Strange objects hanging in night sky over Iraq

reply to post by omnicron


BRAVO - some one needed to say it - its a thought that goes through my head on countless threads

PS - have a star

reply to post by Incarnated


Thank you Incarnated. It is very obvious that these light 'pillars' originated from ground light. There is one or two (faint) beams that does not appear to be as distorted as the others.

Agreed. Ground lights shining through the low clouds/fog. Nothing to see here. Move along.

reply to post by goosdawg


I just want to say that I agree with ya. Light pillars seem the most likely explaination, especially when you look at existing photographs taken of them. Still, a cool phenom.

en.wikipedia.org...

I hope this helps some.

Back in the mid 90s, here in West Texas, the same phenomenon occurred as we stood out in our front yard on an overcast night. We saw the exact same display of light in the western sky. It absolutely freaked us out! As it turned out, 20 miles away was an oil rig fire with flames plummeting up into the clouds, causing this whitish glow with an extended red haze. The projection of the fire, illuminated by the clouds, made the light appear exactly like that, that the soldiers are capturing on their recorder.

As for D4rk Kn1ght's posts, I have read those and like John Titor’s's posts, when someone comes up trying to convince people of something and the very core of what they advocate is surrounded by so much vagueness, as was the case with Titor’s and D4rk Kn1ght's posts, you can pretty well determine their going in circles and repeating the same thing over and over without specifics is a good sign they are just passing the time, amusing themselves at the expense of others.

LIGHT PILLARS

A light pillar is a visual phenomenon created by the reflection of light from ice crystals with near horizontal parallel planar surfaces. The light can come from the sun (usually at or low to the horizon) in which case the phenomenon is called a sun pillar or solar pillar. It can also come from the moon or from terrestrial sources such as streetlights.







Unlike the crystals producing sun pillars, those making tall artificial light pillars need not be strongly tilted. The column producing pillars are approximately midway between the eye and the light source. The higher the crystals in the atmosphere, the taller is the pillar. When the crystals are very high - or the light sources are close - the pillars seem to radiate from overhead, the zenith.

Originally posted by goosdawg
Could they be "light pillars?"

Light reflecting off of very fine, nearly invisible, ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.

Excellent explanation of the effect here:

Atmospheric Optics | Light pillars
[edit on 3-1-2008 by goosdawg]

Exactly, we see these in Canada as well. It is really strange as the light sources are not pointing straight up at all, but you still get this effect. In fact even street lights who shoot down will create this beam straight up.

NVG enhanced natural star light as well as camera shake.....thats what we're seeing

reply to post by Netstriker


And what's really cool about light pillars is that they don't appear directly over the source light.

That is, like a rainbow, their apparent position is entirely dependent upon the location of the observer.

They're a chimera, a reflection of light, something that isn't really where it appears to be.

And it can happen above or around any light source, the sun, the moon, the planets, even stars!

Atmospheric Optics | Moon Pillars

Atmospheric Optics | Venus Pillars

Here's a whole bunch of cool images:

Atmospheric Optics | Pillar Image Gallery

But this one's still my favorite:

Source | Atmospheric Optics | Light Pillars | Lights radiating from the zenith

reply to post by goosdawg


oh ya i smell UFO misrepresentation to alien vehicles all over this phenomena

reply to post by Alanjw72


To me it just looks like streaks of light shining through the clouds...

In my opinion, at first glance, they don't seem like streaky light pillars.

After learning more and more about these things, and seeing numerous pics online, I'm leaning towards the pillar theory as well.

I'd love to be proved wrong, trust me :-)

Originally posted by Umbra Sideralis
reply to post by jritzmann

 

Humm..Have you seen my last post?

Yup, I just dont think thats the answer based on the video alone. Horizon up is pillars, in sky sundogs, but who really knows....we're looking at NV footage people. We dont know what the true perceptive scene even is.

It's interesting nonetheless...but ehre's no where near enough to go on...and certainly nothing to get up in arms about.

I don't buy the whole "light pillars" idea. Out of all these "light pillar" pics, none look like the ones in the video. And how easily you people forget when comparing the two, is that the video is in night-vision, remember?. None of these pics of "light pillars" are taken with night-vision. So given those two things, how can you honestly or accurately compare the two?
I honestly have no idea what these things in the video are nor have I seen them anywhere before.

Not all 'light pillars' are the same. Some look like a beam going straight up, some are interrupted/dotted beams, and some are like what we see in the video.

They can be very dim or very bright, depending (I think) on how clear the air is.

I saw some this morning and thought about this thread and all the people that are going to insist that it's something unnatural.

[edit on 4-1-2008 by alaskan]

I think that this thred (and video icluded) is interesting, but doesn't 21 flags IMO.


I just think that it's nothing paranormal and it's only a lack of knowledge of how ligh rays shine off of ice crystals. I think the video just shows light pillars, but I'm not an expert on light replection/refraction, so I could be wrong.

I'm not saying I'm right either, I'm just saying that this thread is basically 'solved'.

Hi all....I was a combat medic with the Big Red One in Iraq during OIF II....We had to pull re-trans duty for a week at a time on the Iran/Iraq border....Out there in the middle of nowhere the sky was totally devoid of light pollution. MANY MANY MANY times we would lay out under the stars with our nods on and watch the sky. Any given night we would see things like this...We would also see what we called "dancers" because the lights would just dance all over the sky....What we were seeing were not satellites because they were not in a geosynchronous orbit, nor were they planes of any kind....Some of you might think they were just meteors or space junk but they didn't burn out, they would just dance all over the sky or like in the video just sit there....I am not going to say that they were UFOs but whatever they were they put on one hell of a show!!!!


Edit....Please keep in mind that we were hours away from anything and I do mean ANYTHING!!!! Also we would lay on our cots and watch the sky from straight on, not at an angle or dead with the horizon...Also you would not believe what all you can see in the sky with nods....It really is quite remarkable.

[edit on 4-1-2008 by Combatmed1]

Originally posted by DisabledVet
LIGHT PILLARS

A light pillar is a visual phenomenon created by the reflection of light from ice crystals with near horizontal parallel planar surfaces. The light can come from the sun (usually at or low to the horizon) in which case the phenomenon is called a sun pillar or solar pillar. It can also come from the moon or from terrestrial sources such as streetlights.







Unlike the crystals producing sun pillars, those making tall artificial light pillars need not be strongly tilted. The column producing pillars are approximately midway between the eye and the light source. The higher the crystals in the atmosphere, the taller is the pillar. When the crystals are very high - or the light sources are close - the pillars seem to radiate from overhead, the zenith.

This is exactly what I was thinking. I remember seeing a thread where they had a video the phenomenon in the day time. The give away is that it's almost in a complete circle.

Check out this video

I am not saying this is the case, but just a possible explanation.

Here is another interesting one, it's on YouTube as 2nd Sun Weather Phenomenon.

2nd Sun Weather Phenomenon.




[edit on 4/1/2008 by TheInfamousOne]

I've read every post and what no one has seemed to think of is that maybe it's coming from the sky and not hanging or shining up.

the distance these are covering and the way they are all vertical looks as hough lights are coming DOWN and are visible as they punch through the clouds. The bright spots would be where the clouds are at there thickest.

Now what in the heck could be shining down though? I've heard of many strange stories and many theories of all the different weapons or intelligence gathering devices and this could be a "star wars" type contraption.

How many "machines" in space have people seen recently and discussed?

The light pillars don't match this and the crystals being aligned toward the viewpoint just isn't cutting it for me at this point either.

Normally I don't get strange feelings over "strange things" but this one does that to me..

b

I would say they are sun pillars or zodiacal light. Worshiped by the Egyptians as part ofThe Sun God Ra.Obelisks and maybe the pyramids were made because of them is my guess.