(March 18, 2010) The Loughborough Echo today reported an amateur astronomer's claims that an unidentified flying object sighted over Loughborough last month was nothing more than a cluster of Chinese lanterns. Stefan Carney, a resident of Quorn, was reported to have contacted the Echo after three independent witnesses saw what they described as a "plane on fire".Carney was quoted as saying, "I can see what they mean about a plane on fire. I saw the same one, and I can say definitively this was a Chinese lantern. These thin, ruralgs are nearly always Chinese lanterns - we get this sort of thing all the time. There are so many reports of UFOs at the moment, I think these lanterns are just a bit of a fad”.