The Las Vegas Strip is a small 4 mile stretch of dirt, but almost anything can happen on it. Residents of the “Sin City” are no strangers to the weird and unusual; in fact, UFO sightings are a common occurrence in Las Vegas.

And it makes complete sense. After all, the notorious Area 51 Air Force facility and suspected alien experimentation site lie just a few miles across the desert.

With that in mind, it’s not all that surprising, or even out of the ordinary, that multiple UFO sightings surfaced a couple of days before Christmas 2022.

While at Sapphire Las Vegas for a night of work, a group of employees noticed a strange “patch of lights” in the sky. Although obscured by clouds, a cluster of red, white, and yellow lights was clearly visible above the club.

Sapphire’s manager, Brett Feinstein, was among those who witnessed the strange event, recording the lights with his phone before posting it on social media as proof of the UFO.

“Honestly, this is really weird ,” Feinstein said as she looked up to reveal the glowing orbs. “I mean, we’re here every night. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The UFO sighting in Las Vegas immediately sparked a flurry of responses, many of whom expressed agreement that the lights were, without a doubt, those of an alien craft.

“Of course it does, because it’s reflecting light when it hits it! That is definitely something up there,” wrote one user. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Unless you see a UFO, don’t stay in Vegas ,” another joked.

Others came up with questions: “When, exactly, did Feinstein see it? Did he hire actors to pretend to see the UFO along with him? Was all this just a promotional tactic for his club?

However, Feinstein assured them that it was not a hoax. “They told me at 11:47 pm,” he wrote in the responses. “I think he was there a little bit before I got there. Our security guard Sapphire said that he saw 12/01/2023, 00:55 A colossal UFO spends several hours in the sky of Las Vegas (Video) something fly by and then it appeared. He was there for several hours. Eventually, he began to fade behind the cloud cover. He never moved or made a sound.”

Experts believe that the UFO was actually a rare atmospheric phenomenon

According to the National Weather Service, there is a good, if rare, explanation for the lights, and it has nothing to do with UFOs. Instead, experts believe they were “pillars of light” since the light cluster did not move and the cloud temperature was low enough to produce the phenomenon.

“The long pillars of multicolored light streaking across the sky look like the perfect backdrop for an impending alien invasion ,” the NWS wrote on its official website . “But actually, light pillars are a common effect that can be found all over the world.”

“They come from above, not aliens, but little ice crystals that hang in the atmosphere. … Ice is highly reflective, so when light hits those wider faces, it bounces off and reflects off more ice crystals.”

“That means we have these vertically stacked mirrors floating in the atmosphere,” they continued. “Light hitting it reflects up and up (or down and down, depending on the source) and becomes a radiant column in the sky. Light can come from the sun, the moon, cities, street lights, any strong light source.”