A team of Ukrainian astronomers says a high-speed camera pointed at the Moon caught something they cannot explain: more than twenty unidentified objects moving across the lunar surface, some reportedly stretching up to 25 miles wide. The claim comes from a new, non-peer-reviewed preprint titled “UFO Dynamics on the Moon,” and it has already sparked a familiar mix of excitement and skepticism across the paranormal and space communities.
The researchers, Boris Zhilyaev, Vladimir Petukhov, and Sergey Pokhvala of Ukraine’s Main Astronomical Observatory, say the objects came from footage recorded at an observatory in Vinarivka, a small village in the Kyiv region. Using a telescope fitted with a camera capable of shooting 20 frames per second, the team recorded two separate observation sessions in 2025, one on August 16 and another on September 7. They argue the high frame rate let them catch movement that traditional astronomy equipment would miss entirely.
What the Researchers Claim
The study splits the objects into two categories. “Atmospheric” objects appeared to hold a fixed position relative to the lunar surface, almost as if anchored in place, and produced rapid flashes lasting between one tenth and half a second in repeating patterns. “Continental” objects, on the other hand, appeared to race across the Moon itself, with the team estimating speeds as high as 11 kilometers per second.
Size estimates for the objects varied wildly, ranging from roughly 440 meters up to 15 to 25 miles across, a gap the researchers attribute to uncertainty in the reflectivity assumptions used to calculate scale. They also reported a separate set of ring-shaped structures, estimated between 22 and 36 kilometers across, that appeared to rotate on a repeating cycle of roughly three minutes.
In the paper, the researchers write plainly that they believe the Moon “serves as a base for UFOs,” and go further, suggesting the objects could reach Earth within 20 minutes, where they claim the same craft would appear in our skies as UAPs. They describe the behavior of the objects as intelligent and coordinated, at one point noting that two objects hundreds of miles apart reportedly flashed in sync, an observation they say points toward “a technologically advanced civilization.”
A Team With a Complicated History
Here is where the story gets more complicated, and it matters. This is not the first time this research group has published dramatic claims about unidentified aerial phenomena. Ukraine’s own National Academy of Sciences previously rejected earlier work from the same team, citing significant methodological problems, including errors in how the researchers calculated distance to the objects they studied. That earlier rejection does not automatically disqualify this new paper, but it is relevant context that most outlets covering the story have buried well below the headline.
There is also the matter of what the raw footage actually shows. Independent reviewers examining the recordings have pointed out that these supposedly colossal, Manhattan sized objects appear in the source video as little more than a two by two pixel speck against the lunar backdrop. Every size and speed figure in the paper is derived not from a direct measurement, but from a chain of assumptions layered on top of that handful of pixels, assumptions the researchers themselves admit they cannot independently verify. A two pixel dot can become “25 miles wide” or “440 meters wide” depending entirely on how far away you assume it is, and distance is precisely the measurement this same team has been criticized for getting wrong before.
None of this means the footage is meaningless. Faint, fast moving objects near the lunar limb are notoriously difficult to identify, and could plausibly include anything from orbital debris and micrometeorite impacts to sensor artifacts from the high-speed camera itself. But “we don’t know what these pixels are” is a very different claim than “the Moon hosts a technologically advanced civilization,” and the paper leans hard toward the latter without the peer review that would normally be required to make that leap credibly.
Timing and Broader Context
The timing has not gone unnoticed. This claim arrives amid a broader wave of renewed public interest in UAP disclosure, following a string of declassified documents and congressional hearings in recent years that have kept government transparency on the topic squarely in the news. Stories like this one tend to spread fastest when public appetite for answers is already high, and a claim involving a possible lunar base checks nearly every box for viral spread: it is specific, it is visual, and it invites an easy question anyone can weigh in on.
That is worth sitting with for a moment. A study proposing something as extraordinary as a hidden alien base on the Moon deserves scrutiny proportional to the claim itself. Extraordinary claims built on a two pixel smudge and a team with a documented history of methodological criticism from their own national academy warrant real caution, even from those of us who want to believe there is more happening above us than we are being told.
Conclusion
Whether these objects are genuine unexplained phenomena, sensor artifacts, orbital debris, or something else entirely, the paper has not been peer reviewed and its authors have a track record that invites hard questions. That does not mean the mystery is closed. It means the mystery, for now, remains exactly that: a mystery, dressed up in numbers that sound far more precise than the underlying footage can support.
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