Something Strange During 2015 Perseid Meteor Shower

originally posted by: AceWombat04
If we can narrow down a general location, I'll try to point my telescope in the vicinity tonight or whenever it's clear and take a look. (Unless we're speculating that this phenomenon is limited to the meteor shower.)

Peace.

That would be awesome!

I have marked the spot where I saw it here:

a reply to: AceWombat04

For me it was NE in what I believe is the Radiant point. At the bottom of the constellation is a sort of "row of stars" that looks like one is missing..lol..my experience was the 2nd star in that line up that does not exist kept filling itself in then disappearing.... For me it was always that exact spot...it was amusing because along with looking for meteors I kept looking for that as well.

Normally, I'm a lurker around here. There have been 36K posts since I last logged in according to the screen that shows right after you log in. However, I couldn't resist logging in to reply to this thread. Last night, I too was watching the meteor shower (from Central Florida). I also noticed some very odd flashes in the sky.

Seeing as I am from Florida, I am quite used to seeing all sorts of lightning; during all sorts of weather conditions, from all sorts of directions, and from all sorts of distances. I will essentially echo everyone else on here talking about these flashes, but I wanted to add two things: 1) the light flashes seem to be of the same intensity across the entire visible horizon (read: not brighter in one direction than another), and 2) the "star" I see in relation to the light appears to wobble. Here's a video that I shot in 2012 that depicts the "wobbling" UFO/thing. You'll need to watch in fullscreen (as the video is in portrait) and turn up the brightness on your screen. Wish it were better quality, but hopefully you'll be able to see two UFOs. The first is in the dead-center of the screen flashing, the second is slightly up and slightly to the right of dead center; the second one is the wobbling one I'm talking about. Freaked me out in person, as it was MUCH brighter than the video shows.

a reply to: Aqualung2012

With it being such a common occurrence there must be a simple explanation, satellites reflecting sunlight could be a logical explanation. I remembered something a few astronauts had mentioned about seeing flashes of light, Cosmic Ray Visual Phenomena its called. Even though it mentions occurring outside the magnetosphere I wonder if a few are strong enough to penetrate to make it to us as tiny little flashes of light in the night sky.

originally posted by: ngchunter
I did catch a couple of meteors though.
h.dropcanvas.com...
The Andromeda galaxy and Pleiades are also present in the shot. I didn't even set up the telescope, this was just a very simple shot with an SLR on a standard tripod, no tracking, 30 second exposures.

Wow that's really amazing shot!

Just got back from being out and about all day...

First, I have to say I'm moderately taken aback by the response this thread has gotten.
It's great to see so many of you who don't normally post decide to contribute to this experience.
It's also surprising just how many of you are reporting such similar things.
Was not expecting that at all. It seems most of you weren't expecting this thread either.

To those asking about the location of my "sightings;" I can't place which direction I was looking on each night, nor which constellation was nearby; mostly just because I didn't know the directions at the time.
I can look it up... will update.

All of the information offered to possibly explain the lights so far has been great.
There is no denying that this must be (becoming?) a common occurrence worldwide... regardless of its nature and origin.
A few of the explanations seem very realistic and likely, but I definitely wouldn't say "mundane," whatever it really is.

Glad to hear from you.

Well I believe the poster that responded to me is correct about the geostationary satellites. I just saw the exact same thing in the exact same spot one hour earlier than last night. Pretty cool. In all of my sky watching I haven't seen a satellite of this type and now I've seen it two days consecutive.

a reply to: Aqualung2012

I' have seen this.. I saw this three to five years ago, I didn't mark a date. essentially what I saw was 3 intermittent flashes of light in my peripheral vision which garnered my attention. Upon which I saw three more intermittent flashes evenly timed and in the same spot in the sky, then I saw what looked like a fireball from the same spot and it did a zig zag motion in sky and then abruptly disappeared that was it. Never could really explain just what it is I saw. Wish I had a date or year even I just have a range.

a reply to: Aqualung2012

Something that I've noticed, and it doesn't happen enough, is sometimes a member makes a thread that is universal, and thus apolitical. Those are the threads where members come together and discuss without derision. We work together and figure something out.

You have created one of those threads here, and I congratulate you, and thank you. I truly love this side of ATS. Hopes of these types of threads are what keep me coming back.

Amazing that so many people see this.. it got curious, yesterday we had to much cloud covering and thunderstorms, so I totally missed the meteor shower..

I'm going to look tonight from the point I live and that's in Europe. Maybe I pick a glimpse of what you guys all talk about ..
It almost feels like we're waking up in the matrix. .

a reply to: 0bserver1

Seems we all have been seeing the same thing yet not speaking about it. Which is interesting but i suppose I never said anything because, I dismissed it as some explainable phenomenon albeit on I can't explain. My x wife was with me and what I saw does defy logic it's amazing what is happening here. Perhaps this is something mundane or who knows. It's just even more striking that so many have seen it yet remained in silence.

a reply to: Aqualung2012

I don't post here much but yes I have seen this phenomenon at my dads house. It seemed to do it for hours.... I gave up watching after a while... Couldn't explain this and had a few other people watching a puzzled as well.

originally posted by: DupontDeux

originally posted by: AceWombat04
If we can narrow down a general location, I'll try to point my telescope in the vicinity tonight or whenever it's clear and take a look. (Unless we're speculating that this phenomenon is limited to the meteor shower.)

Peace.

That would be awesome!

I have marked the spot where I saw it here:

Excellent. Clear skies permitting, I'll aim my telescope there and see what the viewfinder sees tomorrow night (too late tonight already. Apologies.)

Peace.

originally posted by: AceWombat04
Can everyone who saw it specify the location in the sky or general direction they were looking in? Some people have but others haven't. I've seen people say northwest, west, Cassiopeia, and the big dipper. Anyone else?

If we can narrow down a general location, I'll try to point my telescope in the vicinity tonight or whenever it's clear and take a look. (Unless we're speculating that this phenomenon is limited to the meteor shower.)

Peace.

.

looking east north east about 40 degrees

originally posted by: AceWombat04

originally posted by: DupontDeux

originally posted by: AceWombat04
If we can narrow down a general location, I'll try to point my telescope in the vicinity tonight or whenever it's clear and take a look. (Unless we're speculating that this phenomenon is limited to the meteor shower.)

Peace.

That would be awesome!

I have marked the spot where I saw it here:

Excellent. Clear skies permitting, I'll aim my telescope there and see what the viewfinder sees tomorrow night (too late tonight already. Apologies.)

Peace.

Yes there .

a reply to: TechniXcality
Well it has been mentioned on here years ago and the iridium flares came up as an explanation. I chimed in I saw it back then

OK, this video of an iridium flare is being posted just to show the differences between it, and what I saw. Here you see the flare somewhat slowly comes into view, flares, and then slowly disappears. Similarities: Stationary (actually, the flare does move somewhat in the video which doesn´t happen with the flash), brightens, and then disappears. Differences: Size (the flash is much smaller) , duration (literally a quarter of a second at best, however you could still see the lumination deteriorate to blackness. It was not an instantanious flash like that from a camara, although if you didn´t directly observe it "head on", and it caught you by surprise, you might think that), and in my case, when observing Cassiopia, repeated once more a few seconds later, but not directly in the exact same spot. You can either say there were two separate flashes, just very close to each other, or they were generated by something that was moving and flashed twice. Singular flashes observed in other sections of the night sky behaved the same way.

Seems to me we can conclude that, as of now, this phenomena is happening at night, at differnt times, around the globe (so far only Northern Hemisphere sighting have been reported on this thread.) and seems to more commonly occur from a general area of sky encompassing the Big Dipper and Cassiopia.

originally posted by: AceWombat04
Can everyone who saw it specify the location in the sky or general direction they were looking in? Some people have but others haven't. I've seen people say northwest, west, Cassiopeia, and the big dipper. Anyone else?

If we can narrow down a general location, I'll try to point my telescope in the vicinity tonight or whenever it's clear and take a look. (Unless we're speculating that this phenomenon is limited to the meteor shower.)

Peace.

I cant remember the specific constellation, but both sightings where close to the zenith.

a reply to: Aqualung2012

Hi Aqualung2012.

This post is of particular interest to me because I have seen the exact same thing over the years, many times. I don't think it's rare, but because of the nature of the pin point flashes, they're easy to miss. What I've seen are single pin point flashes, double flashes and on occasion several flashes from the same point in the sky. The gaps between flashes can vary from less than a second, to 20 or so seconds apart.

Iridium flares are often brought into this subject (there are a number of similar discussions on the net and on this site) because they get very bright, or suddenly reflect light before tracking into shadow. What I feel we are discussing here though are those flashes that originate from just one tiny area of the sky, with no movement. On occasion, I've been lucky to be looking directly at these flashes and get the impression that it's not necessarily reflected light - I have a hunch that it's emitted light. If the light is coming from something man-made, the objects would need to be geo-stationary satellites.

As a result of looking around on the web, I realised that some some satellites for both military/scientific use use LIDAR and that some LIDAR may be in the visible spectrum. Could it be this?

Otherwise, I'm at a loss. Gamma ray bursts, other worldly flashes, cosmic particles hitting our eyes?

Great post. Thank you. We're not going mad fellow sky watchers!

Geostationary satellites do not move enough to see by eye. Even by telescope I can literally turn the power off and not notice any motion at all over several minutes. Most geosynchronous satellites would also likely not produce any visible motion over short time scales of a few seconds.

Well i used a software to go back in time to reproduce the sky at the night when i saw the flashes. They where far away from the geostationary satellite line, close to the zenith. Maybe you look at the picture and tell me what you think?