Mysterious blinking star-like objects

I left this thread alone today because I thought someone would have answered this question. I believe what most of you are seeing is called "stellar scintillation" and is explained pretty well HERE

The atmosphere of earth bends and refracts the light coming from stars, revealing individual colors of the spectrum, creating a "twinkling."

reply to post by InsideYourMind


Not to travel off topic, i hope, but...
I started using apps on my ipad called starwalk and redshift, when i go out to smoke, and it has helped me with some of my feelings of " what was that?!"
especially when it comes to the ISS and satellites, because it shows orbital trajectories. It helped me memorize alot of star and constellation locations too, which is bonus.
I've still spotted a few odd orange globes that made no sound and flew very low, but i think they were obvious without the help of technology.
Eh, just a thought

i too saw flashing 'star' like object in the sky 2 nights ago, it was definitely not flashing like a aircraft and it was not a satellite as i have seen that many. more just random flashes but moving very slowy the flashes seen in different areas then almost going back on itself . then i saw a shooting star going the same direction as the flashing 'star' like object almost as if the flashing thing had attracted it like a magnet. im absolutely bemused at what i have seen. it was the 27th sep 2011 about 10.30 ish. i live in west yorkshire

Originally posted by InsideYourMind
Hi, just been outside in the early morning hours for a cigarette and to watch the sky (very clear night) here in Bristol. Observing the skies as always looking out for satellites, shooting stars and the likes. I was facing east and looking vertically up for a few minutes and saw a flash slightly lower down from my view in the corner of my eye. @ Approx. 4:45am

Anyway, i immediately looked to where this flash came from and thought "that was odd" when it happened again, so i stood there trying to guess where the next flash would happen (as if it was an object in orbit, reflecting the sun). But it appeared to have no obvious flightpath across the sky, the object was only visible during the brief flash, which also varied in brightness every other time it occurred. There was a random delay between flashes (5-30 seconds) and it appeared to change speed.

So as i was watching this thing go upwards (from east to west) it suddenly appeared about an index finger (at arms length) to the right of my view. Immediately after that, there was a very odd burst of small flashes around where i guess this object was and it left a smear of white light for about half a second (like a long exposure photo of car headlights moving during the night) . Next thing i know this blinking light is now traveling down-wards and literally 1-2cm (at arms length) to the east of Jupiter in the sky, whereas before it was traveling upwards from my view and was approximately 2 index fingers away from Jupiter. Blinked several more times and just disappeared...

Its the kind of flash as if you could imagine someone snapping a photo at night from a long way away facing your direction. The thing that really gets me, is these lights never appear on the horizon, they just start blinking for a short moment in a random part of the sky.

I'm posting this thread because i want to know what this was. I have tried researching things like "star-like flashing lights in the sky" but never found anything which fits what i have seen. Shooting stars, satellites, ISS, space-junk, just doesn't fit. I watch the sky for at least an hour every night when the stars are visible, and i do know what a satellite (artificial or man-made) behaves like.

Now i know this probably isn't that interesting just being a blinking light, but i have wondered for a long time what these mysterious flashes are? I know of the flaring effect when satellites reflecting sun-rays from their solar panels as they rotate, for example. However that does not explain the erratic movement between flashes, such as chicane-like movements, blinking twice in the exact same spot, or even doubling back on itself. As well as the fact this is just a flash/blink that happens almost instantaneously, in an on-off fashion.

I've watched several of these things in the past and all pretty much act in the same way as i tried to explain here. Its really bugging me that i can't find an explanation for it. Any ideas?

By the way, if anyone seen these strange flashes this morning (4-5am england) then please post about it, i'd really like to know what it could have been. Thanks.

i too saw flashing 'star' like object in the sky 2 nights ago, it was definitely not flashing like a aircraft and it was not a satellite as i have seen that many. more just random flashes but moving very slowy the flashes seen in different areas then almost going back on itself . then i saw a shooting star going the same direction as the flashing 'star' like object almost as if the flashing thing had attracted it like a magnet. im absolutely bemused at what i have seen. it was the 27th sep 2011 about 10.30 ish. i live in west yorkshire

Ya, I have seen an irridium flare once...was very cool. Never even knew about such things before (was satellite watching when aliens took a picture of me )

I guess you can actually track em on some websites to know exactly when and where you may see one...however, I am not sure how considering some of them are caused by "tumbling" satellites (spinning).

Fun to notice new and unique stuff in the night sky, isn't it.

Originally posted by geezpinky
I'm no where near you at all I'm in northern Arkansas, but my grandpa and I saw a flash in the sky last night. My grandparents live out in the middle of the country so it's pitch black outside when the porch lights turned off. I was leaving their house, I was walking out to my car, and my grandpa was sitting on the porch smoking a cigarette. As I was getting in the car I just seen a white flash in the sky, I was facing the house and my grandpa was facing the road when it happened so he was looking behind me and I was looking behind him and it lit up the entire sky. I asked him if he saw it and he said "Yep, see alotta weird things in the sky sitting on this porch all night," and he went on the say he'd seen the flash before. I didn't see the source of this said flash, but I sat on the porch with him for a couple hours and listened to some of his stories. He mentioned that one of the times he seen the flashes (in Kosovo) that when the entire sky lit up there was one black patch in the sky in the shape of a circle (like a circle facing you) with a bite taken out of the top and bottom - that's exactly the way he explained it. He's recently retired from Interpol and came home from Kosovo only about 9 months ago, I consider him reliable but who knows - just sharing.

lightning

My husband, son and I all saw something similar in Oklahoma about 2 nights ago. It blinked for a while, then it seemed to move ever so slightly. We watched it for a while, then noticed it got closer. It was just an airplane, but it was too bright and too far away to be any normal airplane I've ever seen. It was triangle shaped.

Yes, I saw it tonight mate. I am in Ayrshire, Scotland.

It was my mum who noticed it, we could follow it for a few minutes. It appeared at the exact location you described, i know as I had been useing Google Sky to find certain stars.

I live in central scotland between Glasgow and Edinburgh and I see these lights often in the morning driving to work too. I tend to write them off as I stay between two busy airports but I agree it does seem odd. I noticed that I never see them when its dark only usually when its 'dusk'.

I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye a few nights ago but dismissed it and here's why. This explanation certainly doesn't apply to most of the flashes described in this forum, but it might help to explain some.
Several years ago, when I stepped outside to take my dog out at night, I noticed a white flash-streak across the sky out of the corner of my left eye. I thought it was something hitting our atmosphere. It happened consistently over the next few nights and I mentioned it to my husband and wondered if there was a meteor shower. A month or two later, during a routine eye exam, the ophthalmologist asked how my eyes were, and I said, fine, except for a few night flashes, which I mentioned as a joke. He then asked me if I noticed an increase in "floaters" in my eyes and sure enough, there had been. The flashes I saw happened as I was looking up, moving my eyes to the right. He explained that this was a partial breakdown of the support tissues of my retina, that isn't uncommon at my age. Things have settled down since then, until a few nights ago when it happened again, and sure enough, I've had more floaters than usual lately.
Again, my intent isn't to dismiss what people or describing, but only to offer one possible explanation for some.

I Swear God And I Swear My Mum...I also Saw The Similar Thing..
ok so we ( me and my friends ) were going to the rat temple here ( Im From India ) cuz of some occasion and my friend went to take his car with other friend on Bike, Me aNd My Friend Were waiting for them so i asked him to come with me to have a smoke so we went to a nearby store and got our cigarettes...and near the place there is a railway track, and trees and on the distance of some meters, there are houses, so i was looking up in the sky, and was talking to my friend about something, suddenly i noticed a star like object, a little bit bigger in size, and moving towards the north east.. i could clearly see smoke it was leaving behind too... the storeman and some old people who were smoking and talking there also saw, some illiterate old people said its a broken star ( lol they don't know what stars really are ) otherwise, it moved so fast and didn't just disappear, could see it for more than 1 minutes, my friend said its a UFo, i said crashed one lol ...otherwise, whatever it was, so many people saw it, and it was just #ing awesome, loved it...
and today too, i saw the similar thing but it just disappeared within 10sec. but i think today it was a broken star..
world is full of strange treasures.. i wish i find a alien Spaceship just as in the green lantern... and get some power ring..lol

Originally posted by wWizard
I left this thread alone today because I thought someone would have answered this question. I believe what most of you are seeing is called "stellar scintillation" and is explained pretty well HERE

The atmosphere of earth bends and refracts the light coming from stars, revealing individual colors of the spectrum, creating a "twinkling."

edit on 28-9-2011 by wWizard because: fixed spelling

Yes, but stars don't bounce around, that I know of anyhow.

ETA I did address scintillation on page 5.

Not sure if what I saw is the same as the OP but have seen this twice. First was in February. What I saw literally looked like what happens when the Enterprise goes into warp on Star Trek TNG...a big bright flash followed by what would normally look like a satellite. The second time in April. I was looking at what appeared to be a satellite and the same thing happened only this time it disappeared after the flash. Both times the flash took about 2 seconds to reach it's peak and was about 3 times the size of Jupiter on a clear night.
I'm not speculating this was anything ET but in all my years of skywatching, this was a first...and a second which makes it all that more odd.

The other night I was playing xbox in my buddies basement when I noticed a flash out of the corner of my eye. I assumed it was a cars headlights as there is a road pointed at his window until he said, "Oh it must be thunder and lightning out". The flash apparently lit up the entire sky. The weirdest thing is that all of southern New Brunswick was clear that night. I'm pretty sure it was the 26th, did anyone else observe an intense flash like this?

Aliens Baby, Aliens....

im in clevedon (just a few miles west of bristol down the coast) and have been seeing the very same flashes past few nights, more above the plough area! Orion just coming into view on east horizon at very early hours 1/2! Well im glad im not going mad!

OP i have seen what you have described here in florida a month or so ago i saw a flashing white light heading generally eastward slower than any sat, plane, meteor even caught it with my telescope it was moving so slow the brightness got dimmer and dimmer as it got closer to the horizon it was in view for atleast 30 minutes probally longer since i went inside after a while and coincidentally the time of the sighting was close to yours 4:00 am E.S.T though the only thing i saw was flashing lights nothing else

Does anyone ever experience something like this; You go about your daily business as usual and then you see something you have never seen before, or you hear a word you have never heard before or haven't heard in years, then the following days or weeks after hearing or seeing the uncommon or unknown item you see or hear the word or objects multiple times?

I am asking this because just last night my mother and myself were standing in front of her home when she noticed a star doing very unusual things. It would seem to be blue, next, a light green, and then a white color. We watched the mysterious star for 30mins-1hr and noticed it doing some more strange things.

The star was covering a good amount of sky and traveling in the same direction, when it altered it's course by 90 degrees and followed that path for several minutes before turning 90 degrees right and eventually back to it's original path. After 45minutes or so the strange 'star' became hidden when it traveled beyond the horizon and behind some trees.

It was also interesting in other ways. It seemed to change colors, like described above but it also had other strange lights visible at different times. The 'star', while cahnging colors, would also have what appeared as a very fast streak of light with an unknown origin hitting the star. This happened 3-4 times while we were watching.

We got an old camera out with a decent zoom and tried to get a better view by sooming in. The star was larger, but there was not much difference from naked eye view.

I am not sure if this is related or not, but during the time we were watching the strange object we heard a jet engine - (not sure if it was commercial or otherwise). An airplane came into view and made a couple passes over the area. Then it flew toward the light in the sky, banked to the right and essentially circled the light in the sky before continuing on a path away from the plane's origin.

It was definitely one of the more strange things I have seen first hand, but have no idea what it was.

When I read the OP, it reminded me a lot of how I would describe what we saw last night. I thought it was interesting that since we saw light in the sky there is now a similarly described occurrance.

Hope you find a satifactory explanation for what you saw, if you have yet to do so.

Ea

reply to post by esteay812


Wow! I read the OP and my post was a direct response to the OP. After taking just a few more minutes to scan over several peer posts, it seems as if something similar to what I saw is being reported by many others, in many different locations throughout the world.

Thanks for the thread! We may have never realized that several of us have seen what can be described as similar experiences, with very similar 'stars' in the sky

Originally posted by EvanJP
I have seen this as well, in Florida.

Actually, many strange things in the skies as of late..


And yes, I have seen the flashing stars, wondering if they are planets or what, but they sure don't look like it.

edit on 28-9-2011 by EvanJP because: (no reason given)

I saw this too (I think it's the same object) here in West Palm Beach and I thought it was the UARS coming down. Then I thought it was Betelgeuse and then, I just gave up.
This object was red and green.