Primrose Hill [Rajiv Bhuttan]

ASTRONOMERS are flocking to the summit of Primrose Hill and darker corners of Regent’s Park as intrigue grows about sightings of unexplained objects in the sky.

With US and UK governments making statements about UFOs and mysterious “spy balloons” and a spate of stories about unusual comets and meteoroids, Camden’s main astronomy groups are experiencing a surge in interest and more and more amateur scientists are said to be setting up equipment in the parks.

Nicholas Joannou, a founder of the The Baker Street Irregulars stargazers that meet in Regent’s Park Hub and Primrose Hill, said: “Astronomers are the group who have put in the most time, effort and money into the search for life outside of the Earth. No one would be happier than an astronomer to finally find aliens.”

He said cynics needed to remember searching for UFOs was not specifically about making contact with aliens, adding: “The U in UFO stands for unidentified, not alien. UFO means that you cannot identify what you saw. And that’s the way it should be thought about until it is identified.”

Mr Joannou said “Occam’s Razor” – a theory that the simplest idea is most likely to be true – was “a useful tool” when it comes to considering strange objects in the night sky, adding: “In the vast majority of cases it turns out to be a man-made object – like a strangely moving satellite, or a natural effect in the sky, like the police officer who mistook Venus as a flying saucer while driving.

“If aliens did come knocking, there would be no mistaking it at all.”

Meanwhile Simon Lang of the Hampstead Scientific Society, which runs the Hampstead Observatory, said the “major nuisance” of satellites were to blame for recent unidentified object sightings.

“They are constantly crossing what we are trying to view and leave streaks on film images”, he said. “But any inference of UFOs being from somewhere else is the usual expression of preferred dreaming over reality in my opinion.”

He recalled how his step-father, a professional conjurer, saw parallels with tricks of his trade used to create illusions called “auto suggestion”, adding: “If extraterrestrials are real and at all like us, then Putin and Xi Jinping will look like mere playground bullies by comparison.”