Sighting record / 1985
Tuesday, 17 September 1985. Buenos Aires looked up. A brilliant white point hung high over the city, swaying gently, shining like a lens with a column of light above it. Radio stations and newsrooms were flooded with calls. At 10:00 the Ezeiza control tower reported "una esfera luminosa no identificada" moving at 22,900 metres. Two Mirage jets climbed after it. Channel 9 sent a Learjet and chased it live on air. For more than ten hours, Argentina watched. Astronomers soon said balloon. Ufologists said otherwise. The answer would be traced to a launch site in South Africa, and a French space agency that recognised its own work.
September 1985. Argentina was about to meet the alien invaders of the television series V, whose broadcast began on the 18th. Something else arrived a day earlier. Tuesday, 17 September, the International Day of Peace. A light appeared in the sky over Buenos Aires. It would be remembered simply as the "OVNI del 17".