Is it a star, planet, aircraft lights, satellite or.........a UFO? Find out here!

Lately, I have been posting some links over and over to various threads here in A&U so that people can identify or eliminate aircraft lights, stars, planets and satellites when they have seen something unidentified in the skies.

So, I am going to make a post of all the sites I have bookmarked and if anyone else has any others, let me know and I will add to the list.

When you see something up in the skies and you are unsure what it could be....first check out the following sites.



Satellites/ISS
Heaven's Above
NASA - Human Space Flight
Orbitron - Satellite Tracking System

Stars, planets
Stellarium
American Meteor Soceity Thanks to member youallcrazy

Aircraft
Aircraft Light Identification
Aircraft Light Identification - 2
Article on Helicopter Lights - they vary

Flightware - Live Flight Tracking Thanks to member youallcrazy

Launch Schedule
International Launch SchedulesThanks to member Pauligirl

And more identification:

1. Sensory Illusions in Aviation
   
2. Yehudi lights
   
3. IsaacKoi's Sky Lanterns Research Project
   
4. ElevenAugust's UFO misidentifications: Lens flares samples
   
5. Weather balloons and radiosondes (good example)
   
6. Compound observations
   
7. Atmospheric phenoemna:
   
   1. Lenticular clouds
      
   2. Sun dogs
      
   3. Ball lightning
      
   4. Earthquake lights
      
   5. TLEs
      
   6. Mirages
      
   7. Natural smoke rings
      Identified Flying Objects
      Request help identifying all govt. & civilian saucer-related projects!
      Faking UFO Photos for the Twenty-First Century.
      Thanks to member Xtraeme
      Classic UFOs misinterpretation: Subsuns by elevenaugust
      
      
      
      
      
      Subject to edits, updates, etc.....
      
      
      
      
      edit on February 29th 2012 by greeneyedleo because: (no reason given)
      

reply to post by greeneyedleo


Bookmarked, thank you.
Will be sure to put it to good use.

Excellent, bookmarked for later use as well =)

Edited because info was already in the OP.

SnF anyway because this is the type of information most people need to know before exclaiming "UFO!" when most of the time these UFO's are balloons or terrestrial craft.

reply to post by greeneyedleo

I'd recommend adding Laesie Work's "Identified Flying Objects." Also couldn't hurt to mention this thread I authored a long while ago, "Request help identifying all govt. & civilian saucer-related projects!" It's got a ton of strange aircraft designs.

Some others that I've collected:

1. Sensory Illusions in Aviation
   
2. Yehudi lights
   
3. IsaacKoi's Sky Lanterns Research Project
   
4. ElevenAugust's UFO misidentifications: Lens flares samples
   
5. Weather balloons and radiosondes (good example)
   
6. Compound observations
   
7. Atmospheric phenoemna:
   
   1. Lenticular clouds
      
   2. Sun dogs
      
   3. Ball lightning
      
   4. Earthquake lights
      
   5. TLEs
      
   6. Mirages
      
   7. Natural smoke rings

I can rattle off quite a few more, but that's all I've got time for. Great idea for a thread GEL!

reply to post by greeneyedleo


I would add flightaware.com...
and maybe something like
www.amsmeteors.org... for large meteors

Originally posted by greeneyedleo
So, I am going to make a post of all the sites I have bookmarked and if anyone else has any others, let me know and I will add to the list.

Good idea!

I also like the collection of photographs of various types of aerial phenomena at Caelestia.be, I gave some details in this post.

And I think this video is a classic, showing how easy it is to misidentify a flying object:

"CAUTION: to all UFO videographers"

The information about navigation lights didn't help much on that one, at least not until it got closer.

I'd also highly recommend people take a peek at CSI's 2003 article, "Faking UFO Photos for the Twenty-First Century." As a rule observers have to be a lot more skeptical than they are when they see a UFO picture because there are just too many ways for the things to be faked. People should be looking for multiple confirmation sightings; or they should be spending their time on reports from trustworthy sources. Even better consider setting up passive radar antennas (see tinyurl link 44zvslk). Single standalone shots unfortunately just aren't that useful.

reply to post by greeneyedleo


Awwww dude!!!! Thanks so much for doing the hard part for me. I'll put this to good use.
Thanks again man.

Nice list. Pretty comprehensive. Thanks to all who contributed to this thread. Now let's see if this will translate to a higher percentage of threads containing truly unidentifieds. One can only hope.

anybody mention rocket launches?
Launch Schedule 2011
www.satelliteonthenet.co.uk...

Great Idea GEL.

Just joking but, it ought to be mandatory that before everyone posts some tabloid titled thread here they have to review these links before their post links.

Make em think about alternatives for a few minutes, might mellow out the goofiness a bit.

I've actually witnessed a TLE. But I haven't seen the others though. Very Interesting post.

An asteroid zoomed past Earth this morning, coming within 7,500 miles above Earth's surface over the southern Atlantic Ocean.

2011 MD, as the asteroid is named, did not come as close to Earth as a smaller asteroid, 2011 CQ1, which avoided an impact with the planet by just 3,405 miles in February, according to Geek.com.

Even so, 2011 MD flew closer to Earth than the moon.

The latest asteroid is 33 feet long and was discovered this week by telescopes in New Mexico, the AP reports.

According to the IBTimes, 2011 MD is the fifth-closest asteroid to zip past Earth.
link: www.huffingtonpost.com...


reply to post by greeneyedleo

Great thread idea and collection of links. It's kind of already been done but not in such a simple straightforward manner. I also think it's very important to get to know whats overhead before we start pointing out anything we don't recognize off the top our heads as a ufo. I took a basic Astronomy class a semester or two ago and that was very helpful also....

More stuff worthy of mention. I don't know if there are useful websites for identifying much of this stuff, maybe google images?
Birds.
Kites.
Party Balloons.
Remote controlled toy aircraft.
Lighter than air vehicles.
Signal flares.
Garbage or debris lifted by wind.
The will of the wisp. (AKA swamp gas) en.wikipedia.org...

And with photographs...
Falling leaves.
Bugs.

Also deserving mention are...

The autokinetic effect, which can cause stars and planets to appear to be moving, and satellites to appear to be moving in a strange way... en.wikipedia.org... (This was mentioned in the aviation illusions link, but is also applicable to observers standing on the ground.)

The effect which causes stars to appear to be moving at great speed when viewed between moving clouds. Probably related to the autokinetic effect, but does it have a different name?

These are some good links. I have been looking more into this stuff as well so this helps when looking through a telescope, hopefully now I won't be so easily fooled. Thanks for sharing.

Many of these sites are also available via smart phone. I have one on my android that allows me to pinpoint the stalites at any given time. This is a great help when attemptining to rule a sighting in or out.