A mystery object appeared in the skies above Stithians this week - leaving one man baffled.

Amateur meteorologist Paul Richards had just finished his weather observations at 9pm on Thursday when some odd flashes of light caught his eye.

“All of a sudden I saw this sort of oval shape,” he said.

“It was a golden and white coloured object over the east north east, about 20 degrees above the horizon.”

The object looked similar to “arcs of high voltage electricity,” Mr Richards said, and was stationary for about a minute before it slowly drifted to the north east and disappeared behind a cloud.

A similar sighting was recorded near the Devon border on the same evening, but a clip on video-sharing website Youtube had been removed at the time of going to press.

“Presumably there must have been other people that saw it,” Mr Richards said.

“I would have thought that other people would have seen it with the amount of clear sky that was in the area at the time.”

The object, which moved very slowly and made no noise, was unlike any aircraft or Chinese lantern that Mr Richards had ever seen before.

“I was really flabbergasted, to be honest – I didn’t expect to see it,” he said.

“I got the binoculars to see it and it was basically an oval shape and I could see this flashing of golden and white, very intense light – it was quite a nice thing to look at.”

Although Mr Richards admits that the possibility of a flight into Newquay Airport cannot be ruled out as the explanation for the sighting, he believes the object to have been higher, brighter and further to the east than any aircraft using the airport would have been.

Did you see any strange lights in the sky last Thursday? Can you help explain what the object might have been? If so, please email the Packet at editorial@packetseries.co.uk, or use the comment form below.