Digital Rendering 1, “Multiple Red Lights,” 2026

This image is the first of two the FBI drew in 2026 from the interview in FBI-UAP-D037, in which a man describes an evening in the western United States spent watching a series of lights with a companion. The second picture is FBI-UAP-D039. The released file is image-only, and the release does not say which of the evening’s sightings each picture shows.

A hard thing to draw

The interview shows why these lights are difficult to illustrate. To the naked eye the witness saw dull red lights shaped like dashes, moving along a mountain ridgeline in rain and heavy cloud. Through night-vision goggles the same lights looked round, with the halo that any light source gets in that equipment. He has astigmatism, he noted, and his companion saw them as triangles or diamonds. Later in the night a light hung directly overhead, and two more appeared to the east, one apparently only a few feet off the ground, while a glow moved along a dry wash behind them.

What the picture represents

The FBI calls these images visual aids for the PURSUE release. Where two witnesses and two ways of seeing disagree about shape, the artist has to choose, so the picture should be read as one interpretation of the accounts rather than a record of the lights. The interview gives no explanation, and the witness tried thermal optics without seeing anything.