A central Mexican couple who have taken up the hobby of photography was snapping images of an active volcano when they were surprised by an object that appeared to be a UFO.

Karla Garcia told DailyMail.com that her boyfriend Luis Guerra was up early Sunday morning at their home in Atlixco, Puebla, to prepare their backyard for a family breakfast when they were moved by a blast from the Popocatépetl volcano.

Garcia recalled that Guerra took his cell phone and immediately started taking pictures and videos, zeroing in on the full moon to the left side of the cliff that spans across the State of Mexico, Puebla, and Morelos.

‘He sends me the photo on WhatsApp and when I wake up, I see it and share it on my WhatsApp status (feed),’ García said.

She remained in bed and started to receive messages from her friends who noticed what seemed to look like an extraterrestrial object flying near the right side of the Popocatépetl volcano.

‘Since my boyfriend is not a fan of social networks, I asked him if I could upload his photo to Twitter and he said yes,’ García added.

She tagged a local reporter, who proceeded to share the image on their local network before it went viral.

García also posted the photo on her Facebook page, writing, ‘Today’s photo at 7:52 am. Popocatépetl, the moon and possibly a UFO.’

The couple has been living together for about a year now and their home is located just 1,600 feet from where a UFO monument was erected in 2000 under orders of the then-mayor of Atlixco.

However, García said the volcano’s magnetism and not the presence of the UFO monument is what has attracted flying saucers to the area.

She initially reserved her doubts about whether life beyond Earth existed.

‘Honestly, I was feeling a bit skeptical years ago,’ García said. ‘But with the programs that I see about investigations that go through, for example, on the History Channel. It started to make me doubt.’

For residents in Mexico, it was the second flying saucer sighting since October when an object was spotted across the skies of Tula, a city in the east-central state of Hidalgo.

In late June, dwellers in the cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Mexican border towns of Tijuana and Rosarito, and the southeastern municipality of Mérida reportedly saw an object with flicking orange lights in the sky.