By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — When members of the Westport Astronomical Society met last week, a major topic of discussion was the same issue that has been circulating around the Northeast for weeks — the mystery of drones hovering overhead. 

The celestial phenomenon — an extraordinary hoax or extraterrestrial threat or something in between — has aroused the curiosity of many people, sparking fear among some.

The Westport astronomers were not particularly concerned, according to Dan Wright, a former president and board member of the Westport Astronomical Society. “Everyone said they had heard of someone who has seen a drone. A lot of these things are clearly airplanes … or people are flying their drones and they’re getting a charge out of the reaction.”

Right now, both the planets Jupiter, seen in night skies straight above Earth, and Venus are very bright, and that may be what some people are mistaking for drones, Wright said. 

Plus, he observed, fears about unknown flying objects are nothing new.

“Back in the ’50s when everyone was watching UFO movies, everyone was seeing UFOs,” he said, noting there even were reports that flying saucers had set down on Earth. “It seems to me there’s a lot of news [about drones] right now and a lot of attention that perpetuates itself.” 

Information about drones “is inconclusive,” he said. “We just don’t know … You need proof before you really have to panic.”

Because of the widespread attention that drone sightings has generated the Westport Astronomical Society, which operates an observatory on Bayberry Lane, has received a lot of calls and emails about drones in the past few weeks, Wright added. 

The Westport Police Department, however, has not, said Lt. Eric Woods, public information officer.

Two police officers on patrol in the last couple of weeks did report seeing drones hovering above the Saugatuck River at night and the Police Department notified the Federal Aviation Administration. 

But there haven’t been other local reports, Woods said.

Drones are often used for a variety of purposes by many organizations. The Police Department, for instance, uses them to monitor the town’s parking lots and the Longshore Golf Course, Woods said, but not for surveillance in criminal matters.

He knows there has been a lot of discussion about drones, and possible threats they may pose, “But I don’t have one iota of information about them,” he said. 

Woods agrees with local astronomers about what might be causing the uproar about drones “You don’t know if people are just using them to see what the reaction is,” he said. 

What does puzzle him, however, are the widespread reports of what appear to be larger drones. “They’re extraordinarily expensive,” he said of drones that are five feet or larger, the size reported to be flying over Westport by the patrol officers. “Our biggest [Police Department] drone is three feet. You’d have to be rich to fly a large drone.” 

Last Tuesday, the FAA released a joint statement with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense about “Ongoing Response to Reported Drone Sightings.”

The federal agencies reported “there are more than one million drones lawfully registered with the FAA in the United States and there are thousands of commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones lawfully in the sky on any given day.”

The statement goes on to say that research into more than 5,000 drone sightings reported to the FBI in recent weeks concluded, “We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast.”

The four federal organizations issuing the statement, however, are urging Congress to enact legislation to “extend and expand existing counter-drone authorities to identify and mitigate any threat that may emerge.” 

Some police departments are also issuing statements about drone sightings, including Fairfield. On their Facebook page, Fairfield police encouraged “residents who observe drone activity or other suspicious behavior … to report it directly to the Connecticut Suspicious Activity Reporting Portal.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.