I'm not the GP however I do the same, and even as a fairly lousy photographer I'm able to get photos where you can usually see some reasonable detail. Here are some examples: https://imgur.com/a/Nr5NIgt

All shot on a Canon 1100D with a 75-300mm zoom lens, using manual focus with the "full auto" mode for controlling aperture, shutter time etc. Usually I am leaning out of a window or standing in my garden to capture these shots.

As you can see, none of these images are particularly "good": the subjects in the first three images are underexposed due to their dark colouring against a light background, some are slightly out of focus, some show evidence of dirt or other marks on the camera sensor, yet you can still make out various details on all of them. One would imagine that if there were an equivalent photo of an actual "alien" UFO, it would be on the front page of newspapers across the world.

Nice!

(One trick that I use for family photos is to use a delay of 1 second, to avoid the movement when I press the shutter. (It's not useful when there are kids. One second later they are in another room.))

I've been meaning to pick up a shutter release accessory for a while now since the 1100D only has 10s shutter delay in automatic modes, or 2s delay in the manual modes. Fortunately the movement when pressing the shutter button isn't much of a problem for these type of shots as the camera + lens is weighty and quite well balanced.