The man who made the discovery is a visiting French photographer and journalist named Daniel Ubertini.

Mr Ubertini did not see the saucer-like phenomena with his naked eye. They were captured by his camera in photos taken of the airfield at the time. In the photo is also an image of an inter island aircraft belonging to Great Barrier Airlines parked on Eua Airport.

It is understood the UFOs were following this aircraft while it was airborne. After he had loaded the camera’s images in the computer he discovered two distinctive round images in the background.

Later when the images were enlarged they showed up as saucer-shaped objects similar to UFOs sighted around the world over the years. Daniel Ubertini is the same man who took pictures of UFO flying about the wing of an airborne B 747 Air France aircraft in February 1977.

In the early 60s he worked as a reporter/photographer for a newspaper in the Reunion Island of French-speaking Madagascar. He later worked for TV New Caledonia and later still for Tahiti Nui TV for seven years; he is still working for them as a contributing journalist.

Born and raised in France he is a UFO buff. He has a collection of images of UFO sightings from the around the world and he is now adding to it his images from Tonga.

He estimates that the closer UFO was “half mile away followed by the other strange object a bit further away.” Mr Ubertini recalls waiting to go back to Nuku’alofa at 8:30am when he started taking pictures of Eua airfield where other people were also waiting.

He says ten minutes before the plane took off a Japanese friend of his took a picture of the airfield with the inter-island aircraft in the background.

“I don’t know why but at this time I pointed the index finger of my right hand to the sky when the UFOs appeared which I was not aware of,” he explains.

“When I went back to my hotel and downloaded my camera I found the strange phenomena in it. It is impossible to tell where they came from and where they went to afterwards. It’s a mystery.”

Mr Ubertini says the first object was flying behind the plane about half a mile away followed by another flying object further behind.

“Each time I take a picture I don’t see anything,” he says. “I don’t know where these objects came from.” This is not the first time Mr Ubertini has involved in so-called UFOs.

On 19 February 1977 in Reunion Island at 2:30pm he took pictures during a Air France Jumbo jet taking off. “I didn’t see anything as I was the shooting 21 pictures but after processing the black and white 400 asa Ilford films, I saw two strange flying objects above the right wing following the plane.”

“In 1980 at Phoenix Arizona, I sent to the Ground Saucers Watch laboratory the original negatives. “They analyzed the villages which cost him $US25.00, and William Spalding who was the Director at the time sent him back the negatives and colored pictures.

“In his report he said it was not a hoax but it was impossible for them to tell what the images were of.” Mr Ubertini says he later in an archive he came across an image of a UFO flying above a sailing boat named “Lady of the Lake” and it looked much the same as the one he had taken on Reunion Island. That one was taken on 22 March1870 in the West Coast of Africa. Much earlier in 1952, a similar image was captured in a photo taken flying behind an aircraft in New Jersey, USA.