The Battle in the Sky over Nuremberg
The account
At dawn, globes, crosses and cylinders supposedly battled in the sky over the city before falling to the ground in smoke.
What investigators found
Historians and meteorologists see in the account a solar halo with sun dogs, described in the religious language of omens typical of the time.
The story
At dawn on April 14, 1561, residents of Nuremberg reportedly witnessed a frightening spectacle in the sky: spheres of many colors, crosses, tubes and a large dark spearhead shape that seemed to clash beside the rising sun. The episode is known from a broadsheet of the period, illustrated with a woodcut attributed to Hans Glaser and now kept in a library in Zurich.
In the 20th century, the woodcut became one of ufology's favorite images, presented as a record of a battle between spacecraft. Historians note that broadsheets like this were common at the time and treated phenomena in the sky as warnings from God. Many researchers compare the description to a solar halo with sun dogs, the false suns that appear when light passes through ice crystals in the atmosphere.