Strange Object Appears Next to Planet Mercury

It's neither a bird, nor a plane, nor Superman. The giant object now appearing next to the planet Mercury remains a mystery. UFO followers believe it could be an alien ship. Scientists, however, aren't convinced.

The object appears in a number of images taken by a NASA telescope named Heliospheric Imager-1, which was focused on a coronal ejection from the Sun. In a sequence where the telescope observes a solar flare, viewers can clearly see a massive circular object moving around in the frame.

YouTube Video Arouses Speculation

Video of the object next to Mercury has been posted to YouTube, where several hundred thousand folks have watched and speculated about the sighting.

The object has been described as being "cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle." (Source: youtube.com)

The discovery has sent UFO hunters into a frenzy, but scientists insist the object may not appear the same up close as it does through the NASA telescope. In fact, NASA experts say the manner by which the images are processed has dramatically altered the physical appearance of the object.

Scientists: Mystery Object is an Artifact

United States Naval Research Laboratory engineer Nathan Rich believes the object is nothing more than an image of Mercury from the previous day.

"When [this averaging process] is done between the previous day and the current day and there is a feature like a planet, this introduces dark artifacts in the background where the planet was on the previous day, which then show up as bright areas in the enhanced image," Rich said. (Source: dailymail.co.uk)

Astronomer Dr. Heather Couper agrees it's probably not aliens on their way to conquer Earth. "No way could it be an alien spaceship the size of Mercury because Mercury is the size of our moon and we would know about it," she told MailOnline.

Of course, the people who speculate about this kind of thing aren't much interested in the opinions of the experts. It's likely we'll never know exactly what the mystery space object is -- unless, of course, it moves in closer to our home planet, Earth.

Video of the object can be found via Youtube, or by viewing the embedded image below.