Trouvelot's UFOs

1871 At the Meudon Observatory in France, astronomer Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (December 26, 1827 - April 22, 1895) saw several flying objects high in the atmosphere. He described one object as descending like a disc falling through water. Ufologists suggest this might have been the first description of the ‘falling leaf motion’ that is known in modern UFO cases. Some sources say Trouvelot’s objects resembled those seen at Basel, Switzerland, on August 7, 1566.

Trouvelot, by the way, made a living as an artist, painting mostly portraits, but he had an amateur interest in entomology. was the person who introduced gypsy moths to North America, bringing them back from a trip to Europe between late 1868 and early 1869 with a view to raising them to make silk, a plan which failed. Over the next seventeen years, the gypsy moth population exploded and it is now a major pest.

Fed up with entomology, Trouvelot turned to astronomy and became famous for his illustrations of astronomical details of the sun and of Venus. In 1872 he was given a faculty position at Harvard University in astronomy. A crater on the moon was named in his honour and he won the French Academy’s Valz prize for his astronomical research.