Flashes/Tiny explosion-like in the sky over New Zealand, anyone else seen? What is it?

Spotted several of these, bluish white, fraction of a second flashes, as bright as Sirius. Spotted one at a time at a very small area of the sky South East of Manukau around 6 p.m. today. The flashes were several minutes apart. At this time in NZ, 6 pm means the sky is dark, almost black already so stars can be seen

The flashes don't look like stars which are incredibly tiny points, they had some diameter and eerily look like the visible warp flashes of starships in Star Trek fiction.

The funny thing is I also spotted similar but less brilliant event, same time last week. There are no aircraft or artificial satellites in the area. Although plenty satellites frequent the area(going South from North), they tend to be visible by reflecting sunlight and orange in color due to sunlight passing through the atmosphere. But none of them during the sightings. Satellites here are so plenty that they sometimes cross paths... Definitely not planes due to absence of navigation lights

What is it? Head-on meteors, but isn't such phenomena a rarity? Did not see even one tailed meteor during those events. Supernovas? Weather balloons? Pranksters flying RC w/e? Any classified scientific experiments conducted in the sky? Anyone who had a better answer, thanks! It can be bothersome as I see weird phenomenon in NZ skies with such regularity and I really don't stargaze or w/e!

I live in California so have no clue as to what you are speaking, but i suggest checking the Mufon UFO tracker for the next week or so to see if anyone posts pics or comments about them.

I live in California so have no clue as to what you are speaking, but i suggest checking the Mufon UFO tracker for the next week or so to see if anyone posts pics or comments about them.

reply to post by ahnggk


The sky over Manukau is not black.
Manukau is a suburb of NZ largest city, with a lot of ground lights etc disrupting the dark sky.
It is also under the flightpath to Auckland Airport and with the westerly winds last couple of days, planes fly over that area of the city in order to land.
Another spurious post without evidence to back it up.
This part of the city is also host to lost of methamphetamine users, who are out of their brains a lot of the time.
Flashing lights could be the cops!

South East of Manukau is the airport and one of the main landing flight paths, flashes several minutes apart sounds like flight path to me,,,
let me see,, winds were south south west right which means the planes would be in a south east landing pattern as shown by this map.
the fact you saw it each friday suggests a reguluar pattern,, even the flights form other parts of NZ come into land about that time. Maybe atmospherics were causing some distortion to your vision,





www.mysteriousnewzealand.co.nz... sources/nzflightvectors/downloadables/nzflightvectors_lowres.jpg

Between 17:00hrs and 18:30 hrs these is between 25 to 30 flights arriving both domestic and international.

There is a satellite that went up a few months ago called Nano-sail D which is highly reflective and create such flashes at night. I'm sure I saw the flash twice also. NASA released an article about it a while ago and I remember reading on it creating the flashes.

I can not find the article on NASA news about the flashes, it may have been a question and answer section of it.
It is there somwwhere, just hard to find it. Sorry

Sounds like a tumbling irridium flare or as mentioned the nanosail d.

www.calsky.com...

I'm very familiar about the planes that fly around, I'm aware that they are plenty in our airspace, I drive daily to the airport and to the airfield weekly day and night. More importantly, I have better than 20/20 vision(unaided) and can clearly distinguish a plane the size of Boeing 737(with navigation lights on) apart from anything else over 100,000 ft away in the night sky

I'm also aware that planes unless of the armed forces conducting a sortie will keep their navigation lights on, day or night.

I'm also aware that planes can project with what seem to be a brilliant point of light from afar, just far enough that you can barely see the blinking navigation lights, using their landing lights - but these lights tend to be yellowish, I have never seen a plane with bluish white landing lights yet. Even then, even if the plane is turning, the brilliant 'flash' won't come and go in a fraction of a second, it will be gradual and smooth - if the former was the case, the aircraft is definitely out of the ordinary!

Planes are also equipped with powerful strobe lights that could light up whole clouds like lightning. They can also be bluish white in color, but the flashes aren't sent in a narrow beam. 100% of the time, if you can see the strobes, you'll see multiple flashes in several seconds and it will be 'moving' in a straight line, unless the plane is turning.

Finally, if it is a helicopter, it can't be far away, because they don't point their search light(also bluish white) on great distances, because it's pointless. Thus, you should hear them. No sound of a helicopter was heard.

It would be a great challenge for me to get video evidence of this due to inferior equipment. But I really don't care, and isn't the point of this post. I only want to know if anyone else has seen one and maybe has a better idea what it is. If it helps, the flashes do look like head-on meteors (meteors pointed directly towards you that you only see a flash of light and no tail). But head on meteors are a rarity and most common during meteor showers but then, you should also see plenty more normal meteors.... But head-on meteors only, in a relatively short span of time, does seem realistic in term of statistics. I'd be extremely lucky if that was the case.

reply to post by ahnggk


Has'nt this area been subjected to small earthquakes of late? There's more coming in June for NZ in this region plus Taupo and CHCH region but nothing to worry about.

im in england very interesting though i suggest checking the Mufon ufo tracker the next week or so to see if anyone posts pics or coments on the flashes peace.

Originally posted by pazcat
Sounds like a tumbling irridium flare or as mentioned the nanosail d.

www.calsky.com...

Thanks man! I think you provided the right answer!

I was looking at some youtube vids of 'Tumbling Iridium' one of them looked very similar to what I saw.

www.youtube.com...

I apologize if I caused some alarm! Pardon me for my ignorance with this stuff!

Originally posted by bluemirage5
reply to post by ahnggk

 

Has'nt this area been subjected to small earthquakes of late? There's more coming in June for NZ in this region plus Taupo and CHCH region but nothing to worry about.

The whole of NZ is subject to small earthquakes on a daily basis, there is nothing newsworthy in that. It is teh occasional big ones like ChCh x 2 that make news.

Ive seen hundreds of what the OP is talking about over the last 10 years where i live in the Waikato (right on the edge of a small rural town) since we have very low light pollution (the milkyway even on a half moon night is fully visible arcing over the sky) its good for seeing many meteors, flares and satellites every night.

What your seeing OP is for the most part point meteors... basically the meteor is hitting the atmosphere perpendicular to the direction you are looking as such all you see is a point of flashing light that lasts a very brief time. They also have a habit of happening in small groups around a small area in the sky, im assuming this is other tailing debris hitting the atmosphere later. For someone else a god distance away the same 'point flash' would appear as a very short streak id assume.

That being said, i have seen the odd irregular repetitive flash of light that follows a trail in the sky, could be a tumbling satalite, but they are often very irregular in strength and timing the flashes occur unlike most satellites ive seen (and they arent iridium flares since ive seen many of those and these are not the same).

So yeah OP id say your seeing is point meteors from personal experience... im still waiting for the big one when I see a point meteor and its big enough to make it to the ground (hopefully close by) id jump in the car and go find where it landed, and sell the little bugger...

Originally posted by BigfootNZ
Ive seen hundreds of what the OP is talking about over the last 10 years where i live in the Waikato (right on the edge of a small rural town) since we have very low light pollution (the milkyway even on a half moon night is fully visible arcing over the sky) its good for seeing many meteors, flares and satellites every night.

What your seeing OP is for the most part point meteors... basically the meteor is hitting the atmosphere perpendicular to the direction you are looking as such all you see is a point of flashing light that lasts a very brief time.

Always loved exploring Waikato, the nearest, nicest, non-urbanized areas around! Whenever I go south to Waikato, I usually avoid the motorway and appreciate the spectacular dreamy-looking fogged scenery!

The link Mr Pazcat gave actually put the tumblers/flares at roughly the same time and spot in the sky I saw it. Multiple point meteors are still possible but less likely