The Eight-Pointed Star (PURSUE PR38)
In 2013 an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform over the Middle East recorded a small object that the government’s own caption describes as "an area of contrast resembling an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length." U.S. Central Command logged it, AARO kept it unresolved, and the Department of War published the clip in May 2026 as DOW-UAP-PR38. The strange burst shape made it one of the most shared files of the release, and a viral theory began calling it a biblical "Ophanim" angel. The reporter who filmed it wrote no description at all.
What did witnesses see at Middle East?
The clip runs one minute and forty-six seconds. A small, sharply defined area of contrast sits above a horizon line in a thermal view rendered in black-hot polarity, so the object reads as dark against a paler sky. Its shape is the whole story: a compact core with radiating points, an eight-armed burst with the arms at uneven lengths, the feature the official caption singles out. As the sensor holds it, the object moves within the field of view trailing a faint streak behind it, then drifts toward the lower right and leaves the frame.
The imagery carries the standard reticle, heading letters, and data fields, several of them redacted to black bars. There is no narration and no audio. Critically, the release states that the person who submitted the report "did not provide any oral or written description of the observation," so there is no account of how the object looked to the naked eye, how far away it was, how big, or how fast. Everything known about it is what the infrared sensor drew.
What is the official explanation?
The clip was released by the U.S. Department of War through the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). PR38 is part of the first tranche, posted to war.gov/UFO and to DVIDS in the opening release dated 8 May 2026, with the White House amplifying it days later. Its official DVIDS title is "DOW-UAP-PR38, Unresolved UAP Report, Middle East, 2013."
The government’s description is unusually plain and worth quoting: U.S. Central Command submitted a report of an unidentified anomalous phenomenon to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office consisting of one minute and forty-six seconds of video from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform in 2013; the video "depicts an area of contrast resembling an eight-pointed star with arms of alternating length," the area of contrast moves within the sensor field of view "followed by a visible trail," and then leaves the field of view at the lower right; and the reporter provided no oral or written description. The case is marked unresolved. AARO attaches no identification, no prosaic cause, and no conclusion.
What did the witnesses think it was?
There is no civilian witness and, unusually, no military narrative either: the submitting reporter left the observation undescribed, so the sensor file stands alone. That cuts both ways. It removes the human embellishment that muddies many cases, and it strips away the context that would let anyone weigh the object against aircraft, drones, or optics.
The striking shape drove the clip’s afterlife online. Within days of release, social media users linked the eight-pointed form to "Ophanim," the wheel-like, many-eyed angels of Ezekiel’s vision, and to the "biblically accurate angel" meme, presenting the footage as evidence of something theological. Some of that traffic attached unrelated or altered images to the story. A Lead Stories fact check found that one widely shared star-shaped still being passed around as part of the files actually predated the 2026 release and was not the government clip at all. This archive separates the two: the PR38 video is genuinely a Department of War release, while the "Ophanim" interpretation and several of the stills circulating with it are viewer additions, not part of the official record.
Is the Eight-Pointed Star (PURSUE PR38) real? The two-pass assessment
Pass one, the mundane reading. The eight-pointed burst is the first thing to explain, and the most likely explanation is the sensor itself. A bright, compact point source on an infrared imager routinely blooms into a star or cross pattern because of diffraction in the optics and the way the detector and its support struts handle a saturating point of light; the "arms of alternating length" are a classic signature of that optical artifact, not necessarily the true outline of a solid object. The faint trail behind it is consistent with a moving warm point smearing across the thermal frame. Under that reading the underlying object could be an ordinary aircraft, a drone, a flare, a balloon, or a distant heat source, with the dramatic shape supplied by the camera. Because the reporter gave no description and the release withholds range, size, and speed, none of those candidates can be confirmed or excluded.
Pass two, if it is not that. What the file does support is narrower than the viral framing but not nothing: U.S. Central Command thought a short infrared clip from a combat theatre was worth formally reporting up to the national UAP office, and that office still lists it as unresolved more than a decade later rather than closing it as a known artifact. If the burst pattern were a trivial lens effect, a sensor office would ordinarily be well placed to say so; the choice to leave it open is logged here as part of the evidence. The exotic, angelic reading, by contrast, rests entirely on the object’s resemblance to a shape humans find meaningful, which is the weakest kind of evidence and is set aside.
The case is filed as Unknown. No official narrative resolves it, the optical-artifact explanation is plausible but unproven, and the "Ophanim" theory is treated as folklore that grew around the clip rather than a finding about it.
Sources
- www.dvidshub.net/video/1006088/dow-uap-pr38-unresolved-uap-report-middle-east-2013
- www.war.gov/UFO/
- www.primetimer.com/features/a-mysterious-8-pointed-ufo-spotted-in-pentagon-footage-is-now-being-linked-to-biblical-ophanim-theories
- www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-photo-star-shaped-053813185.html
More cases from this region: UFO sightings in Undisclosed
