"So then about seven or eight other skateboarder dudes come over and they're like, 'What's going on?' I said, 'Look at that! Do you see that?'"
I was like, 'Yo! Do you guys see that?'" Swing said. When Swing first observed the orbs in the sky, he couldn't contain his initial shock. The shining orbs appeared at about twice the altitude of the usual air traffic, at least from the untrained perspectives of Swing and the other witnesses. He's familiar with the area and said he typically can see the trajectory of planes going to and from Philadelphia International Airport. Swing lives in East Falls and visits Paine's Park two or three times per week for exercise. It's really, really difficult to claim anything about this at all, other than to say it looks like some kind of blob on video." We can't see anything about it at all because the image is so completely undefinable. We can't really see anything definitive about the shape of this object. We have a view of some sky, we have a view of some trees. "The problem is that we have absolutely no context for what this thing is – none whatsoever. We're trying to identify it as something that we can classify," Pitts said. What we are trying to do right now is ascribe to an undefined object some kind of meaning. "This object is pretty obscure and undefinable at best. He watched the video footage Swing compiled and wasn't particularly moved to read much into it. Derrick Pitts is the chief astronomer and director of the Fels Planetarium. The frame is frozen at a few points to show examples of what Swing called dark, fleeting objects that zoomed across the sky at irregular intervals among the shining orbs.Īt the Franklin Institute, Dr. The clearest and strangest moment in the first video comes around the 30-second mark, when the orb drifts to the left and then make two sudden shifts to the right. To the naked eye, Swing said the scene above him looked like a "sea of fish" or "white lights," but the iPhone camera only picked up some of them. The first video focuses primarily on one orb that Swing was able to isolate in the sky over the parkway.
The first timestamp from Swing's iPhone was 7:51 p.m. The event was observed from about 7:45-8:05 p.m. He enlarged portions and varied the speed and contrast in an attempt to illustrate what was seen.
The videos do not capture the full extent of what Swing described, and they are best viewed full-screen on a laptop or desktop computer.Īs an amateur video editor, Swing used iMovie to combine the footage into two videos. It represents his best attempt to document what he and others at Paine's Park witnessed. Swing recorded the video footage in the videos below on his iPhone. It looked like 30 to 40 little diamonds just kind of sparkling in the sky. "They looked like – the best way I can describe it is like diamonds in the sky. "As soon as I looked up, I saw all these orbs," Swing said. He laid down by himself and looked up at the sky above the Philadelphia Museum of Art and along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. He didn't know them, but they were about to be united by an unusual and enthralling display.Īt about 7:45 p.m., Swing stopped to rest and drink some water. Swing was joined at the park by a group of skateboarders and BMX riders. It had been a hot Monday, approaching 90 degrees, and the sky was mostly clear.