Green Fireballs , The Best Documented Examples of Unidentified Flying Objects

The green might indicate the influx of negative charges.

reply to post by TeslaandLyne


Are you saying the green colouring may be due to their propulsion systems or the green fireballs were misidentified aurora ?

Originally posted by gortex
reply to post by TeslaandLyne

 

Are you saying the green colouring may be due to their propulsion systems or the green fireballs were misidentified aurora ?

No sir, not aurora as I gave as an example of incoming electrons.
This from sources unknown perhaps as I doubt it might not be readily available on the net.

Yes, the fireball perhaps is a ship of some sort.

Surly we can't say for sure but there is the electropulsive motion theory out there that perhaps
people would like to go away and from what I hear tell as perhaps only a few might divulge
as a green inflow and red-orange outflow.

I know all these things are as puzzling as cow mutilations but may all be connected.
Well if the ships aren't flying they might be lying low on large ranges.

ED:electropulsive motion
but the theory lies here

word difference
ED: One would think that in theory the ship can move so fast they might hardly be seen.
Thus eliminating any sightings. Some how the slower speeds bring out the lights.
ED++: The mention of Sandia Base kind of hit the conspiracy spot:
a spot where things are developed

Green Fireballs Now that is something interesting.

Meteorites to be sure yes? Like the famous Peekskill Fireball Meteor in Ney York that actually hit a car



And the big one in Canada

Police dash cam of Meteor over Edmonton, Canada



However some green fireballs are NOT so easy to explain

For instance... the ones photographed leaving Earth by Apollo 7

Image # AS7-05-1613


Image # AS07-06-1700


Nice thread Now to look at your others

Originally posted by strafgod
im one of the lucky few who have seen a green fireball. the whole sky lit up green it was even big enough for me to see the object spinning inside the green flames. i dont think it was a ufo but who knows i just thought its copper that made it glow green idk.

I too saw one while camping in Ontario, Canada when I was young. Huge Bolide lit up the sky and broke up. Copper usually burns blue... zinc and nickel will burn green.

Just toss some copper wire into a bonfire and you will see. A galvanized pipe stuck in the embers (zinc coated) will give you the green

Also when oxygen is excited/heated, like a meteorite in the atmosphere, you will get green glow

I am an eyewitness to one of the Green Fireballs which were seen flying near Brisbane on 16 Mar 2006.
In Dr. Steven Hughes' report of the event, (eprints.qut.edu.au...)
it says:
"On the evening of Tuesday 16 May 2006, a bright light was seen passing over
the city of Brisbane and the Gold Coast in southeast Queensland, Australia at
about 18.18 h (08.18 h UTC). Sunset occurred at 17.00 h and the Moon (2 days
past full) was below the horizon."

Now there are some peculiar things about the media reports of the incident which still intrigue me. For example, I'm not 100% sure that the date and time that the fireballs were reported to have occurred are in fact the correct ones.
If the fireball came at 6:30pm, the sky should have been very dark, however, according to my memory of the event, which lasted about 2 seconds, it was not dark. I distinctly remember a fairly bright late afternoon sky. I know it was over 6 years ago now, and memories do fade, but I still vividly recall the "traffic light" green fireball moving almost horizontally East to West, against a _blue_ afternoon sky. A fireball against a dark sky would have a totally different quality about it. Why, then, do I remember it as being a daytime event? Does anyone else have any memory of it being a bright sky?

Another incongruity relates to the alleged photo of the same fireball, taken by an undisclosed member of the public, which can be seen as Figure 3 in Dr. Hughes report. It shows a fireball flying over the Brisbane CBD, but from the vantage point of the photo, the object would have been flying towards the South East, and originating far southwest of the Brisbane CBD. The fireball which I saw was definitely at least 20km north of Brisbane and definitely moving east to west. In effect, the two objects would have been flying parallel and towards each other, separated by about 100kms If they were related, such as being fragments of the same piece of space junk, how could they travel like that? Perhaps, and I'm only speculating, the one I saw moving to the west flew a broad arc around Brisbane and sped out towards sea over the Gold Coast. Dr, Hughes mentions how unlikely it would be that three unrelated fireballs would enter the atmosphere at the same time. In my paranoid opinion, I think that something quite extraordinary happened on that day, which somehow distorted the memory of those who saw it.

Ive seen a green fireball before, but it looked no different than any other meteorite ive ever seen. Maybe a little closer than the average meteorite, but it acted and looked the exact same.

I figured it was a meteorite that had a high copper content, or some other mineral that would burn green under high temperature. I didnt think of anything out of the ordinary. Although a meteor expert says otherwise... hmmm. Well what I saw did leave a trail although it did travel slightly slower than most meteors. Im a pretty shooting star watcher, so far this spring ive seen around 7. I dont go outside and stare up for hours on end, I just happen to look up at the right time.

crazy post

reply to post by zorgon


Intense, that is exactly what I saw. In Canada, around the great lake superior.

reply to post by keithb


We're on the same track, here's a full version of the paper with a full list of references.

www.scribd.com...

reply to post by Trexter Ziam


Thanks for the link Trexter , the Brisbane picture is interesting ... Aurora Australis maybe ?

I've found a video of the Green Fireball leaving Earths orbit photographed from Apollo 7 that was posted by zorgon .

Wilbur Allen -Edgar Mitchell UFO lecture 2012: UFO Forensic Files Green Fireball is a comparative analysis of Green anomalies imaged by Apollo 7, and Apollo 11, in 1969

From 1.30

Not everything that glitters is gold, just as not everything that glows green is a "fireball" or meteor.

Just to state the obvious, there are at least two different and unrelated phenomena that have been mentioned in this thread: Ball lightning and meteors.

Originally posted by gostr
Ive seen a green fireball before, but it looked no different than any other meteorite ive ever seen. Maybe a little closer than the average meteorite, but it acted and looked the exact same.

I figured it was a meteorite that had a high copper content, or some other mineral that would burn green under high temperature. I didnt think of anything out of the ordinary. Although a meteor expert says otherwise... hmmm. Well what I saw did leave a trail although it did travel slightly slower than most meteors. Im a pretty shooting star watcher, so far this spring ive seen around 7. I dont go outside and stare up for hours on end, I just happen to look up at the right time.

I pretty much agree with all of that.

Most green fireballs are just bits of comet/asteroid hitting the atmosphere. I'm not sure this so called "expert" was worth his salt. There are many basic mistakes he makes, for example:

"the object moved far too slowly to have been a meteor and left no trail of sparks or dust cloud as would be typical of meteors flying at low altitudes.

"too slowly" is wrong since perspective can heavily influence how fast a meteor appears to move How Fast is "Swift": An Exploration of Meteor Angular Speeds

"no trail of sparks or dust cloud" - none of these are necessarily present in all cases.

On top of that, he makes the basic error of thinking he can judge the altitude by simple observation, and gets it wrong by the sound of it, as many people do.

I do think there is probably nothing that unusual about most (if not all) green fireballs (in the case of meteors - ball lightning is less well understood as far as I'm aware), although they are cool to see.

As I wrote here, it's well known how misleading/confusing meteors can be, even fooling well educated people in many cases.

By the way gostr - copper content probably has little or nothing to do with the green color in meteors - the colour is not produced by "burning" (meteoroids don't burn, they "ablate"), but it can be influenced by speed as well as the composition of the air the meteoroid is moving through, which does vary at different altitudes: The photographed colours of Leonid meteors

I have seen a green orb a long time ago, around 1975-6, in Goiania, Brazil. I was 10 years old and that sighting has been on my mind since then. Two friends who were standing beside me also saw it. It was a perfect green phosphorus sphere without any trail, sparkles, glow or sound. It had a slow descending diagonal trajectory until it disappeared behind the tree-line. It was a clear night with no clouds. The green ball was two times bigger than a full moon. It didn't look like ball lightnings or meteorites.

a reply to: GreenOrb

What I love about the Green Type is they don't dilly dally or play the tag game................. They really seem on a mission and keep up the straight line which is so beautiful

Gortex - While I respect your contributions here, and elsewhere, this topic is probably the largest red herring in UFOlogy.

I did try and point out the flaws earlier in this thread, but I obviously did not do a great job, so I will try once again.

Basically it boils down to this:

Our atmosphere is constantly bombarded by natural rocks from space. When those rocks enter our atmosphere, they are generally traveling at velocities between 10 and 72 km/s. At these velocities, the air a meteoroid slams into, and the meteoroid itself is turned into a glowing plasma (ionization). Every element involved glows in a different (and very specific) colour/wavelength, so it possible to conclusively identify which elements are involved due to their color/wavelength.

It turns out that green is one of the most commonly observed colours in bright meteors and fireballs. I say "bright" meteors, because most meteors observed are not very bright, and in low light, human vision defaults to black/white, so most not-bright meteors appear white, even though they may have colour.

The main reason many brighter meteors appear to be green is because of the oxygen in our atmosphere, which emits green light at a wavelength of 557.7 nm (see the paper I linked to in my previous post). The faster meteor showers like Leonids (72 km/s) and Perseids (64 km/s) are exceptionally good at producing meteors that start out green, and sometimes continue to be green if they enter at low angles, since higher up in the atmosphere (where faster meteors become visible) oxygen is in a higher concentration than other atmospheric gases like nitrogen and carbon dioxide which when ionized will emit other colours/wavelengths of light.

Now meteor physics is quite complex, and many factors can come into play which will affect the appearance and colour of a meteor. The energy involved is crucial, with faster objects generating more green, because it takes more energy to emit green light at a wavelength of 557.7 nm, but the size of the meteoroid will also come into play. With a larger meteoroid there is more surface area, and more material (from the meteoroid itself) is ablated, and when ionized there are various elements which can also cause an overall green colour, although this is not always the case.

So we know meteors and fireballs are actually a fairly common occurrence - it is agreed that many tons of space rocks/dust rains down on earth each year.

We also now know that green is a very common colour in bright meteors and fireballs.

The only seeming sticking point here is that many of the witnesses of these green fireballs seem reluctant to acknowledge that what they observed was a meteor. However, if you take the time to look at witness reports of confirmed fireballs, it is often the case that people state that what they saw did not look like a meteor/fireball.

Having observed many meteors and fireballs myself, as well as the green variety, and read hundreds (if not thousands) of witness reports, is becomes blatantly clear that inexperienced observers are often not exactly sure what they have seen in many cases. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the beast. Most people have preconceived ideas about how meteors should look and behave, but with experience, an observer soon learns that meteors have a wide range of appearances and behaviors.

For starters, people do not have a good grasp of the possible trajectories meteors can take in our atmosphere (Were you aware meteors can seemingly travel upwards and away from the horizon for example? It's actually an illusion that they are traveling upwards!), and the sheer brightness is known to mislead people into assuming the meteor was much much closer than it actually was. Most people also assume that all meteors are fast, but that is not true either! Meteors can be fast, but they can also be exceptionally slow, and in many cases perspective plays a part, since perceived speed is affected by weather the meteoroid is traveling towards you, away from you, or none of the above. In extreme cases, if a meteor is heading directly towards you (known as a "point meteor"), it can even appear to not move at all.

So there are plenty of things that meteors do which can throw people off and make them think "that was not a meteor".

When I read the witness reports included with this thread, all the witness saying "no it was not a meteor", are simply behaving just like the thousands of other inexperienced observes who see meteors and fireballs, and are not quite sure what they have seen, even though their descriptions scream "fireball".

Given the above, there is no mystery to green fireballs. While not every event mentioned in this thread is related to "space rocks" obviously, it is by far the simplest explanation which fits most of the descriptions in this thread - Occam's razor.

I suppose "red herring" is the wrong term... this is more like a "green herring"!

So let me turn it around, and ask ATS: Why could the majority of green fireballs mentioned in this thread NOT simply be due to "space rocks"?

Does anyone even have a plausible answer based on actual facts/evidence? If not, then I would suggest once again that there is no mystery here, and the whole subject should be put to rest.

originally posted by: FireballStorm
then I would suggest once again that there is no mystery here, and the whole subject should be put to rest.

Green type ufo orbs are real Very rare compared to the white type and amber / orange type but they are out there for sure

The trouble with "experts"

...is that, it takes one, to know one.

So I have continued to research the subject at hand, and have further "insights" to add. Since Gortex seems to lend much weight to these fireballs due to the "expert" nature of the witnesses/people involved, I will just look at that aspect of this case.

Let's start with Dr. Lincoln LaPaz.

A little digging turns up the fact that his main area of study was in fact mathematics. While he did (later on in life) set up an institute to study meteor science, his main interest seems to have been in "meteorites" rather than "meteors".

Now, to the uninitiated, there might not seem to be much difference between these two fields of study, and indeed, they are closely related, but, in practice most people who study meteorites lack knowledge about the aerial phenomenon know as meteors, and vice versa. Indeed, his lack of knowledge regarding meteors, is plain to see for those who have what today would be considered a basic understanding of the subject.

You only need to look at his witness report, to see that there are large gaps in his knowledge of the subject, which I'll do so below.

He said:
"the object moved far too slowly to have been a meteor and left no trail of sparks or dust cloud as would be typical of meteors flying at low altitudes. Other anomalous characteristics were the intense lime-green color, low altitude of only 8–10 miles yet exhibiting no sound, flat rather than arced trajectory, and turning on and off like a light switch."

Let's break it down:

1/ "the object moved far too slowly to have been a meteor"

The most obviously erroneous statement of the lot. Any meteoriticist worth his or her salt would know this is a load of twaddle. As I've pointed out, meteors can appear to move fast, or slow, and even to not move at all!

2/ "left no trail of sparks or dust cloud as would be typical of meteors flying at low altitudes"

Firstly, not all meteors leave a trail of sparks or dust cloud.

Secondly, I've never seen any evidence that altitude (in particular, "low altitude") plays a part in either of these attributes, although the thicker atmosphere lower down does make it more likely to fragment (ie throwing off sparks), and while these attributes might be less likely at high altitude, they are just as likely at mid-altitudes as they are at low altitudes.

Thirdly, and most importantly, it's virtually impossible to determine the altitude of a meteor, unless photographs/triangulation are employed. It's unclear whether photographs/triangulation were involved in that particular case, but I have yet to see any evidence that they were...

3/ "Other anomalous characteristics were the intense lime-green color"

I've already established that green is a very common colour in meteors/fireballs, so why this would be considered an "anomalous characteristic", I really don't know.

So while the rest of his account does sound weird, the above, certainly rings alarm bells because he does not seem to know/understand the subject very well at all.

Now I'd never presume to proclaim myself to be an expert in the subject of meteors. There are people (though probably not that many) with a much deeper knowledge of the subject than myself, but I do strive to maintain an overall view of the subject, and occasionally probe a little deeper when there are particular aspects that interest me. The connection between meteors and UFOs is one aspect in particular that has interested me from the very start (of my interest in the subject - the 20th anniversary will be on Nov 17 this year), so I have paid more attention to the factors involved in that aspect of the subject, and those factors come up here, as they do time and again.

It has to be pointed out that our knowledge of the subject has exponentially increased since the times we are talking about here, so today's "basic" knowledge would have been "cutting edge" back then, and so with hind-sight, it is easier for someone else with basic knowledge today, like myself, to spot someone who is an "expert", and vice versa.

The same problem is also evident in much more recent history. For example, when I used to follow the big fireball threads that used to get going on ATS a decade or so ago (remember those?), there was nearly always an article posted, where the news agency contacted an "expert" to comment. The trouble was, any old astronomer, is not an "expert" in the field of meteor science, and in many instances, these so called "experts" made misleading statements!

It should also be pointed out that not every one thinks Dr. Lincoln LaPaz was a particularly trustworthy researcher according to wikipedia.

Regarding the 1947 Roswell incident, at least three witnesses, including two involved with Army and Air Force counterintelligence, claimed that LaPaz was brought in after the Roswell UFO incident to interview witnesses and reconstruct the trajectory of the crash object.[3] However, UFO researcher Karl T. Pflock discovered some facts that might call into question some aspects of this testimony. For example, one of the purported witnesses to LaPaz's Roswell involvement claimed that LaPaz spoke fluent Spanish, but by interviewing family members, Pflock discovered that LaPaz did not speak any Spanish[citation needed].

Continued from previous post...

That brings me to this part of the OP:

"On February 8 La Paz met with Dr. Joseph Kaplan, a UCLA geophysicist and member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. Kaplan, himself a meteor expert who agreed they could not be conventional meteorite falls and informed La Paz that he knew of no secret military projects that could explain the fireballs."

and this:

"In early 1952 Edward J. Ruppelt, director of the USAF Project Blue Book UFO study visited Los Alamos National Laboratory to speak to scientists who had their own green fireball sighting ,None of them believed they had a conventional explanation , Instead the scientists speculated that they were extraterrestrial probes "projected into our atmosphere from a 'spaceship' hovering several hundred miles above the earth,Ruppelt commented "Two years ago I would have been amazed to hear a group of reputable scientists make such a startling statement. Now, however, I took it as a matter of course. I'd heard the same type of statement many times before from equally qualified groups." "

I have nothing against scientists, but they are not the same thing as meteor scientists. It might seem like semantics to an outsider, but it does make all the difference.

Also, regarding the following:
On August 13, 1887 J.N. Lockyer of the Royal Society of London, "observed in the northeast a magnificent fireball of emerald-green colour, as bright as Jupiter, with a very slow motion."

This would almost certainly have been a Perseid meteor. The Perseids peak around that time every year, and the radiant (in the constellation Perseus) is in the northeast at the start of the night. Since the meteor was seen close to the radiant, this means the meteor would have been traveling towards the observer (much the same as the "point meteors" I mentioned above), and as we all know now, perspective can affect apparent velocity - think about "point meteors" which won't appear to move at all.

So a Perseid seen near the radiant will always appear to move slowly compared to one seen high in the sky and away from the radiant, which are the conditions under which meteors are observed from the side, rather than "head on".

Indeed, we know that Chinese observers, thousands of years ago, also would have observed the Perseid meteor shower (there is hard evidence for this), which on occasion prompted them to write "the stars fell like rain", so it's pretty certain green fireballs have been with us for a very long time. Considering that all it takes is a space rock and some oxygen, the conditions have been ripe for green fireballs on Earth long before humans arrived on the scene.

I hope my above posts have revealed other angles, which might have been overlooked previously, but which I believe hold the key to at least some "un-solved" mysteries. There are many lessons fireballs in general have in relation to UFOs which I think have been overlooked, which I can sort of understand, since it's not an easy subject to find reliable and up-to-date info on, but I'm more than happy to point anyone in the right direction if they are looking for more information on a particular aspect.

Funnily enough, while I have been writing this post (it's taken a few hours!), there has been a green fireball reported over the UK. I'm off to investigate further.

When are these stupid aliens going to learn to paint their flying thingamajigies with Ventablack?

OK... I am not doubting there is a lot of weird unidentified things in our skies, but for those that jump straight to the conclusion that they are alien UFO's I am not with that. The best piece of evidence for that sort of UFO is the TicTacs IMO. Then again maybe they are afterburners for some otherwise invisible spacecraft that doesn't give a damn if we see it.

I am just saying if some advanced alien species is sporting around the earth and doesn't want to be noticed especially at night then they will not be seen. Even we have the tech to do that.

originally posted by: ufoorbhunter
Green type ufo orbs are real

Very rare compared to the white type and amber / orange type but they are out there for sure

The things you refer to as "orbs" just happen to have many of the characteristics as meteors, satellites, aircraft on a path nearly directly towards you, dust particles or bits of "fluff" floating in the air, sky lanterns, etc, etc. All of these things and others can appear to be "orb like" in nature when observed under the right conditions, be it out of focus in a photograph or seen at distance in a dark night sky, or some combination of these and other factors.

All of the above have been reported as UFOs/orbs on this forum and many others, and in many cases are later conclusively shown to be due to (usually) one of the above causes. The explanations fit and are simple - Occams razor.

You are arguing that this is not the case (right?), meaning people are seeing objects that can not be explained.

I disagree, we already have perfectly good explanations for many of these reports which are backed up with very hard evidence. For example, green fireballs have had their orbits calculated, and been shown to have undeniably similar orbits to comets and asteroids.

I have yet to see a published orbit for an "orb", or any other real/hard evidence to support them, such as meteorites (or the "orb" equivalent), which is about as hard as it gets.

It is rather telling/convenient that, as I mentioned before, "orbs" just happen to have many of the characteristics of other perfectly ordinary phenomena under the right circumstances.

While I do agree that there are still some mysteries when it comes to orb like phenomena (ball lightning, earth lights for example), and there could be other, even more mysterious phenomena yet to be documented that is orb like, most UFOs' like the ones in this thread, can be fairly easily de-bunked by someone who understands the subject.

As usual though, the only argument, you have to back up your claims is "they are real". After all these years, that is the best you can come up with? Really?

I am willing to listen, but I'm still waiting to see any actual evidence, or even a coherent argument, that backs up your claims... if you want to be taken seriously?