party, what the wind patterns were, and whether or not there’s any corroborating video from another angle,” Kirkpatrick said.