I saw a strange object last night around 11pm 7th march UK time.

reply to post by Essan


Id estimate its direction as SW to NE

reply to post by gortex


It was around 11pm just after

reply to post by Ezappa


not too far from me than...

A good way to discover the sources of lights at night is this site. Put in your coordinates and get a read out of visible satellite flares.

Heavens-Above

The night sky is truly alive with satellite flyovers. I've had printouts of 30+ moderate to bright satellites to be seen on some nights. No more are the dark nights when we'd thrill to the tiny, dim Sputnik doing its once in a while overhead show.

The light you describe sounds like an Iridium flare, where sunlight reflecting off of solar panels gives a brief but eyecatching bloom of white light. The ISS tends to stay bright for a great deal of its path across the sky.

Some lights are broken satellites and debris that tumble and flash intermittently.

It can get to be a fun hobby if you're a star-watcher.

reply to post by czygyny


Im always in the garden at night as i smoke in the garden. and in all my years i have never seen anything like it.

It was so fast i was lucky to even see it. imagine someone throwing a ball past you at a fast speed and then it lights up for meter of its journey.

reply to post by Ezappa


I have no doubt that the sighting was noteworthy. With all the meteors, space debris and satellites out there the sky seems filled with all sorts of crazy lights.

I just want to let people know that MOST of what we see up there has a rational explanation and give them the tools to weed out the possibilites. Some, a small percentage, has no ordinary definition...and those are the truly (U)nexplained (F)lying (O)bjects.

I sleep outside from May until around October (until the weather drives me inside) I have seen and grown accustomed to many satellite flyovers. The ISS is always a winner, but my favorite are the 'tumblers', the broken bits of hardware that are a bit less predictable than whole satellites. I caught the flash of one that momentarily dazzled my eyes.

Of the years of my night sojourns I have only come across two incidences that I could not explain by normal means. One was a flyover of four 'satellite' type lights, flying in pairs. Satellites sometimes will follow close behind another one, but never side by side in sets of four. The other was a stationary 'flare' with no movement. I had just happened to be gazing at the right spot at the right time. It slowly grew to brilliance and then slowly subsided.

I can't wait for the weather to turn so I can be back out in it!

Originally posted by Ezappa
reply to post by Essan

 

It was way to fast to be a satalite.

it was like whooosh there 1 sec and then gone the next

edit on 8/3/11 by Ezappa because: (no reason given)

Comets don't move fast in the sky. Did you mean meteors?

I would say there is a good chance that that is what you saw. Occasionally a meteoroid will break into two, even before it is visible in the atmosphere. I have heard reports of "double-nucleus" meteors before, but I've only seen meteors that have already separated from each other, and they are following each other on their heels so to speak. That is actually fairly common to see if you spend lots of time observing meteors.

Originally posted by czygyny
Satellites sometimes will follow close behind another one, but never side by side in sets of four.

Actually they do! I saw a triplet a few years back whilst observing meteors.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.



I've never had the charts show satellites in four formation...but who knows? I've seen them travel in twos in a direct line, seen them travel in intersecting paths, but never two and two in close formation.

As rational and debunking as I try to be...even I wish for a bit of *extraordinary* to come about, now and again!

P.S. thanks for the link!

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


No it was definitely not a meteorite the light was to consistent.

Iv seen some amazing meteorites in the past but this was very different.

Can i just mention that the object i saw was not at the height of a typical meteorite or satalite. It was lower than a 747's ceiling.

Another person from the UK said they seen lights too, its in a thread I started on page 2 his name is Dark rift.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Ezappa
reply to post by C.H.U.D.

 

No it was definitely not a meteorite the light was to consistent.

Iv seen some amazing meteorites in the past but this was very different.

edit on 9/3/11 by Ezappa because: (no reason given)

There is no such thing as "too consistent" when it comes to meteors (they are only "meteorites" if they make it to the ground). I've spent 100's of hours observing meteors, and have seen in excess of 10,000 over the years. and I've seen lots of meteors that appear to be consistent, and over much longer times than yours. Some of the best were Leonid earth grazers, that shot across the sky in 2001.

I caught this grazer with my camera in the build-up to the Leonid storm of 2001, and at the time it looked smooth. The brightening/dimming at the ends was barely perceptible, partly due to the speed and surprise of seeing something so amazing!



That grazer was not the most consistent grazer I saw that night either, and I've seen meteors that were much more consistent over a long path, although not as impressive as the bright Leonid grazers I saw/photographed.

Unfortunately we don't make very good witnesses, especially when it comes to dramatic events that occur in a short space of time. The brain can often "color in a picture" when there is no color in it. This is quite well documented, although the precise mechanisms behind it are not fully understood.

Any investigator worth their salt would take this into account when investigating a case of this nature.

Preconceptions can also influence what a witness remembers, i.e. if they hear an explosion, they expect to see fire and will remember seeing it. Children have more open minds and are often more reliable than adults.

Note that gender is not a factor in assessing reliability. No significant variation seems to exist in comparing the accuracy of adult female and male observers.

7.3. Credibility. Certain aspects of human nature come into play when a person witnesses, or is part of, a dramatic event:

- Witnesses rarely observe all of an occurrence, and even if they do the tendency is to report those events which were most vivid.


- Witnesses, when questioned in detail, become aware of gaps in their observations and, in hope of saving face, apply logic, answer in generalities, and add to their statements to make their observations seem more plausible.


- Witnesses who offer very specific information about altitude, airspeeds, or maneuvers must be viewed with caution, since even eyewitnesses with aeronautical experience have difficulty with these estimates.

USAF Witness Interview Guidelines

I've bolded the important bits.

My best guess and that's all i can do without anything else to go on here would be that you see a black RAF project or US

Are there any RAF/USAF Airbases near you?

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


I highly doubt it was a meterorite hes already told us it looked like a very fast plane/jet and has provided us with a flight path, i don't know of any horizontal flying meterorites

reply to post by BRITWARRIOR


Yes there are RAF bases not as many as there used to be though. I lived on RAF Finningley when i was a kid. RAF Finningley is now Robin Hood Airport, about 10 miles from my current location.

Originally posted by BRITWARRIOR
i don't know of any horizontal flying meterorites

Then you have not done any research into meteors, because they are very real:

Have you even considered that the apparent direction of a meteor depends on the location of the observer in relation to the meteor, and taken into account that Earth/our atmosphere is spherical - not flat?

I posted the following on another thread the other day:

Consider this diagram It's exaggerated, but demonstrates what is going on.:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/95efe8242439.jpg[/atsimg]

If you are the observer (B), it will look to you like the meteor has fallen (downwards) just behind the mountain, but the observer (A) who is observing the same meteor from a few hundred miles from your location, and over the horizon will see something completely different. He/she would see the meteor apparently going up, and away from the horizon!

An observer in another location might see the meteor flying apparently horizontally. Meteors that appear to travel horizontally, or shoot upwards are usually caused by earth grazing meteoroids/asteroids.

See how easy it is for a meteor to look like it is doing something that it is not?

I have seen meteors go up, down, sideways, and even stand still! I've even photographed them on occasion, like this Leonid grazer that I posted a reply or two above this one.:

I also saw a similar object but I saw that object at about 4am in the morning

Thanks for all the reply posts concerning my sighting. I still dont know what it was but it was still spectacular to see. It didnt look like a meteorite i have seen before but we all learn and see new things everyday.
Whatever it was will always be in the back of my mind.

Thankyou all

Ezappa