What happened
On January 16, 1958, the Brazilian Navy ship “Almirante Saldanha,” taking part in the International Geophysical Year program, was anchored off the volcanic island of Trindade, more than a thousand kilometers from the mainland coast. Around noon, crew members began pointing at the sky, and professional photographer Almiro Baraúna, who was on board, took six pictures. Four of them show a flattened object with a ring, resembling the planet Saturn, flying over the island’s peaks. The film was developed on board, in the presence of officers. The navy examined the negatives, and in February 1958, with the approval of President Juscelino Kubitschek, the photographs were published in the press. They appeared in newspapers around the world and remain among the most famous UFO photographs to this day.
Witnesses
Photographer Almiro Baraúna and members of the ship’s crew and scientific team – although not everyone on board claimed to have seen the object.
Explanations and hypotheses
The Brazilian Navy found no evidence that the negatives had been faked, but skeptics point out that Baraúna was skilled in trick photography and a few years earlier had published a tongue-in-cheek piece on how easy it is to fabricate flying saucer photos. Analyses of the photographs have reached conflicting conclusions: some suggest a double exposure or a model, while others show no signs of manipulation.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.