1566 Celestial Phenomenon over Basel

On the mornings of July 27 to 28 and August 7, 1566, residents of Basel, Switzerland reported an unusual sight in the sky, recorded the same year in a broadsheet printed by Samuel Apiarius and Samuel Coccius and later preserved in the Wickiana collection in Zurich. Witnesses described strange shapes overhead, including a sunrise in which the sun lost its normal brightness and appeared blood red, and large black spheres that seemed to move rapidly back and forth in front of it, some glowing fiery red before fading out. The surviving broadsheet gives an eyewitness account rather than a scientific analysis, and its own infobox lists a sun dog or other atmospheric optical display as the most likely modern explanation, though a full modern scientific treatment of the event is still missing from the source.