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THEY are back. After a spate of sightings of unidentified flying objects in the skies above the Katherine region throughout 2010 and 2011, a Katherine man now claims that UFOs are back in the region - and he is not the only one. On Thursday Katherine South resident Dennis Mangan spotted two red and green clusters of light in the sky above the Victoria Highway. Mr Mangan said he was mesmerised by what he believes was a UFO. “I have no doubt something odd was going on,” Mr Mangan said. “I have never seen anything quite like it,” he said. “Blinking red and green clusters of light hovering in the sky. “They didn’t make a sound.” Another witness, Katherine woman Archana Poudel, 26, said it was about 7.30pm when she spotted the “strange lights” in the sky above the Victoria Highway. “The lights were red and green and were moving erratically left to right at low levels for about 15 minutes,” Mrs Poudel said. “I was a bit scared at first. “I thought it was a helicopter out of control by the way it was flying.” But Mrs Poudel said she could not hear a sound and the lights were flying erratically “side to side and up and down.” NT UFOlogist Alan Ferguson of Acacia Hills said Katherine had a long-standing reputation for being a UFO hotspot and he had no doubts that “something is out there”. In August 2011 Mr Ferguson was among a group of ten Katherinites who spotted a bright light on the northern outskirts of town. The group described seeing a “really, really bright” light in the night sky. One witness said the light “was kind of going on and off, like it had a pulse” before it shot across the sky, travelling twice as fast as a satellite. “I guess the time for sceptics is over,” Mr Ferguson said at the time. Mr Mangan believes Katherine could capitalise on these sightings by developing its astronomy tourism. “I think there is a big opportunity with the number of sighting in Katherine over the years to develop some sort of astronomy station just outside of town and use it as a place for research purposes and for tourist to come in the hope of seeing something,” the 70-year-old pensioner said. Mr Mangan has always kept an open mind and says there is no reason for him not to believe in alternative life forms. The long standing Katherine resident urges the community to take in the wonderful skies around us. “I’m not scared of UFOs,” he said. “They are usually sighted and then they disappear, which means they don’t seem to pose any immediate threat. “The more people who report UFOs the more people will have an open mind to the possibility of life beyond our earth.”

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