UFOs, Gaybo and me: After years of controversy, Irish astronomer ‘vindicated’ by Nasa and Barack Obama’s comments

“Unfortunately, with UFOs, you always have to deal with that giggle factor,” he said of his Late Late Show appearance in February 1998.

Dr Ansbro recalled appearing on the Friday night chat show where footage he had recorded of a sighting over Lough Key, Co Roscommon, was played.

“My colleague, Alan Sewell, was on the stage with another guest and I was in the audience. Gay Byrne wanted to talk to us about UFOs,” he said. “Alan explained about a UFO event at Lough Key and they showed our footage of the construct moving along. A cylinder appearance, low resolution, Sony-tape-type footage.

“Gay Byrne is watching this and then he comes towards me, I was near the front. He said, ‘Well, all we are looking at here is a cylindrical light.’

“I said, ‘Yes, but this cylindrical light is over Lough Key, where there is no electricity to generate that light.’ He was a bit stumped.”

They met again later that night in the green room backstage. “I spoke to Gay after the show and he asked if I could predict when these UFO events would occur. I said, ‘Yes, with an 80pc success rate.’

“I asked if he would be interested in the dates in the future, so he could attend one of these events. He said he would attend, but needed six months’ notice. I thought, ‘How do I deal with this?’.”

So how did the director of Kingsland Observatory in Ireland, a man with a PhD in astronomy and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, get into UFOs?

“I got to know Herman Van Bellingen, director of Schull Planetarium, in 1989. He said one day, ‘We’re getting lots of calls about lights in the sky.’ I was really curious to get to the bottom of it,” Dr Ansbro tells me in a cafe in Boyle, Co Roscommon.

“I decided to look at it as a scientist, rather than throw it out. I began investigations and would meet people two or three times to find any deception or lies.

“We thought UFOs might be operating like satellites, but it didn’t fit. We tried our model mathematically and discovered orbits based on the synchronisation of the earth’s movement.

“UFOs appeared to be doing reconnaissance. Our data was like a Bus Éireann timetable. We could predict when a UFO sighting would occur, within a certain timeframe.

“I never cared about the taboo aspect. There was always that snigger factor to contend with but, from day one, I knew I had to take this seriously.”

Nasa would seem to agree, announcing last October 24 it would be launching a full-time study of UFOs, also known as UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena).

“It’s only in the past few years that things are changing,” Dr Ansbro says.

At Harvard University, they have invested millions of dollars in the Galileo Project to investigate UAP.

Dr Avi Loeb and his team have built a series of telescopes in order to try to obtain high-resolution images, precisely the kind of work Dr Ansbro has been doing since the early 1990s.

Even former US president Barack Obama has spoken openly about the subject on The Late Late Show in the US with James Corden last year.

Pressed about his knowledge of “aliens”, Mr Obama replied: “There is footage of objects in the sky that we don’t know what they are. We can’t explain how they move, their trajectory. People are trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”

Dr Ansbro plays the footage shown to RTÉ’s Late Late on his laptop. He has footage of three other UFOs in the sky over Ireland. It is similar to what has become known as the filmed “tic-tac” encounter in 2004. Commander David Fravor, a US Navy pilot, witnessed this “tic tac-shaped” UFO while training off the USS Nimitz battleship.

During that widely reported incident, multiple pilots witnessed a white, cylindrical object zipping around the sky at incredible speeds in an erratic pattern.

John Ratcliffe, former US director of National Intelligence, has said: “There are technologies we don’t have, based on what we’ve seen on radar and satellites. We have to have a discussion to try and figure out what this is about.”

According to Dr Ansbro, UAPs have been observed and their characteristics documented for more than 100 years. “UAP, UFO, whatever you want to call it, I use the word ‘construct’. People haven’t been ready for words such as ‘craft’ or ‘automated probe’,” he said.

After his appearance on RTÉ’s Late Late, he was wary of media exposure, but later found a more receptive broadcaster in the late Gerry Ryan. “I was beginning to turn most journalists down after the Late Late. But Gerry Ryan seemed genuinely interested, so I took him on,” Dr Ansbro said. “This was 1998, in the morning. I was all psyched up, there was no goosing around like with Gay Byrne, this was full-on. I loved Gerry Ryan.

“I was on for 20 minutes explaining the dynamics behind UFOs. I hypothesised we had extraterrestrials visiting our backyard. That in the future, because at that time it was the big snigger factor, we may be in a position to eventually communicate.

“I explained how we could do it someday. This non-human intelligence, it hasn’t just arrived on the scene, we have data since the 1880s. I believe it’s here since before we were.

“I talked, but Gerry was just listening. He never expected it. He was absolutely a very good listener. There was no sniggering. He just wanted to know the information. It was my first time mentioning a communications aspect, which might eventually be possible.”

Other media appearances did not go quite the way he expected. “In January 1994, Carlton Television came over to see a UFO. We selected a location up in the hills. I had 80pc confidence the UFO would appear. Within the timings, lights showed up over the bay. Three UFOs were moving around over the bay, slowly,” he recalled.

“The camera people were shaking. I was calm – you have to remain clear-headed. People are very blasé about this subject, but when they see it for themselves, it’s a different story.” We head to Lough Key, scene of the reported UFO sighting. Dr Ansbro walks to the water’s edge. ​

What does he say to people who believe there is no evidence of UFOs?

“I don’t engage with them, I’m not interested. It’s a waste of energy. People need to go out and explore for themselves. Go out and find out for yourself. One of my missions is to bridge the science community in this area. Now that it is accepted on an international level, I receive a lot of invitations. I go and I educate astronomers. Then we can have a conversation,” he said.

Twenty-five years after the sniggers on the Late Late Show, it must be pleasing for Dr Ansbro to see Nasa studying this subject.

“Vindication is the word that comes to mind,” he said.

To such an extent that he would consider going back on the Late Late Show? “Yes, I think I would. There needs to be education in this area.”