Resources

Updated: 22 August 2024

Below is a list of resources we use as UFO investigation tools at API. If you have suggestions for additions or deletions to this page, please use our contact form.

Please visit our Field Investigator Training video playlist, as well as our Supplemental Training video playlist.

RESEARCH RESOURCES FOR INVESTIGATORS:

Reference Documents

• Valle classification system (2007)

General Research Resources

• Bellingcat’s Online Investigation Toolkit – many tools and links for open source investigation.
• Time and Date – make sure you know when daylight savings time begins and ends.Lots of other useful calculators at the same site.

Investigator Education

• What are Azimuth and Elevation?
• The API Investigator training Video Series – essential knowledge for the API investigator.
• The Supplemental training video playlist – many good videos on topics germane to field investigation.

Photography and Videography

• Digital Camera Database – detailed information on digital cameras
• Digital camera sensor sizes
• Understanding Focal Length and Field of View
• The Exchangeable Image File Format – a Library of Congress page that summarizes EXIF with links to the details.

Satellites

• Heavens Above  – Satellite Tracking and Flares
• ISS  Tracker – International Space Station Tracking
• CelesTrak –  for more advanced analysts and Two-Line Element sets
• Jonathon’s Space Report – an impressively detailed chronology of human activity in space. 
• GPredict – Unix software for predicting satellite passes. Easy to build and update on the Mac using Homebrew or MacPorts.
• SatObserver – this app hasn’t been updated for several years, but still works.

Natural Phenomena

Weather and Atmosphere

• The US National Weather Service has lots of good information accessible to the non-specialist.
• Iowa Environmental Mesonet  – historical weather and climate archives, including METAR reports. Provides a useful map to select stations from.
• Wunderground – Weather and Historical Weather
• Aviation Weather Charts  – historical aviation weather reports, such as METARs. Goes back 4 months.
• How to read METAR weather reports.
• METAR abbreviations
• National Centers for Environmental Information – lots of historical weather and climate data. Click on National Weather Service Text Narrative and Archive for most weather products.
• Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive – weather balloon soundings. Might be your best source for winds at altitude. Start with the readme file.
• Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) – CWOP might make it possible to get a weather observation closer to where your sighting was. Data more than 1 year old is probably not available.
• University of Wyoming Upper Atmosphere Maps – for interpretation, see this page.For reading the wind speeds, see this page.
• MADIS – A NOAA portal. You’ll have to fill out an application, but you will have access to lots of US weather data.
• Speed of Sound table – turns out, the speed of sound depends pretty strongly on temperature and altitude.
• UK Met Office Weather Observations Website – weather observations in the UK and much of Europe.
• NOAA Satellite Imagery Global Archive – goes back to 2017.
• The Science of Contrails

Meteors and Space Debris

• American Meteor Society – Meteor Showers and Fireballs
• International Meteor Organization
• UK Meteor Network – includes detailed data on fireballs observed in the UK.
• List of all meteor showers by the IAU
• Fireball and Bolide Data – includes lightcurve data for some fireballs. Hosted by JPL.
• Global Fireball Observatory – a network of fireball detection sites.
• Bolide Data from Geostationary Lightning Mapper – NOAA’s detection of fireballs from Geosynchronous Orbit.
• NASA All Sky Fireball Network – videos of meteors on a network of cameras
• Re-entries  – Rocket, satellite, and orbital debris re-entries

Astronomy and Space Physics

• Spaceweather.com  – auroras and other space weather activity
• In-The-Sky.org – a very nice, easy to use astronomy site. Also helpful for satellites.
• Lunar ephemeris calculator – easy to use.
• Aladin Sky Atlas – a free astronomy visualization tool for the more advanced user.
• XEphem – astronomy and satellites
• JPL Horizons System – solar system bodies

Aviation

• Airport codes
• ADS-B Exchange replays – you can also monitor in real time by editing the URL (see help page).
• FlightRadar24 – live or historical aviation information
• SkyVector – aviation maps
• Airspace Classification – FAA.gov pag explains the different classes of airspace.
• LiveATC.net – live and historic Air Traffic Control information and audio.
• LiveATC US Air Traffic Control Center feeds.
• NOTAM search (FAA)
• Special Use Airspace Map – FAA map of special use areas in the US and Virgin Islands.
• Airspace Boundaries in the US – an FAA map showing the areas for each regional control center.
• What is ACARS and how Airlines and Pilots Use it – about the Aircraft Communications, Addressing and Reporting System.
• Aviation Archeology and Investigations – historical aviation accidents and crash sites
• Aviation Lights – this is for civil aviation.
• PlaneCrashinfo.com – aviation accidents
• Air Show Center – information on air shows.

Drones/UAVs

• FAA UAS Data Map – shows maximum altitude drone operators can request to fly in the US
• All operational FAA drone waivers
• FAA UAS sighting reports – published every 3 months.

Balloons

• aprs.fi – tracks balloons or anything else with APRS transmitters. You’ll need the call sign to get the historical data.
• Stratocat – a chronology of scientific balloon launches going back to 1947
• habhub.org – tracks some high altitude balloons
• sondehub.org – radiosonde tracker
• NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility
• University of Wyoming Balloon Trajectory Forecasts

Maps

• Download Topo Maps
• US Geological Survey Topo Maps Viewer –  another easy point-and-click way to get USGS topo maps. You can download a .kml file and overlay it on Google Earth Pro (make sure you switch off “Terrain” in Google Earth).
• European Map Data
• The Bellingcat Search Grid Generator  – Generates a grid over a map that will help you organize your search.
• Open Topography – you can request .kmz files for overlaying on Google Earth
• Elevation API – if you know the location where you want elevation data, and don’t mind a little typing, this will work.
• NOTAM mapper –  paste in the text of a NOTAM, and this will map it.

Sky Surveillance

• Raspberry Pi Meteor System

Freedom of Information Act Requests

• FAA FOIA Request Site  – use this to request RADAR data less than 45 days after the event.
• Guidance on FAA FOIA Requests
• US Army FOIA Form

Government Archives

• National Personnel Records Center –  a service of the National Archives.
• FBI Vault
• US National Archives

Private Archives

• The Black Vault
• Isaac Koi’s Home Page
• Newspaper Archive
• nicap.org
• The Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS)
• A Blue Book Archive on fold3

Useful Software:

Source Code

• Poliastro – Astrodynamics for Python – if you have a little skill with Python, you can predict orbits very flexibly with this MIT Licensed package.
• Skyfield –  a Python package for astronomical calculations.

Desktop Applications

• Google Earth – a powerful free app we use a lot at API for mapping sighting locations and measuring directions and distances.
• Sky Safari – astronomy. Also available as a mobile app.
• Radar Beacon Analysis Tool (RBAT)
• EXIF Tool for reading metadata from a wide variety of files
• Raw Therapee – a free application for sophisticated display and processing of RAW image files from a wide variety of cameras. Also does an excellent job of displaying metadata.
• Davinci Resolve – a free app from Blackmagic for importing a wide variety of video and audio formats and performing powerful editing and processing on them. The free version is not significantly underpowered, although there are some extra features on the Pro (“Studio”) version.
• Cartes du Ciel – free software to draw sky charts
• Tracker – free video analysis software
• MedaiInfo – Mac software that can give you the encoding date and time for a video clip.

Mobile Apps

• FlightRadar24 – for viewing past and current aircraft flights with ADS-B transponders
• Heavens-Above – satellite viewing predictions for Android devices
• Moon Phase Pro – because we frequently need to know the moon phase

Web Apps and Pages

• Forensically  – photo analysis.
• Download Topo Maps
• US Geological Survey Topo Maps Viewer –  another easy point-and-click way to get USGS topo maps. You can download a .kml file and overlay it on Google Earth Pro (make sure you switch off “Terrain” in Google Earth).
• NOAA Magnetic Declination Tool – for your site visit plan, it’s good to know the difference between true North and magnetic North if you plan to take compass readings, and that varies with location.
• UTM to Latitude/Longitude Converter
• Peak Visor – this tool can be used to identify mountain peaks in photographs or videos. Bellingcat explains how to use it for geolocation.

Good Blogs:

• Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (Philippe Ailleris)
• Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – scientific research (Keith Basterfield)

• Blue Blurry Lines  (Curt Collins)
• UFO Trail (Jack Brewer)
• UFO Fotocat Blog (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos)

UFO/UAP Reporting and Investigation Organizations:

• The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)
• The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC)
• NARCAP – for aviators
• GEIPAN (in French)