Black Ring in Khazakstan

[jezzaOZ]

What is this mysterious black ring in the sky of Khazakstan?

Khazakstan black ring

[beowulff]

Looks like a really nice smoke ring to me.

[Blake]

Yep, it’s a smoke ring. There are thousands of ways it could have got there that. If i were instructed to produce it, I would just tie a smoke canister to a drone.

I also love the claim that it was “Roughly one kilometre (0.6 miles) above ground”, You always get this sort of nonsense with mysterious sky objects. In truth, it’s impossible to judge the distance to an unknown object in the sky. At distances greater than 10 metres the eyes can’t accurately judge distances. The brain can do some tricks, such as bobbing the head, that allow it to roughly calculate distance out to about 100 metres. After that, the only way the brain can calculate distance is relative position to objects of known size. With no point of reference in the sky, there’s just no way the brain can work out how far away something is, or how big it is. But for some reason every UFO report includes a description of how big it is, how far away it is and how fast it’s travelling. This smoke ring could be 4 metres across and 100 metres off the ground or it could be kilometres across and 10 miles above the ground. there’s just not enough information to be able to work that out.

[XT]

Definitely a smoke ring (not sure how anyone could conclude otherwise, unless they think it’s a CGI fake). You can make pretty big ones like this:

The trash can smoke ring generator is a signature finale in Steve Spangler’s stage show… and was recently featured on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Years ago, toy manufacturers like Wham-O sold air blasters that sent bursts of air sailing across a room to the surprise and delight of any innocent victim. With a little practice, it was quite easy to shoot a cup off of someone’s head from 20 feet away. Steve Spangler took this to the next level using his motto, “Make it big, do it right, give it class!” His Trash Can Smoke Ring Launcher is easy to make and a blast to share with your friends.

Materials

5 gallon bucket or a large trash can
Bungee cord
Plastic shower curtain or thick plastic sheet
Knife or keyhole saw

Obviously, you could scale this up as well, but since we can’t really determine scale in that video you probably wouldn’t have too…just use camera tricks to make it seem bigger than it was. Cool effect though.

[jezzaOZ]

I thought it might be some type of insect swarm that dispersed at the end.

[Fear_Itself]

I’m betting it is insects swarming. Springtime. Happens in the UK also, coincidentally last year at this time.

[Mangetout]

Here’s another almost identical case from a year or so back, in England. It was attributed to testing of fireworks. The link also includes further down a video demonstration of a machine to make big smoke rings in the sky:

Weird black ring appears in the sky [Pyrotechnic Smoke Ring]

[Mangetout]

Here’s a direct link to the video: Smoke Rings on the Playa Burning Man 2008 - YouTube

Basically, anything that makes asymmetric fireball-type explosion can end up making a smoke ring.

[BACI]

There was a similar discussion here a little while ago - turns out it was an electrical transformer at the top of a power pole burning out. There are videos around the place of it actually happening. This: Wicker Park Transformer Explosion - YouTube for example.

[Johanna]

Or maybe Goddess peeled off her stocking, and in the process it rolled itself around its own elastic, and she dropped it from heaven and it floated gracefully toward earth. The sharp dark ring being the rolled elastic and the hazy area the sheer fabric.