UFO Lights over Charlotte NC 15 October 2016

originally posted by: MaximRecoil

originally posted by: charlyv
a reply to: MaximRecoil

All I can say is try it yourself. This is ATS, you can do it..

The LED lamps you're talking about: how many lumens per watt?

They are about 30 lumens driven at 25ma. I slightly overdrive them, but the batteries will give out long before the LED fails.
High power 5mm LEDS can go 30-90 lm/W, but you are not going to get any where near the high end here due to the type of LED and the power.

a reply to: MaximRecoil

I don't know what the current draw was of the little keychain LED lights that I bought for my kids as stocking stuffers one year but they were very very bright for their size and they were very lightweight they also had three different modes one of them was a strobe mode one of them was an SOS mode and then the other was a flashlight mode but they were certainly small and light enough to be picked up by a decent-sized helium balloon maybe two feet in diameter and I have no trouble believing that they could be seen from a mile away in fact if I remember correctly that was part of what was advertised about them.

Having said that ... that doesn't mean that I'm convinced that this is what we are seeing in the video. I do believe it would be possible to create something "similar" utilizing helium balloons with the type of light that I mentioned.

The problem is I feel that there are some characteristics being displayed by this group of Lights that would be hard to duplicate.... for instance this group of Lights seems to keep itself grouped together to the same density for the duration of the video and that to me is not a phenomena that would occur with free-flying balloons.

From my experience of watching helium balloons ascending into the sky they separate themselves further and further as they go along and they do not stay in one place for any length of time whether there is any wind or not.

So then that leaves the option of having balloons that are tethered and they don't look like balloons that are tethered because even though the group stays in the same location in the same relative density the pattern of the lights changes so with tethered balloons you would get some variation side to side but not vertically because they would be pulling against the strings and would remain at the same position vertically.

The other problem with tethered balloons is the weight of the string the strings would have had to be very long which means you would have had to have much much larger balloons to be able to hold them up.

Now if you have a group of large balloons at an altitude that would be picked up by radar you would have had Air Traffic Control noticing them. Okay I guess I'm done Thinking Out Loud for the moment.... all I can say is these lights do seem to present quite a mystery.

a reply to: Springer

I am a content writer/investigator from Charlotte NC area. ANY chance anyone knows this viewer??

a reply to: HarryJoy

It doesn't appear to maintain the same shape or distance between lights at all. Even the cameraman comments about the changing configuration when he says it's forming a triangle. He says vertical triangle which I assume is the opposite of a horizontal triangle...

originally posted by: charlyv
They are about 30 lumens driven at 25ma. I slightly overdrive them, but the batteries will give out long before the LED fails.
High power 5mm LEDS can go 30-90 lm/W, but you are not going to get any where near the high end here due to the type of LED and the power.

In your previous post you stated 5 volts as the upper amount, and in this post you've bumped the current draw from 20 to 25 mA. So, 25 mA @ 5 volts = 125 milliwatts (1/8th of a watt). If they are 30 lumens, that's 240 lumens per watt, which is well beyond the high end of 90 lumens per watt that you said you couldn't get anywhere near in this application.

If you meant that they are 30 lumens per watt, then that = 3.75 lumens. A "standard candle" is 1 candlepower, which is 12.57 lumens. It can be seen, under clear conditions, at up to 1.6 miles, at which point it disappears from view, according to this article.

The LEDs you are talking about are about 1/3 candlepower and are partially obscured by a translucent balloon. Do you think they can be seen from 9,000 feet (1.7 miles) away ... through clouds even?

a reply to: MaximRecoil
Why do you say 9,000 feet?

a reply to: raymundoko

I stated in my post that he said the pattern changed.... which was one of the problems I listed with it being a group of tethered balloons.

originally posted by: Phage

I retract my statement. Those might just be LED balloons. Good work Phage.

a reply to: HarryJoy

How would that prevent it from being a group of tethered balloons? Watch the video phage uploaded, clearly those balloons change configuration several times.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MaximRecoil
Why do you say 9,000 feet?

Based on this post which cited weather data. However, it has been edited since I read it:

ETA: There were, as you can see from the METAR posted above, a few clouds as low as 3600 feet occasionally, so that might bring the unknowns as low as that.

Seeing LED balloons at 3,600 feet is still a stretch, even for the 125-milliwatt LED lamps that "charlyv" described (the LED balloons that someone linked to earlier - www.party-lights.com... - are only about 30 milliwatts). Your own video citation showed the LED balloons that they launched quickly fade from view.

Does anyone know what type of clouds are seen in the video? Different types of clouds appear at different altitude ranges.

a reply to: MaximRecoil

Does anyone know what type of clouds are seen in the video? Different types of clouds appear at different altitude ranges.

Thin clouds.

The METAR also indicates that the ambient surface temperature was quite close to the dew point, indicating that low clouds could form quite easily. Someone mentioned the possibility of industrial "steam."

In other words, no. No way to determine the actual altitude of the clouds.

a reply to: MaximRecoil

If they are 30 lumens, that's 240 lumens per watt, which is well beyond the high end of 90 lumens per watt that you said you couldn't get anywhere near in this application.

No, what I was inferring is that you would never be able to drive this to anything over 30 lumens.
In any case, enough with the specs. Try a real world experiment as I have outlined. See if it matches your suspected performance.

originally posted by: Phage

Thin clouds.

"Thin clouds" isn't a specific cloud type. Also, the clouds look fairly thick to me:

The METAR also indicates that the ambient surface temperature was quite close to the dew point, indicating that low clouds could form quite easily. Someone mentioned the possibility of industrial "steam."

In other words, no. No way to determine the actual altitude of the clouds.

We don't need the actual altitude of the clouds, only a range. Also, the cameraman is not directly under the lights, so that adds distance to whatever altitude they are at. Based on the appearance of the building, he has his camera pointed at perhaps a 45-degree angle relative to the ground. As an example, a 45-degree angle line drawn down to the ground from an object at an altitude of 3,600 feet, would be ~5,091 feet.

a reply to: MaximRecoil

"Thin clouds" isn't a specific cloud type.

I know. But the lights could be seen through them?

As an example, a 45-degree angle line drawn down to the ground from an object at an altitude of 3,600 feet, would be ~5,091 feet.

That would depend on the horizontal distance, wouldn't it? You are making three assumptions; horizontal distance, elevation, and height.

There is insufficient information to reach any conclusion about the actual distance of the lights.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MaximRecoil

"Thin clouds" isn't a specific cloud type.

I know. But the lights could be seen through them?

The brighter ones could be. In the screen shot I posted (which I raised the gamma on), only 1 light is visible, presumably because they passed above a particularly thick section of clouds.

That would depend on the horizontal distance, wouldn't it? You are making three assumptions; horizontal distance, elevation, and height.

No. If you draw a 45-degree angle down to the ground from a given altitude, the horizontal distance is automatically the same as the altitude, assuming level ground. It was just an example, using the minimum cloud height from the weather data (3,600 feet) and an estimate of a 45-degree angle based on the appearance of the buildings in the screenshot I posted.

There is insufficient information to reach any conclusion about the actual distance of the lights.

There's enough information to make a good estimate of the minimum distance, and enough information to know that your LED party balloons explanation is dubious. One of those lights made it through a cloud thick enough to block all of the rest of them (see the screenshot I posted). Show me an LED party balloon with enough berries to do that.

a reply to: MaximRecoil

There's enough information to make a good estimate of the minimum distance

No there isn't. You are guessing at the elevation. You are guessing at the cloud height (the airport is 10 miles away). You are guessing at how bright an LED must be.

You are convinced that there is something very extraordinary there. Good for you. I'm not. UFOs, yes indeed. Unidentified.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MaximRecoil

There's enough information to make a good estimate of the minimum distance

No there isn't.

Yes, there is.

You are guessing at the elevation.

No, not a guess; an estimate. The lights are above the clouds. According to the weather data, minimum cloud height was 3,600 ft.

You are guessing at the cloud height

False. See above.

(the airport is 10 miles away).

Do you think cloud height is going to change drastically in that distance? What good is weather data if it's only relevant for the exact location in which it was measured?

You are guessing at how bright an LED must be.

An LED lamp (plus its power source), which is small and light enough to be lifted by a helium party balloon, has an obvious limit to how bright it can be. Another poster already described an upper-end workable setup for this which he has experience with, and the setup he described was 125 milliwatts with 30 lumens per watt, which = 3.75 lumens. That's not very bright, and off-the-shelf LED party balloons tend to be significantly less bright than that.

Ironically, the "guesses" here have been made by you, i.e., you guessed that it was a string of LED party balloons, and that guess includes the following tacit guesses: that the LED balloons were low enough and bright enough to be seen through thick clouds without zooming in. Those are all guesses because you haven't backed them up with any data whatsoever.

You are convinced that there is something very extraordinary there.

This is a non sequitur, and as such, it can legitimately be dismissed out of hand. In other words, I never asserted nor suggested that "there is something very extraordinary there". All of my posts have been with regard to the dubious nature of your guesses.

a reply to: MaximRecoil

What of it? Do you think cloud height is going to change drastically in that distance?

Define drastically. Five hundred feet, a thousand feet? Yes, absolutely possible.

All of my posts have been with regard to the dubious nature of your guesses.

As was my previous post in regard to yours.

originally posted by: Phage
Define drastically. Five hundred feet, a thousand feet? Yes, absolutely possible.

1,000 feet doesn't help you much, even if it did happen to [conveniently] be 1,000 feet lower rather than 1,000 feet higher, especially since the biggest problem with your guesses is that some of the lights were seen through thick clouds.

Of course, in calm weather, the conditions don't tend to change much over a distance of 10 miles. But it seems that your guesses call for mere possibilities rather than likelihoods.

As was my previous post in regard to yours.

My "guesses" were based on data. You provided no data to support your guesses.

By the way, in the first video you embedded, the LED balloons were invisible to the camera after 1 minute. Here's the final frame of that video:



Do you see the balloons? Also, just before they got too dim to see, they appeared to be in a very small, tight cluster. In order for a string of balloons to appear as large as they did in the OP's video, while being high enough to be above the clouds, it would have had to have been a huge string of them, very widely spaced apart. And of course, those LEDs would have needed some substantial grunt to shine through thick clouds.

a reply to: Springer

Reason the Laws and Leaders don't worry me too much