Sci­en­tists at the Pur­ple Moun­tain Obser­va­tory in Nan­jing are reported to have con­firmed that they filmed a UFO dur­ing the eclipse for 40 minutes.

The Obser­va­tory is famous for dis­cov­er­ing of 147 aster­oids. They say that they will spend the next 12 months study­ing the footage before draw­ing any con­clu­sions. The direc­tor of the obser­va­tory, Ji Hai-sheng, told sina.com that sci­en­tists would not be spec­u­lat­ing pub­licly on the nature of what was cap­tured on film until it had been prop­erly stud­ied. He added:“‘Purple Moun­tain Obser­va­tory and Chi­nese Acad­emy of Sci­ences said that dur­ing the July 22, 2009,  total solar eclipse obser­va­tion, China had dis­cov­ered near the sun, by observ­ing staff, an uniden­ti­fied object, it’s phys­i­cal nature remains to be fur­ther stud­ied. “Cur­rently man­power is being orga­nized to deal with this data, com­plete the data analy­sis and reveal the sci­en­tific results and this will take at least one year’s time to finalize.”