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Case · C-072

Ladakh 2012-2013: the lights reported by the Army on the border with China

Pangong Lake and Thakung post, Ladakh (then the State of Jammu and Kashmir) · India · Aug 2012 – Feb 2013

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Explained

What happened
Between August 2012 and February 2013, units of the Indian Army and the ITBP border police in the Pangong Lake area recorded hundreds of orange-yellow luminous objects (329 sightings according to the press), some of which seemed to cross the line of control with China. The ITBP reported to the government and to the Prime Minister's Office, describing them as unidentified luminous objects and ruling out drones and low-orbit satellites; a mobile Army radar failed to detect them and, according to the press of November 2012, astronomers who had observed them for three days had judged them non-celestial. In December a preliminary assessment attributed them to Chinese lanterns and a check was requested from the space agency ISRO.
Proposed explanation
According to the newspaper The Telegraph of Calcutta (July 2013), picked up by other outlets, two astronomers of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics sent at the Army's request measured the positions of the objects with a theodolite and concluded that they were celestial bodies, the planets Jupiter and Venus, made brighter by the thin high-altitude air. The earlier assessments (“non-celestial” objects, then Chinese lanterns) had been reported by unnamed official sources.
Official investigation
Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP); Indian Institute of Astrophysics (at the Army's request)

Sources

  1. The Register (July 26, 2013): the objects tracked by the Indian Army in Ladakh were planets (press)
  2. International Business Times India (July 29, 2013): six months of observations, then the identification with Jupiter and Venus (press)
  3. Kashmir Life (November 3, 2012): more than 100 sightings reported by the Army and the ITBP (press)
  4. ISRO To Visit Leh To Examine Mysterious Luminous Objects (Kashmir Life, December 16, 2012) (press)

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