Yorkshire resident spots saucer-shaped 'UFO' flying though the hills near Skipton - and experts are baffled

Bizarre flying objects are usually considered a stateside phenomena.

But a remarkable shot shows one brazenly flying though the hills in the north of England – and experts are baffled. 

The mysterious aerial entity was snapped outside of Shipton in Yorkshire by photographer and local man John Tunnah.

Eerily, the Yorkshire resident took about 10 or 12 photographs from his vantage point but the object only appeared in one of them. 

Mr Tunnah said they were the 'first photos on an unfamiliar camera' that he had only just purchased. 

He described the phenomenon as a probable 'UFO' – an unidentified flying object. 

And it's remarkably similar to the classic UFO saucer shape depicted in popular culture, with a distinctive round and elongated shape. 

'Why it was manoeuvring at low level over West Yorkshire was a mystery,' Mr Tunnah told the Daily Mail. 

The photo, shared exclusively with the Daily Mail, was taken with a Pentax Optio SVi camera one Saturday morning, according to Mr Tunnah. 

'I was travelling home with it when I noticed, behind the hills beyond Silsden, a perfectly formed arch of cloud – like a cloudy rainbow,' he said. 

'I pulled in, intending to take photos. By the time I'd sorted the camera out the arch had broken up as per the photo, but I took a few shots anyway.

'That evening, I was playing with the camera and deleting shots I'd taken when I came across this one showing something on the far left.

'It didn't appear on any of the other photos I'd taken at the time.

'I'm not a "flying-saucer", or "alien visitation" freak, but whatever it was deserves the term UFO.' 

Mr Tunnah, originally from Scotland, then showed the perplexing snap to some of his friends 'just out of interest'. 

'They all tended to agree that it was "real", "solid" and appeared to be travelling at speed from the dissipating "arch" on the horizon,' he said. 

'Various theories were put forward – such as "flying saucer" and very short lived cloud.' 

The resident speculated that it could also be be a 'Skunk Works-type aircraft of previously unknown design'. 

Skunk Works is the official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), responsible for developing highly classified experimental aircraft.

Nick Pope, a UFO expert formerly with the UK's Ministry of Defence, offered a number of explanations for Mr Tunnah's photo. 

'When photos show an anomaly that wasn't seen at the time, I suspect either a glitch with the camera, or a fast-moving object like a bird or an insect, close to the lens,' he told the Daily Mail. 

But the US Department of Defense – otherwise known as the Pentagon – declined to comment on the image. 

UFO stands for 'unidentified flying object' and so the term doesn't necessarily describe an object with an extraterrestrial origin. 

But some of its characteristics adhere to common descriptions of what UFOs look like. 

A Pentagon document published in 2023 revealed that the typical UFO has a round shape, usually spherical or an orb, with a white or silver colour.

Based on what it knows from reported sightings between 1996 and 2023, other UFO shapes include rectangle, oval, triangle, disk, cylinder, square and even polygon. 

Meanwhile, 16 per cent have been described as having lights, although in many cases this may have been due to their reflective qualities. 

The Pentagon also released a hotspot map that reveals the location of reported UFO sightings, including Japan and the Middle East.