A Saucer in the Eclipse Slides: Embassy Montevideo, 1966
A Montevideo amateur astronomer showed U.S. diplomats twenty slides of the November 1966 eclipse, each with a 'saucerlike object' in the foreground. Local scientists dismissed him; the officer who saw the slides was less sure.
What this record is
This is a one-page Department of State airgram, A-293, marked Limited Official Use. It was sent from the American Embassy in Montevideo to the Embassy in Buenos Aires “for Scientific Attaché,” with a copy to the Department of State, on 19 December 1966. The subject line is simply “Unidentified Flying Objects.” The National Archives catalogs it as “Unidentified Flying Objects V2.” It is held in the National Security Agency’s files. Only the first page was scanned, so the final paragraph breaks off mid-sentence.
What it says
The airgram reports a visit from Ismael Reyes Febles, “a local amateur astronomer who is rather well known in Montevideo for his long-range weather forecasts which are frequently referred to in the local press.” Reyes directed a private observatory that he called the Antares Observatory. He showed an Embassy officer twenty colour slides of the solar eclipse of 12 November 1966, “in each of which a saucerlike object was visible in the foreground in various positions throughout the cycle of the slides taken during the two-hour duration of the eclipse.” Reyes said he had shown them to no one else and wanted to offer them to a suitable scientific agency of the United States Government. The Embassy noted that he did not name a price, but “his manner indicates that he expects remuneration other than scientific fame.” The officer told him nobody in Uruguay was qualified to make even a preliminary assessment and promised to raise the matter with the scientific attaché in Buenos Aires. Reyes agreed to keep the slides secret “for a reasonable period of time” until he heard back.
The Embassy then asked about Reyes among local scientists. The chairman of the astronomy department at the University of the Republic and other scientists reported that Reyes “has no university training and is completely without standing in the scientific community,” and that local scientists were “generally skeptical of his work and his motives.”
The third paragraph, which is cut off at the bottom of the page, adds a note of doubt: “Despite the unfavorable report the Embassy has received on Reyes, the Embassy Officer who viewed the slides believes that either Reyes has indeed photographed an interesting aerial phenomenon which cannot be…” The rest is not in the file.
Context
The total solar eclipse of 12 November 1966 crossed South America, and it was a major event for amateur astronomers and photographers in the region. A single object in the foreground of a whole sequence of eclipse photographs, appearing in different positions across two hours, has an obvious alternative explanation. Internal reflections and lens flare in a camera pointed near the Sun often produce a bright disc-shaped ghost that shifts position as the camera is re-aimed. The airgram does not show the slides and records no expert analysis, so this cannot be confirmed.
Reyes appears again in the American record a few months later. An FBI file described on this site’s Montevideo page credits the director of the Antares observatory with a set of colour photographs of an oval object over Montevideo in February 1967. The FBI summary gives his first name differently. The Montevideo airgram is useful background to that later file. It records how the Embassy judged his standing and motives when he first approached American officials.
Status
Unresolved in the file, since the slides and any assessment of them are not included. The context and the Embassy’s own inquiries give strong grounds for caution. The document reached the National Archives in 2025 as part of the NSA transfer.
Sources
- National Archives catalog entry: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/596347905
- PDF of the record: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/580103959/457UAP00010_released.pdf
- Series: Records from the National Security Agency Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/580103959
- National Archives, Record Group 615 UAP records: https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/rg-615