Think you may have caught a glimpse of a metal, sphere-shaped object looming in the night sky above? Well, you're not alone.

According to a new UFO reference book, self-published by two UFO experts, California is the top state with the most UFO sightings in the country. California is followed by Florida, Texas, Washington and Pennsylvania respectively. New York came in at 6th followed by Arizona, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.

The "UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001-2015" is a deep data dive into UFO sightings reported to The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) from 2001 to 2015, explains author and UFO columnist Cheryl Costa.

She used both databases every week looking for New York sightings for her column in the weekly Syracuse New Times, she said, and started publishing tables for number of sightings in each New York county, shape of UFOs, when they were reported, etc.

Response to those stats was strong, she said. So when her spouse and co-author Linda Miller Costa got the idea of working through the reports to see just how far down they could drill for every state in the country, they started digging. The end result a year later is the 374-page desk reference.

She said there have been more than 120,000 UFO sightings reported from 2001-2015 in the U.S. She didn't want to give away all the stats (you know, they do want you to get the book) but she said California holds down the top position with almost 16,000 sightings, and Los Angeles County outranks 40 individual states with 3,200 sightings.

Here are the five most recent California sightings according to The National UFO Reporting Center:

Miramar on March 21, 2017

Van Nuys on March 19, 2017

Palm Springs on March 18, 2017

Riverside on March 17, 2017

San Diego on March 15, 2017

Her interest in UFOs stem from her personal UFO sightings, Cheryl Costa said, but her drive to write about sightings came from reading a short news story claiming UFO sightings had fallen off. The report suggested UFO were clearly not real since fewer and fewer people were reporting them, she said.

"That didn't sound right," she said. "I went out to one of the national data bases and the bar chart (of sightings) goes up like a rocket launch."

And, she added, the reports were not from clearly crazy people.

"I found that the majority of sighting reports where by people who were very sincere, and it had energized them to find a place to report what they saw," she said. "They wanted to get this off their chest."

A couple other trends she noticed were, one, "the people who see the majority of sightings are outside having a smoke, walking the dog or outside smoking walking the dog." And, two, "there's a seasonal pattern." For most of the country, reported sightings begin to climb during spring and summer. In places without notable shifts from winter to summer — Texas, Florida and Arizona, for example — the number of reporting’s stays relatively flat. Basically, she figures, come spring and summer, people are simply outside more.

Jake Ellison can be reached at jakeellisonjournalism@gmail.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.