A plateau at four thousand metres in the Peruvian Andes, strewn with weathered rocks in which faces and animal figures appear under the right light. The Peruvian researcher Daniel Ruzo announced in the 1950s that they were the work of an ancient civilisation; geologists hold the shapes to be erosion and the resemblance to be the work of human eyesight. From the 1970s the plateau became a place for esoteric groups to camp, and reports of lights arrived with them. They have been described here for decades, and Marcahuasi is a fixture on Peruvian lists of sighting sites. It can only be reached on foot or on horseback, the nights are cold, and most of the observations were made by people who came for them.

Read next

Hangzhou and the Airport Closed for an Hour

On the evening of 7 July 2010 Xiaoshan airport at Hangzhou stopped work for almost an hour: controllers logged an unidentified object in the zone and eighteen flights were diverted. Passengers and residents photographed a bright trail in the sky. It is a rare instance of a report of an unidentified object shutting down a major airport. Days later the authorities said the phenomenon was connected with military activity and gave no details. The likeliest reading is a missile or aircraft trial; a contrail lit by a low sun produces exactly this picture, and the photographs are consistent with it.