THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP ENCOUNTER REPORT

1973: Bali, Indonesia UFO Photo | Mount Agung Case Archive

In the early afternoon, Japanese tourist Ryo Terumoto photographed Mount Agung from his car, taken with the volcano’s beauty and noticing nothing unusual at all. It was only after the film was developed that he found a small, disc-shaped object floating in front of the mountain in the frame — a photograph published the following year in the Japanese magazine Hito to Nippon under the headline “Flying Saucer Atop the Island of Bali,” and still widely cited today as the first UFO photograph ever taken over Indonesian territory.

The original record for this page was almost entirely blank beyond its structured fields, so this entry is built up substantially from cross-referenced research rather than a submitted narrative. One correction stands out above the rest: every independently corroborating source consistently dates this photograph to August 17, 1973 — not April 17, as this page originally listed.

Date: August 17, 1973 — corrected from “April 17, 1973.” See Researcher’s Notes.

Sighting Time: Approximately 2:00 PM (recovered via cross-referenced sourcing; not present in the original field)

Day/Night: Daylight

Location: Near Mount Agung, Karangasem Regency, Bali Island, Indonesia

Urban or Rural: Rural

Hynek Classification: DD (Daylight Disc) — retained, though no one observed the object at the time; it was noticed only when the photograph was later developed. See Researcher’s Notes.

Duration: Not applicable — captured only in a single still photograph

No. of Object(s): 1

Description of the Object(s): A small, disc-shaped object appearing to float in front of Mount Agung in the photograph; not noticed by the photographer at the time it was taken

Shape of Object(s): Disc

Size of Object(s): Undocumented

Color of Object(s): Undocumented

Distance to Object(s): Undocumented

Height & Speed: Not applicable — static photographic evidence only; no motion observed

Number of Witnesses: 0 direct/live witnesses; the object was noticed only by the photographer, Ryo Terumoto, upon developing his film afterward

Special Features/Characteristics: Terumoto was photographing the scenic view of Mount Agung from his car and did not notice anything unusual at the time; the photograph was published the following year in the Japanese magazine Hito to Nippon under the headline “Flying Saucer Atop the Island of Bali”; this image is widely cited as the first UFO photograph taken over Indonesian territory

Case Status: Insufficient Data

Source: Photograph by Ryo Terumoto (Japanese tourist); first published in Hito to Nippon magazine, Japan, March 1974. Recovered via cross-referenced research; original field was blank.

Summary/Description: On August 17, 1973, Japanese tourist Ryo Terumoto photographed Mount Agung on Bali Island, Indonesia, from his car, noticing nothing unusual at the time. Only after developing the film did he discover a small, disc-shaped object floating in front of the mountain. The photograph was published in Japan the following year and is widely regarded as the first UFO photograph taken over Indonesian territory.

Related Cases: Undocumented by name in the original source; later Bali-area sightings are noted in general Indonesian UFO literature (including a 1992 sighting near Ngurah Rai Airport and a 2011 sighting in Kerobokan, Kuta), though none are directly connected to this case. Not separately indexed in this archive.

Detailed Report

This entry’s original source material consisted of little more than a set of structured fields and an uploaded image, with no accompanying narrative. The account presented here is reconstructed from consistent cross-referencing across several independent sources describing the same widely cited photograph.

On the afternoon of August 17, 1973, around 2:00 PM, Japanese tourist Ryo Terumoto was photographing Mount Agung, an active volcano in Bali’s Karangasem Regency, from inside his car. He noticed nothing unusual at the time — his attention was on the mountain’s scenery, not the sky around it. It was only once the film was developed that Terumoto was startled to find a small, disc-shaped object appearing to float in front of the mountain in one of his frames.

The photograph was subsequently published in Japan in March 1974, in the magazine Hito to Nippon, under the headline “Flying Saucer Atop the Island of Bali.” It has since become one of the most frequently cited images in Indonesian UFO literature, commonly referred to as the first UFO photograph ever taken over Indonesian territory, and continues to be referenced in retrospectives on the country’s UFO history.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

The Mount Agung Photograph — Bali 1973 and a Date That Needed Fixing

• Date Correction: The original page lists April 17, 1973, but independent, consistently cross-referenced sources — a Bali tourism/culture site, an English-language UFO photo archive, an Indonesian-language local news outlet, and a general reference summary — all agree the photograph was taken on August 17, 1973. This entry adopts August 17 as the corrected date, treating “April 17” as a likely transcription error somewhere in this case’s history.
• No Live Witness: As with other photo-discovery cases in this archive, DD presumes a witnessed daylight sighting, but no one observed anything unusual at the time. The photographer, Ryo Terumoto, was capturing a scenic view of Mount Agung from his car and only noticed the disc-shaped object after his film was developed.
• Source Recovered Through Research: The original page left the Source field blank; this entry supplies it from consistent cross-referencing: the photograph is attributed to Japanese tourist Ryo Terumoto and was first published in the Japanese magazine Hito to Nippon in March 1974, under the headline “Flying Saucer Atop the Island of Bali.”
• Historical Significance: This image is widely cited in both Indonesian and international UFO literature as the first UFO photograph taken over Indonesian territory, giving it a notable place in the country’s UFO history distinct from the evidentiary strength of the photograph itself.
• Evidentiary Weight: With no live witness, no documented technical photo analysis, and only a single image, this case’s evidentiary status rests entirely on the photograph’s authenticity and the consistency of its secondary sourcing, neither of which this archive can independently confirm.

More than fifty years on, the Mount Agung photograph endures mainly on the strength of its place in the historical record — the first Indonesian UFO photo, consistently dated and consistently cited — rather than on any independent analysis of the image itself. With that date now corrected and its source restored, it is filed as Insufficient Data: a genuinely significant photograph, still unverified beyond its own reputation.

“Flying Saucer Atop the Island of Bali”