Petit-Rechain — the triangle photograph, 1990

OVERVIEW

In April 1990, at the height of the Belgian UFO wave, an anonymous photographer released a picture of a black triangular object with three lights at its corners, known as the 'Petit-Rechain photo'. It was widely published and examined by NASA, the French CNRS and the Belgian Royal Military Academy, none of which could positively identify it or find obvious signs of fakery.

HISTORY

For twenty years the ufology group SOBEPS held the picture genuine; others doubted it — for the lack of anything in frame to give scale, for its anonymous release, and for motion blur that seemed mathematically inconsistent. On 26 July 2011, in an interview for the Belgian channel RTL, Patrick Maréchal said he had made it to fool his workmates, and showed how: a styrofoam triangle painted black, a flashlight in each corner, hung from a string.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Filed UNVETTED: the object in the photograph was a hoax, by its maker's own account. Brian Dunning called the single photograph emblematic of the quality of all the evidence for the Belgian wave.

VISITING

The pin marks Petit-Rechain, after which the photograph is named.