Midlands UK 1 AM 5/5/2016

originally posted by: RAY1990

a reply to: Biigs
That's uncanny, swear I kept seeing little blinks... Sometimes the light stays in my eyes when going from light to dark making it seem like something is flashing or moving as you move your eyes but I was keeping my eyes still when "blinking" occurred.

Since you also saw somthing similar to mine i'll add what i left out.

The blinks i saw went like this: I saw one flash just slightly off center of the star i was looking at, i moved my eyes to the place i saw the flash, just a few degrees off. I continued to stare at the flash piont assuming id see another a few degrees off as a plane moved overhead, but then the next flash was much later than a planes flash (also no red flash) but the thing that struck me was thatthe second flash WAS IN THE SAME PLACE AS THE FIRST. Indicating to me that whatever it was, was stationary. So i continued to stare at the same spot for another 2 minutes, no more flashes in the same spot or in the periphery of my vision.

To replicate it i thought of this explanation: Think of a BLACK air balloon over head, with zero wind so no movement, and somone leaning over the side (very high up) and taking two flash photos over the side at the ground beneath.

This is why i thought it was strange because no one would fly a black balloon at 1am+ because people arnt that insanely stupid. That was my only rationalization and motive to mention it here.

I really wish i would have spotted what the OP saw, but it sure is a coincidence that a post made me look up at night mere minutes after reading the post AND i actually do see a strange thing! I'll also add that ive seen satalites and planes, drones and all sorts in my life, there was no sounds at all (VERY quiet night for my area of town, i could have heard a moth fart).

Biigs.

UFO glow

a reply to: TheKestrel04

That's and interesting hypothesis, only one huge problem with it in this case. The object I saw shrank in size wholly commensurate with a solid object travelling at some speed, away from my position. As I have mentioned, take a 1 cent or 5 pence coin and hold it aloft at arm's length. Have you ever seen a sharply defined light that size, that casts no beam below or above it in the sky ? That's what I was initially confronted with almost directly over my head.

Subway Celing Lights The object I saw had exactly the same appearance as the ceiling lights in this photo in terms of it's sharpness and colour, only it was perfectly round. I think you can see from this what I mean by it looking, "fake and like an animation yet", its' movement was as I say, wholly commensurate with that of a solid object.

a reply to: TheKestrel04

I was not aware of this phenomena



Can anything similar occur closer to home, as in within our atmosphere?

I only ask because two things I have saw in my life have been energetic in nature, one was kind of the reason I joined ATS.
A blue-white glow shooting upwards from a nuclear plant... I'm probably asking the wrong question, ball lighting itself is still debated

originally posted by: AboveBoard
a reply to: FireMoon

The reason I asked those questions, is that your original description seemed to point to something that I saw, as well.

Mine was daytime under heavy cloud cover and the color was a red/orange, not white, but that same weird "flat" effect (in my case it would be like looking at a red/orange sunrise or set through heavy clouds - perfect circle but zero glare).

It had an odd "skimming" quality - or "gliding" would work as well, no sound at all, and it was a perfect circle. In my case, it got weird at the end. Just past me heading north it instantly sped up to where it appeared to be a blur for about six inches worth of sky from my POV and then it went invisible somehow. Freaked the heck out of me.

Anyway - I think you've seen a genuine Unidentified...and I don't think anyone is going to be able to clear up for you what it was, in the end.

Thank you for sharing it!!!

- AB

Could yours possibly have been mistaken at first for maybe a searchlight? Twice in the past two weeks I've seen something behind heavy cloud cover. Once before dusk, and just a few days ago the second time, was at night.

The first one was an orange light, shaped like the little wing pins that pilots give kids on flights...that "wing" shape but without the definition of layers of feathers. It swooped around in figure eights and then changed direction. I watched it for about five minutes but I got really cold and had to go inside.

This last time, it was on the other side of the sky and it was white-blue, then changed to a white-green and then just white. It was arcing back and forth, like a searchlight...except there was no cone or beam of light from the ground.

It looked as if someone was holding a light above the cloud and slowly sweeping it back and forth. Then, it too changed direction and did so numerous times. It was a different shape, too. An ellipse, like an egg. It also slowed down and then sped back up, several times.

My husband and his brother were on the patio with me the second time, so they witnessed it. We all tried taking photos and video with our phones but nothing would show up. This went on for a while, about 20 minutes. Then it suddenly disappeared.

I knew it wasn't a searchlight by the angle, and there are no searchlights anywhere in this area, however I checked anyway and there were none. And other than the Bat Signal, I cannot imagine a light source with varying shapes that could be that high up.

I keep looking for it every night just in case it appears again.

originally posted by: FireMoon
Just seen the weirdest site. a smooth round white light bigger than the apparent size of Jupiter by 4-5 times . I was putting the bin out looked up and this object was travelling from the from South East to the North West in the direction of Birmingham airport Object was a single totally silent seemingly flat white illuminated flat disc. No idea at what altitude it was, if it was high enough to be out of earshot, it would have been absolutely huge. Travelled in a straight line at some rate of knots, certainly far quicker than any plane and as it vanished into the North West it became star like in its' appearance.

As it flew over my head it appeared to be a solid round object of some size, no other lights, nothing resembling navigation lights at all. If it was a plane., drone, etc it was very low altitude to have shown up as that sized disc and no noise? Even drones make a noise and no, it was not any form of landing light, had it been at that apparent size, it would have woken the whole street. Imagine the focused beam of a searchlight on a cloud with no cone from the searchlight itself and that was the effect, and no not a searchlight etc, there was no cloud to reflect off of. Anyone any ideas what it might have been?

Wow...I just posted in response to AboveBoard regarding two sightings I've had. I didn't read the end of your post...was multitasking and just skimmed. I realized this and went to read again and just saw what you wrote about the searchlight for the first time. I'm floored. You described my sightings almost exactly with regard to the searchlight. That's crazy...I'm in Texas. Nowhere near you.

Eta: holy crap...you even said "cone".

originally posted by: FireMoon
a reply to: vtrio12

Sadly, nothing like what I saw at all. If you hold a 5 pence piece over your head, the initial size of the object was akin to that and exactly the same shape. Just one light that seemed to be the whole object, a very flat colour white with zero hints of any other colours within the white. If anything, it looked like a piece of animation, the colour and the apparent sharpness of the edges were that "flat". One thing that really threw me was that, there was absolutely no context for what I was seeing, it genuinely was unlike any other light I have ever seen in the sky. If anything, it looked somehow "fake" it was so perfect in its' shape. The air was almost still at ground level and it was moving way too fast to be our old friend the Chinese Lantern.

If you're in the USA, take a 1 cent coin and hold that at arms length above your head, that was about the size of what i saw initially.

Mine were far lower, then. They were more like the size of a silver dollar held at arm's length.

a reply to: tigertatzen

Nope. It was an object. There is no way a searchlight would behave the way the object in my sighting did. It was quite solid and moved toward me from quite a far distance away.

A search light is an interesting idea, but doesn't fit the facts.

originally posted by: AboveBoard
a reply to: tigertatzen

Nope. It was an object. There is no way a searchlight would behave the way the object in my sighting did. It was quite solid and moved toward me from quite a far distance away.

A search light is an interesting idea, but doesn't fit the facts.

Lol! No...you misunderstand...I'm not trying to debunk your sighting, nowhere close to that. I think that may be the first time anyone has ever jumped to that particular conclusion about me...usually they're ready to burn me at the stake.

I was not asking if it might have been a searchlight. I know it was most certainly not, but I checked anyway in my area after my sighting this past week, for posterity purposes. I always try to rule out an ordinary explanation so I don't waste my time. It was a solid object, and obviously quite large, too.

My question was actually, did your sighting resemble a searchlight at all as I and the OP both described? I was referring specifically to the shape and glowing sort of aura-like quality to the light. Almost like the glow from a neon beer sign...a muted glow.

Mine was behind a cumulus cloud, both times, so I think it's possible that it simply made the object appear that way. I got the sense that if the cloud had not been there, the light would have been excruciatingly bright, so I was looking for a comparison.

Just trying to figure out if we all saw the same type of object. I've seen it several times; very recently, too.

a reply to: tigertatzen

Ok. No harm!

The way I think of it is either like an electric coil stove burner when it's orange hot but there is no glare in the color. But the best description is the color the sun is when it's rising behind a thick fog so you can look right at it. Red orange with no glare and a perfect circle. Mine was underneath a heavy cloud cover going roughly south to the north. It was not directly over me but about a block over and up, so that I could both see its shape on the bottom (looked pretty flat) and then when it was just past me, it sped up instantaneously so that it blurred into a streak of light about six inches long from my POV. At
That point it completely disappeared or went invisible - not off into the distance but just suddenly not there. It was about the size of a dime from my POV.

So, not quite the same as yours.

a reply to: FireMoon

Sounds like you seen an Iridium flare, it's when the satellite moves in such a way that the sunlight is shining directly off its solar panels making it flare up for a little while then die down and become more "star" like. They can be very bright and just like you described.

a reply to: woogleuk

Seriously, if it was an Iridium flare then the satellite was flying no more than about 500 feet over my head. This was a clearly defined disc shape with zero flare or scintillation and a perfectly defined sharp edge. It only began to show any sort of scintillation when it was disappearing into the distance and had shrunk to star sized. That scintillation I would imagine, given it had been a warm day, was due to city's heat rising. As it moved away from me, there was a very slight elongation effect, which is wholly commensurate with it being solid self lit object. It also gives you some idea of just how big/close to the ground it was, that the elongation effect should be noticeable. I have spent my whole life watching the sky mostly with an eye to astronomical observations, I have never seen anything remotely akin to this apart from one night in Vegas, where they were shining spots onto the base of the clouds.

The real kicker is, I am almost positive that, had serendipity stepped in and I had been in the possession of a broadcast quality camera with a 20 grand lens that, the resulting footage would have been summarily dismissed out of hand as, "quite obviously a computer generated effect" and "too good to be true".

originally posted by: AboveBoard
a reply to: tigertatzen

Ok. No harm!

The way I think of it is either like an electric coil stove burner when it's orange hot but there is no glare in the color. But the best description is the color the sun is when it's rising behind a thick fog so you can look right at it. Red orange with no glare and a perfect circle. Mine was underneath a heavy cloud cover going roughly south to the north. It was not directly over me but about a block over and up, so that I could both see its shape on the bottom (looked pretty flat) and then when it was just past me, it sped up instantaneously so that it blurred into a streak of light about six inches long from my POV. At
That point it completely disappeared or went invisible - not off into the distance but just suddenly not there. It was about the size of a dime from my POV.

So, not quite the same as yours.

I tried like crazy to get photos and video but there was just no way it would show up. The photo OP linked with the office lights...the reflections on the floor look like my object as far as brightness, accounting for the cloud overlaying it. Ah well, I'll keep looking for another one.

We all tried taking photos and video with our phones but nothing would show up

Exactly the same happened when I tried recording my Orange ellipse.


This is mines

Number 10 I witnessed my self really along with my dad.This occurred around march last year in the late afternoon.I was inside when he called me to see an elliptical amber glowing object gliding across the sky going from south to north east. I ran inside and got my phone to take a pic, I still used my Samsung GT s5230 ( it still works to this day although I changed devices late Aug last year) at the time but the object did not register on the camera which puzzled me but never the less we watched it until it faded into thin air like turning off an incandescent bulb then it was gone. Shortly 7 - 10 mins after a Dash 8 shaped craft flew over (which are common in the region) with the sun reflecting of it's white paint, this helped dismissed the sun reflection being a cause for us. My dad also said he saw the same object the previous evening going the opposite direction. Since then I never seen anything like it, a few times I did see extremely high altitude lights moving fairly quickly against the starry back ground but this was during a black out.

I can add a little bit to the tale. I live near Portsmouth on the south coast, I saw something 2 or 3 nights ago, I'm not sure of the exact time or date to be honest. Sometime between 22:00 and 01:00 I imagine. I didn't really think too much about it until I read your post.

I went out into the garden to see what was going on with a helicopter flying low over the the houses that late at night. The helicopter came from the north flying southish. It did a fast banking U turn which made even more noise then disappeared back off north. As it looked like the excitement was over I turned southwards to take in the night sky.

Then I saw a white blinking light travelling quite fast. I only saw it flash 3 or 4 times, but the first flash was quite big, long and bright and looked a bit stretched. The second was less bright and shorter, the 3rd / fourth were star like bright, quick flashes. It was weird, but it looked like as it was disappearing a little bit of the sky flashed bright where it would have been. It reminded me of something blowing up in space, like you'd see in the films. It was barely visible and to be honest I'm not sure it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me, as it can when you're looking into low light.

I definately saw the flashes though. It sort of reminded me of something rotating. It was fast though and it wasn't a plane. I saw the first flash pretty much due south about 30 degrees up from the horizon and it was travelling west to east. Last flash was south eastish.

In my mind I like to think the helicopter doing its crazy turn was related to the flashing, but I'm pretty sure they were two seperate things.

I wonder if what we saw was the same thing ?

originally posted by: TheKestrel04

We all tried taking photos and video with our phones but nothing would show up

Exactly the same happened when I tried recording my Orange ellipse.


This is mines

Number 10 I witnessed my self really along with my dad.This occurred around march last year in the late afternoon.I was inside when he called me to see an elliptical amber glowing object gliding across the sky going from south to north east. I ran inside and got my phone to take a pic, I still used my Samsung GT s5230 ( it still works to this day although I changed devices late Aug last year) at the time but the object did not register on the camera which puzzled me but never the less we watched it until it faded into thin air like turning off an incandescent bulb then it was gone. Shortly 7 - 10 mins after a Dash 8 shaped craft flew over (which are common in the region) with the sun reflecting of it's white paint, this helped dismissed the sun reflection being a cause for us. My dad also said he saw the same object the previous evening going the opposite direction. Since then I never seen anything like it, a few times I did see extremely high altitude lights moving fairly quickly against the starry back ground but this was during a black out.

I've always assumed the phone camera is just not equipped for night footage. But I can capture the moon. This light was at least 90% as bright, but will not show up. I cannot explain that.