Recent Activity in North of England - Can anyone theorise on what I am seeing?

Over the past 5 days, barring last night as the cloud cover prohibited any star gazing, I have been seeing more and more strange lights in the sky! I dont profess to be any sort of expert on U.F.O's,Aircraft or Natural phenomena so was wondering if anyone could shed any light on what I've been seeing or give any tips on how I might be able to capture these on film or photograph.I have tried with my camera phone and 5 megapixel digital camera and cant get anything other than a blurry light on the digital and just blackness on the phone. I know it may be hard to say what Im seeing from just my reports but there maybe some detail I mention which makes it an aeroplane at high altitude or a shooting star etc. Anyway, what I am noticing look very similair to stars in size and colour,they move either really slowly or very fast. They nearly always stay in a straight line however one did arc slightly and another seemed to have a smaller (for want of a better word)star arc away from the front of it. Me and my g/f's brother saw 5 of these in a 25 minute period on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning,I personally had seen 2 on Sunday and 3 on Monday and just the 1 on Saturday.Now I must admit that the whole paranormal/ufo thing fascinates me and I do seem to have a lot of things associated with these fields occur in my life so I sometimes wonder whether I can be truly objective in my judgement and whether or not I sometimes make something out of nothing because Im wanting things to happen. At least Im aware of this,so having the future brother in law there on one of the nights when there was most activity really helped me put things in perspective and made me aware not everything I was seeing was a 'spaceship'.On that same night we witnessed a very bright white ball move from west to east and a quik pace and disappear behind cloud cover.On the Saturday I saw a flash of light which then dimmed, went to nothing and then repeated the pattern identically over and over again at about 5 second intervals going in a 45 degree angle from high up in the north sky to low down in the west! It seems unusual to have all this in the space of a few days,as I've only seen the odd things before. I wondered if anyone else has seen anything in the same area? I hope that from past star gazing experiences that I can distinguish between planes,helicopters,shooting stars and the like as the things I saw didnt bear any resemblance to the aforementioned. Please feel free to ask for any more Info,I'll provide what I can,and will try again with my camera if anyone can offer tips for that.

[edit on 9/7/2009 by dooleysleftleg]

reply to post by dooleysleftleg


same here since May 24th and every other night since a bright craft appears for an hour or so over the hills past heaton park in direction of the pennines. Something is happening i can't explain it but i love it the fact us English are now getting full on attention by Aliens gives me goosebumps!

The stars you described, in a straight motion could very well be satellites, You could try taking some video from your digital camera, maybe by laying it on its back, and letting it roll for 10 minutes when you see one passing over and if you catch one, it should be easy to rule it out as an option.


Other than that, with everything going on in the UK, what with the recent circles and photos of strangeness in the sky, it seems like a very good time to be looking up, and questioning a lot of what you see...

reply to post by dooleysleftleg


Just a couple of initial thoughts. Is there anything in particular that would lead you away from suspecting helicopters? You'd also want to discount VTOL aircraft & perhaps even the V-22 Osprey before moving on to something more exotic.

Is there a military base in your area?

Frequently people catch images on camera that they did not see when they took the picture, so you might be lucky in skyfishing- just taking random shots of the sky over areas you think might be of high activity.

There was a young man who took a picture of a plane doing aerobatics over England and on the resulting image was an ufo following the plane. It was published in the Sun magazine, or newspaper.

People have taken images of unexplainable things they didn't see with the naked eye- ghosts, ufos, unknown entities and the like.

reply to post by star in a jar


yeah i do agree it works pretty good, i've done that a few times

reply to post by star in a jar


Skyfishing....
Best, term, ever.

I live in the south of England and like the op i have also seen these bright lights. I saw 8 in a 15 minute period on tuesday night. They look like stars. Some move a lot quicker than others. I have also seen one that changed direction. Like the op it was too cloudy to see them last night.

It sounds like you could just be seeing satellites to me. Most people dont notice them at first but there is usually at least 4 in view crossing the sky at any one time.

Hi mate, I live near Manchester and I have been seeing them for a while. Some have the typical look/speed of a satellite, but others are just too fast.
Below is a 5 sec exposure of one crossing overhead heading NNW.

Tips on capture:-

If you can manually set the ISO on your camera try and get to 800.
If you can manually set the Aperture get is as low as poss (e.g

EDIT.. Double post sorry....

[edit on 9/7/2009 by UKWO1Phot]

Well looking in the news archives on Google
there are dozens of UK sightings almost everyday

news.google.com...

Many more sightings than usual

very strange, 2008/2009 have seen a huge increase in UFO sightings

It's great that video cameras are so cheap now

I'd say you have been observing lots of satellites, but most prominently the International Space Station. The ISS has been passing over the UK all week and will continue to make up to four passes at night for another ten days or so. It's accompanied by an unmanned Russian Progress module at the moment, which will test out its self-docking maneuver on 12 July.

You are ideally placed to watch this happening with your own eyes. All you need is clear skies (I wish!). Actually photographing the ISS is difficult and you need a good telescope with a camera attached. No ordinary camera alone will show anything other than a point of light or a streak across the sky, depending on the exposure time. Telescopes show all the solar panels, etc.

If you're interested in following it up, go to the Heavens Above Website and set up a free account. You can then enter your location and it will predict not only the ISS passes, but lots of other satellites visible by eye. You could even try to spot the toolbag one of the astronauts lost a few months back. It's still out there orbiting the Earth and it can be predicted with enough accuracy for people to follow it as it streaks across the sky at 24,000 mph. This is a difficult object to spot and binoculars are needed. There's lots of other bright stuff to see. You'll wonder why you never checked it before.

WG3

reply to post by warrenb


Didnt you know?

The UK is like SOOOOOOOOOO the best place to be in the Earth Sector of the Galaxy ,

I for one welcome all our Alien friends be it Pleadians,Nordic's,Korendians,Gliesians etc etc

If you look at the moon now, to the left you can see a bright star which is Jupiter!

But it actually looks even closer than it is and looks like its hovering over the south area, look now

*Edit: If your in the UK

[edit on 9-7-2009 by the plan from the man]

I think the white ball of light you describe is the ISS.

I have been watching this over the past few days, it went over again tonight and to the naked eye it looks like a bright star or ball of light going over.

Lots of movement high up there at the moment.

CX.

Originally posted by dooleysleftleg
Over the past 5 days, barring last night as the cloud cover prohibited any star gazing, I have been seeing more and more strange lights in the sky! I dont profess to be any sort of expert on U.F.O's,Aircraft or Natural phenomena so was wondering if anyone could shed any light on what I've been seeing or give any tips on how I might be able to capture these on film or photograph.I have tried with my camera phone and 5 megapixel digital camera and cant get anything other than a blurry light on the digital and just blackness on the phone. I know it may be hard to say what Im seeing from just my reports but there maybe some detail I mention which makes it an aeroplane at high altitude or a shooting star etc. Anyway, what I am noticing look very similair to stars in size and colour,they move either really slowly or very fast. They nearly always stay in a straight line however one did arc slightly and another seemed to have a smaller (for want of a better word)star arc away from the front of it. Me and my g/f's brother saw 5 of these in a 25 minute period on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning,I personally had seen 2 on Sunday and 3 on Monday and just the 1 on Saturday.Now I must admit that the whole paranormal/ufo thing fascinates me and I do seem to have a lot of things associated with these fields occur in my life so I sometimes wonder whether I can be truly objective in my judgement and whether or not I sometimes make something out of nothing because Im wanting things to happen. At least Im aware of this,so having the future brother in law there on one of the nights when there was most activity really helped me put things in perspective and made me aware not everything I was seeing was a 'spaceship'.On that same night we witnessed a very bright white ball move from west to east and a quik pace and disappear behind cloud cover.On the Saturday I saw a flash of light which then dimmed, went to nothing and then repeated the pattern identically over and over again at about 5 second intervals going in a 45 degree angle from high up in the north sky to low down in the west! It seems unusual to have all this in the space of a few days,as I've only seen the odd things before. I wondered if anyone else has seen anything in the same area? I hope that from past star gazing experiences that I can distinguish between planes,helicopters,shooting stars and the like as the things I saw didnt bear any resemblance to the aforementioned. Please feel free to ask for any more Info,I'll provide what I can,and will try again with my camera if anyone can offer tips for that.

[edit on 9/7/2009 by dooleysleftleg]

I live in Ellesmere Port mate and I have witnessed and filmed 2 of these lights tonight that sound like the same thing you are talking about!

These came from the West going towards the East and the second one arced slightly (apart from the slight arc on the second one they both were on a straight path).

There is no way at all that these lights were a satalite, plane or helicopter. I know what a satalite looks like and this was way brighter and bigger than a satalite. It could not have been a plane or chopper as this light was too bright and seemed too big for what seemed like its altitude. Also - I know that no planes fly in on the path or in the direction that these light were going.

I know these vids are really poor, there is nothing in the clip to reference from to see the speed of this thing and the fact that it was filmed on my digital picture camera does not help at all.

The light was brighter than it looks on the video and the first time moved at random speeds, second time it was a constant speed but it arced off to the South slightly.







[edit on 9/7/09 by Flying Sorcerer - finally figured out how to add a vid haha]

[edit on 9/7/09 by Flying Sorcerer]

would just like to point out that the sky was fully clear, not a cloud in sight. My cam is that crappy at video that it couldnt even pick up the brightest star in the sky! - thats how bright this thing was!

Also, after the first light I saw what did appear to be a satalite as it was much higher, smaller and dimmer than the bright light filmed and it was traveling in a similar direction and path. I also saw a plane go over at a high altitude and I could easily tell it was a plane.


After the second light I saw another satalite but this one was traveling from south to north where-as the unidentified light was traveling west to east.

Thanks for taking the time out to film them,my camera and phone are the same and pick up very little. I agree they cant all be satellites due to the change in speed and direction,although I believe most of them are. I continue to see these but not at the rate of those few days when I first posted this.It seems with your videos that we are talking about the same phenomena and once again thankyou for your post which helps back up mine and convinces me Im not going insane!

Yes.. the ISS really is that bright..

s292.photobucket.com...