Norway, July 1957July 1957

In July 1957, an American tourist named Mrs. William Felton Barrett took a photograph along the Norwegian coast while on a cruise. She aimed her camera at a group of houses on a cliff overlooking the sea. At the time, she saw nothing unusual through the viewfinder, only the landscape she intended to capture.

When the film was developed weeks later, Barrett was stunned to find a large, bright, doughnut-shaped object hovering in the sky above the coastline. The image had not been visible to her eye when she snapped the picture, only to the camera. Puzzled by this apparent evidence of a flying saucer, she submitted her photograph to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC), the U.S. Air Force's unit responsible for investigating unusual aerial sightings.

ATIC investigators examined the photograph, the camera, the negative, and the landscape conditions at the time the photo was taken. They considered various explanations: a cloud, a smoke ring, a defect in the film, a flaw in the developing process, or a lens reflection. For a time, the experts were baffled. One investigator eventually asked Barrett whether she had been wearing a ring when she took the picture. She had, in fact, been wearing a sparkling diamond ring. If the sun's angle, her body position, and the position of her ring finger in relation to both the camera lens and the sun had aligned exactly right at the moment she pressed the shutter, the ring could have reflected light directly into the lens. The resulting bright ring would appear on the negative as an unidentified aerial object hovering in the sky.

The case file includes correspondence between the Air Force and Barrett, as well as analysis sheets and technical notes. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, comprising 20 pages.