Disputed

The Zdany Silver Sphere Photographs

Zdany, near Zbuczyn and Siedlce, Mazovia, Poland · 8 January 2006 · Photograph · Poland · Added 2026-06-12

At about 12:30 on Sunday, January 8, 2006, two men driving a Polonez on the E30 near the village of Zdany, 10 km from Siedlce, said a large metallic object crossed the road, stalled their engine and the engine of a Russian-registered minibus behind them, then maneuvered over the snowy fields for several minutes. The passenger photographed it with an Olympus compact, producing a series of eight startlingly sharp frames of a polished sphere that reflects the surrounding landscape. Poland's Nautilus Foundation called them some of the best UFO photographs in the world. Independent analysts in Poland and abroad argue they more likely show a thrown model made of two joined metal bowls.

What did witnesses see at Zdany?

A bright, mirror-finished object shaped like two bowls welded together at the rims, estimated by the witnesses at roughly 2 metres across, about the size of a small car. It moved silently and swiftly over snow-covered fields beside the road, at times nearly overhead, against a cloudless winter sky with a jet contrail visible. The witnesses reported both car engines dying at the moment it appeared and restarting normally after it shot upward and vanished, with the whole episode lasting around 8 to 10 minutes (in later retellings up to 30). Camera EXIF data published by Nautilus shows the frames running from 12:34:36 to 12:44:16, numbered P1080001 to P1080008, shot at 1/2000 s.

More footage and images of this sighting

The sphere low over the furrowed snow field, with the witnesses' Polonez hood in frame. Nautilus stressed the unbroken snow shows no footprints from any thrower.

The object higher in the sky with one witness beside the car and a jet contrail visible, matching the account that it climbed swiftly before vanishing.

What is the official explanation?

There is no official narrative. No Polish state body investigated, and despite a police patrol reportedly parked nearby and heavy traffic on an international route, no police report or independent witness ever surfaced. The case was handled entirely by the tabloid Fakt, which broke the story on January 12, 2006, and by the civilian Nautilus Foundation of Warsaw, whose investigator Wojciech Bobilewicz interviewed the driver on February 19, 2006 and published the foundation's report. Nautilus conducted site experiments in Zdany in August 2006 and again on the 2012 anniversary, commissioned EXIF and image analysis, and a 3D reconstruction by graphics specialist Cezary Drab supporting the 2 metre size estimate. After ten years the foundation declared the case outright proof that UFOs exist.

What did the witnesses think it was?

The driver was Maciej Talacha, a car mechanic from the Siedlce area (anonymized as Maciej T. in early reports; he died in 2021). His passenger and the actual photographer, identified only as Zbyszek, was returning from a wedding, was still tipsy by both men's account, and permanently refused interviews. Talacha told Nautilus he first thought punks had thrown a bowl over his car, jumped out to confront them and found no one, then spent up to half an hour unable to start a car he knew as a mechanic was mechanically fine. He consistently said he had no idea what the object was, noting his eyesight was poor against the sun from welding damage. Later Nautilus retellings describe the two men as policemen, one a senior Siedlce officer, en route to an escort agency, details absent from the original account.

Is the Zdany Silver Sphere Photographs real? The two-pass assessment

Pass one, mundane candidates with named, method-shown analyses. Mick West on Metabunk demonstrated with a scaled perspective test how a small reflective object tossed near the camera reads as a large distant object, and noted the shape matches two mixing bowls joined rim to rim; Metabunk's analysis also measured the scene's pole distances via Street View and found the object's apparent size and missing shadow detail consistent with a close small model. In Poland, a detailed 2025 Paranormalium critique and blogger Mateusz Kijewski documented version drift in Talacha's testimony between Fakt and Nautilus, the never-found Russian minibus and driver, zero independent witnesses on a busy international road, and independent experimenters who reproduced comparable photographs with a joined-bowl model. Against this, Nautilus's published counterpoints are real evidence claims: EXIF-verified unedited files, a sharp consecutive series they argue is incompatible with throw-and-shoot photography, and pristine snow with no footprints in the fields. Pass two, if real: a silent, highly reflective 2 metre sphere with electromagnetic vehicle interference, one of very few UFO photo cases where the object's surface mirrors the landscape. Verdict: Disputed. The hoax case is strong and methodical but no one has demonstrated the imagery false, and the EM effects rest solely on contested testimony.