A Translucent 'Airship' Hovered Over Dujiangyan, and China's Weather Office Says It Wasn't a Weather Balloon

DUJIANGYAN, China (Sept. 23, 2026) — On the morning of Sept. 23, people in Dujiangyan, a city near Chengdu in China’s Sichuan Province, looked up and saw something enormous hanging in a clear blue sky. Photos and video shared online show a long, milky, semi-transparent body with a rounded nose, a tapering tail and what look like fins. One description compared it to a white submarine floating in the air.

It didn’t streak past like a plane or dart around like a drone. It hung there, and it stayed.

What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

The sighting. According to Taiwan’s ETtoday, citing the newspaper Dushi Kuaibao, several Dujiangyan residents photographed the object on the morning of Sept. 23. Seen from different angles, it had a slender, streamlined outline and a milky-white, semi-transparent surface. Several structures that looked like fins or struts were visible beneath the body and at the tail, a shape clearly different from an ordinary round balloon.
It held position. ETtoday reports that the object kept a relatively fixed position in the sky for a long time, without the fast flyby of an aircraft or the frequent direction changes of a typical drone.
The weather office ruled out its balloons. The meteorological department said the object was not a weather sounding balloon, according to ETtoday. It said sounding launches in the Chengdu area take place only at the Wenjiang National Climate Observatory, at fixed times, and that there was no launch scheduled for Dujiangyan that day. Officials added that sounding balloons are usually spherical, drift with the wind once aloft, and can’t hover in place the way the object did.
No official identification. As of Sept. 24, no authority had officially said what the object was, ETtoday reported, so for now it can only be called an unidentified flying object. A Sept. 27 article on NetEase likewise said there was no official answer.
A second sighting days later. On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Sept. 25, many Chengdu residents along the route from Shuangliu to Shuangnan Avenue saw an orange-red fireball cross the night sky, and drivers’ dashcams recorded it, according to the NetEase article. Both clips spread quickly online.

What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

A tethered airship. ETtoday reports that industry sources, judging from the object’s shape and its ability to hover, suggested it was most likely a tethered aerostat. Craft like that are anchored by cable, can stay over one spot for long periods and can carry instruments for research or environmental monitoring. ETtoday notes the suggestion is still speculation.
Other possibilities. The NetEase writer said the object looked very much like an aerostat of the kind used for geological-hazard monitoring, atmospheric observation or high-altitude security patrols. With no official answer, the writer said, it could also be regarded for now as an undisclosed, secret aircraft. Online, according to NetEase, theories ran from alien visitors to “atmospheric creatures.”
The fireball. The NetEase science writer identified the Sept. 25 orange fireball as a bolide, a larger-than-usual meteor burning up in the atmosphere. The writer argued it wasn’t fireworks, because it made no loud bang and left only a streak of light, and wasn’t reentering space debris, which typically burns longer and breaks into several points of light.

Still hanging there

Two strange skies over Sichuan in three days drew a flood of comment online. The fireball over Chengdu was gone in seconds. The object over Dujiangyan was the opposite: a shape that looked built rather than natural, holding its place long enough for several residents to photograph it from different angles.

The weather office has said what it wasn’t. No agency has said what it was. Until someone claims it, Dujiangyan’s translucent “airship” stays on the list of things people watched and couldn’t name.

✓ What we know

? What’s claimed

Still hanging there

Sources

What we know

What’s claimed