Oh Blimpic Kind of UFO

While the Olympic Games are usually infested with flying discs, most notably in the discus and trap shooting events, UFO researcher and pundit Nick Pope raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when he suggested that we should keep our eyes on the sky during the Olympic Games, because "if aliens have studied our psychology, they may choose to appear in our skies on a significant date – the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games is one date being widely circulated by conspiracy groups."

But some people at least heeded Pope's advice, because after the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics last week, there was suddenly a flurry of internet discussion about a UFO hovering over the event being caught on video footage. Some rational heads suggested it was simply the Goodyear blimp, used for coverage of many sporting events, but many people disagreed, saying that the object was not blimp-shaped, but was instead a disc with the classic flying saucer dome on top:

Personally, all I see is a blimp. It looks like a blimp in profile, with the bright spot at top probably caused by light reflecting from the Moon. This seems more a case of "you see what you want to see". And the blimp suggestion seems far more likely - Goodyear's twitter account acknowledged it was them with a cheeky tweet, and photos on their website and on their Facebook page seem to offer the final nail in the 'Olympic UFO' story.

One ironic note to finish though...one of the photos posted to Goodyear's Facebook page shows the video feed from the blimp looking down on the stadium. And y'know...it's kinda disc-shaped, and has a dome-looking thing in the middle (actually, it looks a bit Spielberg-UFOish)...