An astronomer said he couldn’t “explain the footage” he captured of the moon’s surface as a mysterious fast and bright object darted through the lens of his telescope

An astronomer was left baffled after he captured what he believed to be a UFO shooting across the surface of the moon.

Dr Sebastian Voltmer was recording the night sky when a mysterious object appeared through the lens of his telescope.

The doctor said he “can’t explain the footage”, before adding: “While I was filming the moon, I suddenly saw a fast, bright something darting through the image.”

Initially, it was thought it was a satellite or a space station – but these were both cancelled out as satellites don’t normally shoot past the moon at such high speed.

A meteor was also suspected – however, this was also cancelled out because the object was missing a distinctive feature, its tail, and the speed it was travelling at shed dooubt on that theory too.

The International Meteor Organisation did not have any records of one of the shooting stars at the time Voltmer was filming, reports grewi.de.

Voltmer also rules out flies or dust near the lens and thinks that the object must have been more than 500 meters away based on focus.

He told BILD: “I actually assume that it was at an altitude of 100 to 200 kilometres, i.e. in the transition to the so-called Low Earth Orbit.”

The exact shape of the object cannot be seen as the still image has been blurred by the speed it was travelling. Another possible explanation would be space debris or a military object but the astrologer said he would have expected more reports.