It's Bloody Well Back Again.

a reply to: ufoorbhunter

You presume I was being sarcastic.

a reply to: NewzNose

Hahahaha yes I was. That's a good one

You could be talking straight from your experiences

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: smurfy

so humans can't often judge distance of an object due to atmospheric conditions. like say the light goes behind clouds that you know only form a certain altutudes.

No bother with that, we are all familiar with things up to a point, familiarity then often fills in the blanks. However I was talking in the confines of this thread, and the OP says it was a perfectly clear night.
Anyway just so you know, I am suggesting that a drone could perform all the functions observed by the OP...and even come back and do them again, that includes observed sudden stops. I am not saying that the OP is mistaken, I only point out things that would need to be eliminated.
Really the problem is the proliferation of drones/quadcopters that only muddy the waters for most of us, that would include myself, they don't fly like a plane for a start...fly in fact is probably the wrong word for drones anyway, and despite being called Quadcopters, they are not helicopters either, switch off the electric motors and they drop like a stone, switch them on again and they are away. Imagine then looking at a light in a clear dark sky, directly overhead, or even vaguely overhead, that suddenly stops dead, you don't hear or see anything else but the light, that's a perfect match for a drones fans just being switched off dynamically.

a reply to: smurfy

Excellent post.

I agree with much of what you are saying. I have a buddy who professionally flies drones of all sorts. So I'm familiar with what they are capable of .

However, if a light is 100,000 feet away and traveling through the atmosphere to be received by the eye. THat travel through the atmosphere is going to alter the light in ways that the brain uses to figure. Hey that's really far away, or he that's close.

Even the renaissance painters knew about this and added the effect to their painting to trick the eye into seeing perspective and distance.

What the OP is describing sounds exactly like what I and other members have reported seeing for a while occasionally. In my case they were indeed very high up. id say at about 100k altitude to 250K. soemwhere in that range. It was flying behind high cirrus clouds.

a reply to: alldaylong

Not the first time I've heard someone describe what you've described in your OP.

I know of at least a handful of people who've seen the same type of thing over the years... at first thinking it's just a satellite, but then the weird zig-zagging type of maneuvers happen. Satellites and commercial aircraft don't "zig-zag".

My only pallatable explanation would be some kind of sooper seekrit military operation testing out the capabilities of their sooper seekrit military aircraft in the night skies when most people wouldn't easily spot it.

But if that's the case, you'd think they'd be smart enough to at least fly their toys on cloudy overcast nights only ?

Far too many stargazers in the world for someone somewhere to not spot this kind of stuff every once in a while.

Then again, maybe they just don't give a damn because they know most people wouldn't be believed anyway.



Either way, these types of sightings are always a head-scratcher... no doubt about it.

originally posted by: CranialSponge
a reply to: alldaylong


My only pallatable explanation would be some kind of sooper seekrit military operation testing out the capabilities of their sooper seekrit military aircraft in the night skies when most people wouldn't easily spot it.

That's the thing, UAV's have been around for a long time now, perhaps longer than recorded history, who knows?
UAV's as aerial weaponry go back to limited use in the American war of independance, perhaps only in a testbed that's not clear. 1931 saw a RC vehicle developed in Britain for target practice, and 1935 a reusable version..it was called the 'Queen Bee' supposedly, that's where the name Drone came from, even if it makes no sense.
Actually, today's drones which are evolving in all sorts of ways, while seemingly a fun thing, are potentially one of the scariest objects on the planet because they are robots and they are airborne, and they know nothing beyond a singular response, yet they can do things in unison over and over again, potentially look like anything, both something that humans couldn't do, should they be drilled to death.

a reply to: smurfy

The first use was 1849 in Austria.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: CranialSponge

Why? Even if you see the lights, what is it? How many engines? Fuselage shape?

Even if you see the lights you can't tell anything about it except maybe a vague impression of size if you catch the lights right.

a reply to: smurfy

You make a valid point.

It could very well be remote controlled drones rather than piloted aircraft.

But I truly believe that whichever one it is, it's military operations of some kind.

These sightings are far too high up in the atmosphere (hence the reason why they look like far off satellites) for them to be civilian remote controlled drones horsing around in the night skies.


It's them evil military bastages dagnabit !

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: smurfy

The first use was 1849 in Austria.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

If that's right, then Charles Perley was a plagiarist,

Charles Perley's Aerial Bomber (USA, 1863) patented in NY. The spec is the same.
Mind you there were some wacky inventions that might have worked, except for the configuration, like the guy that built a double cannon around the same era..whatever, but decided the two cannon balls, one for each barrel, should be chained together, and the first test wrecked all round it, destroyed a field, killed a cow, and demolished a chimney stack, when the two cannonballs deployed at different moments.

a reply to: smurfy

That's the first accepted use found in any Aviation history. Any developed around the same time would be pretty similar. There were only so many ways they could do it then.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
However, if a light is 100,000 feet away and traveling through the atmosphere to be received by the eye. THat travel through the atmosphere is going to alter the light in ways that the brain uses to figure. Hey that's really far away, or he that's close.

Even the renaissance painters knew about this and added the effect to their painting to trick the eye into seeing perspective and distance.

I don't think that works at night though. Venus is millions of miles away and it doesn't look further away than an airplane light, in fact sometimes it looks closer than an airplane light, especially when it's brighter.

Nocturnal lights as Hynek called them are a special case and if you think you can judge the distance of an unknown light at night I think you're fooling yourself. Need I remind you of this guy and people reporting this "UFO" was a mile wide because they thought it was further away than it was?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Venus and the moon are different in my opinion than aircraft size objects viewed from ground level that are flying at 100-200k.

what about various thermospheres and temperature differences thephotpns gotta travel through.

moisture differences between different layers of the atnosphere.

how bout upper atmosphere ice crystals.

or the 100,000-200,000 feet of nitrogen, carbon, o2 etc. molecules it has to fight past.

scintilation?

none of that effects the light as it travels from that altitude to the earthy surface.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
scintilation?

none of that effects the light as it travels from that altitude to the earthy surface.

Well if that was true, why are people reporting that 1 meter wide UFO as a huge mothership?

The answer is, no it's not true and people think they can tell how far an unknown light in the sky is at night but they can't, so you're perfectly normal in having that false belief.

Evidence does not support your presumptions. If there is any effect in the factors you cite, apparently we are terrible in general at discerning these discrepancies at night, especially with Venus which some people think was always a blue book cop-out for UFOs flying around the sky, but in fact some of those actually were Venus, and no Venus doesn't twinkle noticeably, not like stars do, which is one of the things that makes it look so close and why it gets mistaken for a UFO so often. You can find threads right here on ATS where people have videoed Venus and posted the video, "check out this UFO". In the last one I saw the appearance it was flying across the sky was actually caused by the Earth rotating, when he was zoomed in a lot on Venus, amplifying the rotational effect of the Earth.

But in the case of this OP I still see no reason to rule out drones.

Does this picture look anything like what you saw in the sky?

^ Was that a ufo sighting? black triangle and orb?