UFOs over Germany?
Unidentified flying objects: A network of volunteers in Germany investigates mysterious aerial phenomena.
Johannes Göbel ,
29.11.2024 
Even the police have already contacted Hansjürgen Köhler: A persistent caller contacted the station regarding mysterious phenomena in the western sky and begged the officers to come and take a look, so they sent a patrol car. When they arrived, the two police officers were equally baffled by the sighting in the night sky and the strange flashing. A call to Hansjürgen Köhler provided clarity: It was merely the fixed star Sirius, which this night had a turbulent and vivid luminosity. Yet again no aliens.
A hotline for UFO sightings
Hansjürgen Köhler is the spokesperson and founding member of CENAP, the Central Research Network for Extraordinary Aerospace Phenomena. It has existed since 1976 and started off as a small group that had already created an archive and international contacts in UFO surveillance. CENAP can be contacted via various channels, such as a 24-hour hotline, if an aerial flying object can’t be identified.
It is staffed by volunteers, including Hansjürgen Köhler who in his retirement is just as passionately dedicated as when he worked as a retail salesman. CENAP has earned an exceptional reputation and cooperates among others with numerous observatories and the ESA, the European Space Agency. Reports of UFOs remain undiminished: In 2023 alone, CENAP was notified of 746 sightings throughout Germany, most of them from Baden-Württemberg (144), Bavaria (124) and North Rhine-Westphalia (115). The clarification rate is very high. The unsolved cases are mostly due to insufficient information to enable conclusive explanations.
Help is also given to perplexed pilots
“We undertake serious work“, says Hansjürgen Köhler, who regularly has to dispel hopes regarding sightings of little green men. Fascinating surveillance is part of his everyday activity. CENAP has also received particular attention in recent years thanks to a billionaire: Reports have increased since 2019 thanks to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites. As “strings of pearls”, when they’re launched into space, but also when they’re in orbit. Only recently, Hansjürgen Köhler was contacted by German Air Traffic Control (DFS) with a request from the pilots of a passenger plane to explain dancing spots of light on the horizon. Only Köhler could clarify that it was the sun being reflected from Starlink satellites.
