Footage of a UFO over North Carolina is making its way around the internet: Here’s what it actually is

In recent weeks, outlets ranging from obscure blogs to mainstream media cornerstones like Fox News have been reporting a new video that seems to show an unusual aircraft flying over Lake Norman in Mooreseville, North Carolina. The video, captured by a man named Jason Swing on May 29, opens with him looking into the lens and stating, “this is a spacecraft” before about a minute’s worth of shaky footage that seems to show a large object floating over the lake. It has since accumulated over a million views on YouTube.

Some have questioned the validity of the video, citing how much it shakes and its short duration, despite the fact that the supposed UFO doesn’t seem to be leaving any time soon. Many have commented on the video or taken to social media to ask why, if this UFO was remaining in the area as it seems to be, Swing was only able to capture less than a minute of footage that at no point offers a really clear glimpse of the craft he was trying to capture.

The video is accompanied by Swing’s brief explanation of events:

I was at work 2018 10:30 a.m it had been raining all morning. Rain finally stopped so we went w pick up a boat from lake norman … When came around the corner I saw this thing sitting still very close …”

The recent revelation that the United States Defense Department had allocated millions of dollars to investigate reports of unusual sightings in the sky provided by military personnel has reinvigorated a great deal of interest in the UFO phenomenon here in the the United States, bolstered by subsequent reports released by the federal government that seem to indicate the presence of something unexplained in the skies shared by the U.S. Armed Forces. One report, in particular, pertaining to a series of sightings and even attempted intercepts surrounding the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz strike group in 2004, has raised questions and eyebrows among many.

This video, however, doesn’t appear to be anything of that sort.

While most of the criticism levied at this video tends to focus on Swing’s failure to get a good look at the supposed spacecraft in the video, one savvy Reddit user froze and blew up a freeze frame of the craft, then compared it to another commonly seen aircraft in the United States: a blimp.

When overlaid with an image of a blimp, this “UFO” starts looking a bit more like an IFO, or Identified Flying Object, though to be fair, it is possible that Swing was himself unsure of what the distant craft may be in the hazy post-rain weather. However, the short duration of the video and excessive shakiness may suggest that he was not only aware but intentionally presented what he was seeing as something out of the ordinary.

The Goodyear Blimp, it turns out, actually was in the area for a May 29 NASCAR race, and when approached about the strange sighting, they pretty quickly put Swing’s story to bed.

“We don’t want to get in the way of a good story, but that’s definitely us,” the Goodyear Blimp staff told reporters. “We left the Charlotte area 5/29 after covering the Coke 600.”