UFO sighting in Bay of Islands?

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Paihia man Rob Clarke has no time for theories about little green men and swears the strongest thing he drank was a cup of tea - but he's stumped by the lights he saw travelling across the sky on Sunday night.

Mr Clarke went outside his Te Haumi home about 9.40pm to see if rain was coming. Instead he saw a pair of lights travelling slowly across a clear sky from south to north, starting in the direction of Opua and disappearing some three to five minutes later over the hill towards Russell.

They were travelling slowly enough that Mr Clarke was able to call his wife outside, who was equally gobsmacked.

The lights were bright and while it was hard to judge their height they did not appear to be higher than a regular aircraft.

The lights were not from a plane because there was no sound; nor did he believe it was a satellite, because there were two lights which at one stage moved closer together.

"I don't believe in little green men, and the strongest thing I'd had was a cup of tea. I'm just interested to know what they were," he said.

In early December the Northern Advocate received a flurry of calls about mysterious objects in the night sky. One explanation put forward by the Northland Astronomical Society was that the planet Jupiter was visible at the time and unusually bright, easily outshining the stars.

The object or objects Mr Clarke saw were not planets because they were travelling across the sky.