Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

January 1969

Photo of barium, strontium, and cupric oxide in the ionosphere after release by a rocket.

On January 6, 1969, at about 7:15 PM EST, Jimmy Carter observed a luminous, unidentified object in the sky in Leary, Georgia.

Carter, who was campaigning for Governor of Georgia, was attending a Lions Club meeting, at which he was to give a speech. He observed a bright object for 10-12 minutes that was initially white, and then changed color. He claimed that it was to the west of him, about 30 degrees above the horizon.

Carter and over 20 other people, by his description, watched as the object shifted in color from white, to blue, to red, and then back to white. Carter was perplexed by this UFO, although he never claimed that its origin was alien.

President Carter submitted a report of his 1969 UFO sighting to the International UFO Bureau.

In July, 1973, Carter filed a handwritten report of his experience with the International UFO Bureau. He also filed a report in October, 1973, with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Both reports were in response to the two organizations contacting him independently, and requesting that he file a report. Some people have subsequently hypothesized that the object was Venus. In 2016, The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast (episode #105) examined a letter forwarded by a member of the Carter family. Written by a man named Carl G. Justus, the letter describes the author's previous occupation working for the Air Force.

He describes how the Air Force, in the 1960s and 1970s, used releases of glowing chemical clouds, released by rockets that launched from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, to study the upper atmosphere. Air Force records from this time corroborate that a barium cloud was released into the upper atmosphere at exactly this time.

Justus claimed that what Carter witnessed from approximately 234 km away would be consistent with the behavior of a barium cloud: bright, and changing color as some of the barium became ionized in the upper atmosphere.